Blog Archives
AGIMO’s Draft Strategic Vision for the Australian Government’s use of ICT has Promoted a Conversation
While it’s important to have a strategic vision that is solid and stands alone, one of the reasons for releasing the draft to the public to comment on is to promote a conversation about the Government’s agenda for future use of ICT. This vision has done both and it has done them well. Shortly after the draft was released, IT opinion group Gartner released their take on the vision, coming to the conclusion that it was less innovative than they expected. Based on a blog post from Andrea Di Maio, a Gartner analyst, I think they had anticipated more Web 2.0 initiatives to be outlined in the vision. But that’s OK, in my opinion, Web 2.0 while a hot, sexy topic for the profit based sector of the IT industry, isn’t quite as relevant for the government sector. The release of the draft also prompted a lot of conversation on the actual AGIMO blog where the vision was released and the official forum for feedback. Some of the feedback were encouraging notes, amazingly there was very little unsubstantiated criticism and most of the feedback was in the form of in-depth, constructive feedback. So I think that AGIMO should congratulate themselves for promoting a conversation around how the Australian Government will use ICT in the next few years.
My Review of AGIMO’s Draft Strategic Vision
I think this is a very well constructed and rigorous document. It is pitched at the right level for a vision without attempting to anticipate the means of implementation, as a vision should. It also encompasses the current Government’s initiatives (namely the National Broadband Network) while still making adequate room for guiding the APS in improving the value it provides in serving the government of the day.
The vision is constructed around three strategic priorities: Deliver Better Services, Enagage Openly and Improve Government Operations. These in turn are decomposed into strategic actions. Holistically these priorities signal that the Australian Government is moving from its cost controlling (efficiency) perspective to a perspective of value management. The Government is also attempting to be more transparent about its policies and its intent to execute them and to engage the public as early as possible. The vision sees a consolidation of the earlier Declaration of Open Government. Finally the vision contains goals for technology-policy alignment and simplifying the access points that citizens may use to interact with the government in an online context.
This is an excerpt from the figure used within the Draft to summarise the vision.
I’m very encouraged by the shift to the value management perspective. John Thorp, arguably the founder of benefits management, has long been championing a move from evaluations based on cost to evaluations based on value. This shift is signalled by “Strategic Action Five: Investing optimally”
Government will invest optimally by targeting ICT investment to the areas that deliver the greatest value and enable a better, more effective implementation of policy decisions.
This is a much more mature approach to investment and promotes alignment with the Government’s priorities. Value is well defined by the IT Governance Institute in their ValIT framework: “value is defined as the total life-cycle benefits net of related costs, adjusted for risk and (in the case of financial value) for the time value of money.” Under this priority, programme and portfolio management will become more crucial and cloud computing options will be considered.
Improvements that Could be Made
By no means is this a perfect vision. There are a number of improvements that could be made. Some of these are cosmetic like including better quality images and capitalising the word “use” within the title to show that it’s being used as a noun and not a verb. Other improvements that could be considered are to give more thought to measures and KPIs for the success criteria of each action. By being more specific with these criteria the current baseline measures can be quantified and the Government will have a good basis for determining future areas to focus on. It wouldalso be great to see the AGIMO putting some more thought into governance of programmes of work that are large from an individual organisation perspective, but don’t meet the criteria to be forced to undergo a two-pass process or a Gateway review.
Overall this is a great document from AGIMO and I encourage you to take the time to read it for yourself and submit your own feedback.
Building on the Business Motivation Model
One of my favourite standards from the Object Management Group (OMG) is the Business Motivation Model (BMM). I believe that this standard is crucial to be incorporated into frameworks for extracting value from IT-enabled investments because it shows what and how a business goes about achieving its aims. Nick Malik, one of Microsoft’s Enterprise Architects, has provided some very interesting commentary on the shortfalls of the Business Motivation Model that he has identified while undertaking some projects for Microsoft.
Malik has made some good observations on the shortcomings of the BMM, which he admits he doesn’t have all the answers to remedy. Those concerns are:
- Bizzarre Assumptions
- The choice of SWOT as inappropriate
- Incompleteness for large enterprises
Malik’s analysis is available on his blog.
Management of Portfolios (MoP) Practitioner Guide Released
It's been quite a long wait for the UK Government's Office of Government and Commerce (OGC) to release their practitioner guide for the management of portfolios, creatively called Management of Portfolios (MoP). But it has finally happened!! For a while now, programme managers and executives have known about the concept of several programmes being rolled up to an overall portfolio. However there hasn't been much in the way of formal guidance on managing that till now. Previously managers of portfolios have had to rely on conventional management theory and governance frameworks. OGC's maturity model P3M3 has been of some assistance in managing portfolios with guidance for increasing portfolio management tutorial. Nothing can beat a proper methodology however.
I haven't acquired a copy of the guidance as yet. So I can only comment on the content based on the marketing material. Portfolio management sits above project and programme management, however an efficient and mature practice of either or both is not required. Merely by applying MoP, the organisation will start to invest in programmes and projects that are aligned to the organisation's long term objectives. More than any other of the P3 disciplines portfolio management requires strong executive support. Executive have to understand the benefits of choosing the right programmes and projects. Benefit management to ensure that benefits are aligned with the corporate strategy and harvestable is also a crucial area. As is an understanding of risk mitigation and other risk management practices. The concept of a portfolio is readily applicable to the public sector where the collection of streams are known as a portfolio. Each government department then manages one or more portfolios as part of their remit. I wrote last year of my department gaining another portfolio – the National Health and Hospitals Network. To find out more about MoP refer to the new Best Management Practices website: http://www.best-management-practice.com/Portfolio-Management-MoP/
