The Driver
It’s no surprise to anyone working in Government or non-profits that over the last few decades western Governments have been embracing concepts like privatization, community reintegration, outsourcing, contracting out and public private partnerships.
From a historical basis, public service used to be a calling with a philosophy of service to the public in an atmosphere of entitlement. With the rise of citizen’s rights and the pressure for accountability from government, the concepts of centralizing services and treating the public as consumers of government services has led to an evolution, or more rightly a devolution, of government services with the private and non-profit sector picking up the responsibilities. The following excerpt, from a report from the Australian Government[1], is highly reflective of governments around the world through the last few decades.
Traditionally Australian public servants saw it as their role to provide citizens with services that were fair, equitable, correctly and lawfully delivered—where entitlements under the law were economically and carefully administered with an emphasis on due process.
The 1970s saw the introduction of administrative law initiatives, which led to a greater acceptance of citizen rights and increased transparency of decision-making. Initiatives aimed at broadening the representativeness of the Service to more closely reflect the wider community were also introduced. The Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration supported measures to improve community participation and responsiveness, and proposed ‘one-stop shops’ to bring together services from a broad range of government agencies to one shop front. Their implementation awaited improved technology.
The results-based management reforms of the 1980s saw increasing adoption of private sector methods in the public sector and a new emphasis on citizens as customers.
By the 1990s the ideas of the competitive market impinged more deeply, emphasising the rights of citizens to choose from a range of service providers, while new partnerships with non-government organisations encouraged the idea of citizen as client. The requirements of public servants to deliver services ‘fairly, effectively, impartially and courteously to the Australian public’ whilst being ‘sensitive to the diversity’ of the public, were incorporated in the Public Service Act in 1999. By this time, members of the public were also seen as stakeholders with a legitimate part to play in government policy decision-making. Ideas of mutual obligation complemented this approach.
By the turn of the century, strong government imperatives and more advanced technology had facilitated the creation of the one-stop shops, and the delivery of electronic services across the Internet had become a reality.
Cross sector/department case management is the next major IT wave beginning throughout governments and their contractors according to research in the IT field. The following is excepted from a white paper by CGI-AMS[2]
…governments are transitioning toward digital government, which transforms the structure of government by using technology to realign public services so as to meet the longstanding government imperatives for economy, efficiency, and accountability. Many human services organizations are adopting this vision through a client-centric orientation that emphasizes integrated service delivery across program areas to help move low-income families toward self-sufficiency.
Due to this increased emphasis on integrated service delivery, state and local governments face the challenge of developing collaborative strategies for building information systems that facilitate the sharing of data, information, and technology resources across multiple agencies, departments, and programs.
Public Sector reform has brought opportunities to both the non-profit social services sector and to for profit enterprises engaged in the provision of social services. In fact, there is much that could be written about the philosophy and outcomes from the two different approaches, but that is outside the scope of this work. As quoted above the non-profit sector is one of the faster growing sectors of the economy. The reason in part is obviously that government is getting out of the business of direct services delivery and focusing more on governance policy, legislation and accountability. It is in this last element that we find much of the drive for technologies within the social services domain. If government is no longer the provider of service, how then can they account for the expenditures of our tax dollars in these areas? It seems elementary that a given ministry or department should simple ask for reports from the field as to the varieties of success from their funding and report this back.
Easier said than done.
[1]The Australian Experience of Public Sector Reform, Australian Public Service Commission 2003
[2]Integrated Client Management – AMS White Paper April 2003
From a historical basis, public service used to be a calling with a philosophy of service to the public in an atmosphere of entitlement. With the rise of citizen’s rights and the pressure for accountability from government, the concepts of centralizing services and treating the public as consumers of government services has led to an evolution, or more rightly a devolution, of government services with the private and non-profit sector picking up the responsibilities. The following excerpt, from a report from the Australian Government[1], is highly reflective of governments around the world through the last few decades.
Traditionally Australian public servants saw it as their role to provide citizens with services that were fair, equitable, correctly and lawfully delivered—where entitlements under the law were economically and carefully administered with an emphasis on due process.
The 1970s saw the introduction of administrative law initiatives, which led to a greater acceptance of citizen rights and increased transparency of decision-making. Initiatives aimed at broadening the representativeness of the Service to more closely reflect the wider community were also introduced. The Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration supported measures to improve community participation and responsiveness, and proposed ‘one-stop shops’ to bring together services from a broad range of government agencies to one shop front. Their implementation awaited improved technology.
The results-based management reforms of the 1980s saw increasing adoption of private sector methods in the public sector and a new emphasis on citizens as customers.
By the 1990s the ideas of the competitive market impinged more deeply, emphasising the rights of citizens to choose from a range of service providers, while new partnerships with non-government organisations encouraged the idea of citizen as client. The requirements of public servants to deliver services ‘fairly, effectively, impartially and courteously to the Australian public’ whilst being ‘sensitive to the diversity’ of the public, were incorporated in the Public Service Act in 1999. By this time, members of the public were also seen as stakeholders with a legitimate part to play in government policy decision-making. Ideas of mutual obligation complemented this approach.
By the turn of the century, strong government imperatives and more advanced technology had facilitated the creation of the one-stop shops, and the delivery of electronic services across the Internet had become a reality.
Cross sector/department case management is the next major IT wave beginning throughout governments and their contractors according to research in the IT field. The following is excepted from a white paper by CGI-AMS[2]
…governments are transitioning toward digital government, which transforms the structure of government by using technology to realign public services so as to meet the longstanding government imperatives for economy, efficiency, and accountability. Many human services organizations are adopting this vision through a client-centric orientation that emphasizes integrated service delivery across program areas to help move low-income families toward self-sufficiency.
Due to this increased emphasis on integrated service delivery, state and local governments face the challenge of developing collaborative strategies for building information systems that facilitate the sharing of data, information, and technology resources across multiple agencies, departments, and programs.
Public Sector reform has brought opportunities to both the non-profit social services sector and to for profit enterprises engaged in the provision of social services. In fact, there is much that could be written about the philosophy and outcomes from the two different approaches, but that is outside the scope of this work. As quoted above the non-profit sector is one of the faster growing sectors of the economy. The reason in part is obviously that government is getting out of the business of direct services delivery and focusing more on governance policy, legislation and accountability. It is in this last element that we find much of the drive for technologies within the social services domain. If government is no longer the provider of service, how then can they account for the expenditures of our tax dollars in these areas? It seems elementary that a given ministry or department should simple ask for reports from the field as to the varieties of success from their funding and report this back.
Easier said than done.
[1]The Australian Experience of Public Sector Reform, Australian Public Service Commission 2003
[2]Integrated Client Management – AMS White Paper April 2003
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