Category Archives: Portfolio Management
A broad category for portfolio management
Gaining an Extra Portfolio of Work (in the P3 Sense)
Within a government department, the term portfolio has a slighly different meaning than the one developed by the Office of Government and Commerce (OGC) in the UK. However on closer reflection, there are marked similarities. They are both about the remit of the organisation and the scope. A department porfolio is defined by one or more ministers being allocated to a general area. For example the Innovation portfolio has the two ministers and parliamentary secretary, each responsible for their own chunk of work.
In a P3 sense an organisation usually has only one portfolio of work. This is only a generalisation and there are sure to be plenty of examples to the contrary. In the Department of Health & Ageing I believe that to date there is only one portfolio of work. The department is usually responsible for the provision of policy advice on health and ageing issues to the government of the day. There are occaisions where the department will be called on to deliver small to medium delivery programs, but for the most part its output is policy advice.
The Australian government of the day has recently called upon the department to deliver its new, ambitious health reform. These changes, as so frequently pointed out by the government, are the largest since the introduction of Medicare (government subsidised health care). To deliver these changes requires a different set of department wide capabilities and coordination than has previously existed. It is fast becoming apparent that the scale of these changes mean more than a large programme of work. Instead the separate parcels of work at times appear to share very little connection to each other. Instead because they are all part of the health reform – they form something larger, a new portfolio of work. This new portfolio has to be integrated into the current structure. It is not often that you get to have an insider’s view of these kind of changes in an organisation. These changes are so fundamental to the organisation that the new strategic plan has been put on hold till the impact of the reform can be integrated.
