Managing change - impact on government agencies

E-government demands public servants work in new ways. They will need increased skills in the use of information and will need to understand how technology creates new possibilities for conducting business and interacting with customers.

There are three principal areas that require commitment from all public servants, from chief executives and boards through to frontline staff:

1. Leadership and policymaking - understanding the implications of new technology for the way the state sector is organised and for policymaking, service delivery, management and organisational culture;

2. Change and project management - working collaboratively, learning from past successes and failures, building on the successes in innovative ways, fostering, managing and rewarding innovation and implementing improvements prudently;

3. End-user skills - training all staff to use new tools for better service and more effective working together.

All public servants will be expected to:

1. Think about and incorporate an all-of-government perspective into planning and investment decisions, not just focusing on their organisation's requirements.

2. Prepare their own organisation for this change:

3. Understand the impact of delivering e-government;

4. Recruit and retain people with the skills necessary to deliver e-government;

5. Learn the lessons, the new business models and the technology;

6. Actively seek opportunities to develop business applications jointly with other agencies, where appropriate, from an all-of-government perspective;

7. Accept that some e-government initiatives conducted by individual agencies may either need to adapt and change, or may be discarded; and

8. Prepare the organisation to operate in an integrated but decentralised environment.

9. Participate:

10. Align current organisation goals and activities with the e-government strategy;

11. Volunteer or ask for inclusion in projects and activities that are congruent with their organisation's activities;

12. Ensure business plans (outputs, services, budgets) cater for the required activities;

13. Eliminate or change non-aligned activities and projects; and

14. Comply with policies and standards developed to support e-government.

"People should be under no illusion as to the fact that e-government is going to mean dramatic and positive change for them in many ways, no matter which agency they work for, or how well they have done to date. The strategy that we will put in place will build upon the good examples we have of what can be achieved, and enable every agency in government to be up with the best in the world in terms of the results they deliver to the public using information and technology."

-Hon Trevor Mallard, Minister of State Services, keynote address to GOVT.NZ Conference, 6 December 2000.