Promoting ODF (OpenDocument Format),Open innovation in Government - Part 2
Continuing from my previous post (part 1) on the MOSTI-IBM seminar on 15 August 2006 on Innovative Government Insights...
The three speakers, Krishna Giri, John Moran and Todd Ramsey delved into why innovation is important for the Government, what areas there needs to be innovation (including the two roles of Government in innovation) and how to be innovative.
Krishna presented the Global CEO Study 2006 but focused from the viewpoint of Public Sector, as the study did also interview Public Sector leaders. Three key themes emerged from the study:
- Enhance existing capabilities and develop new business models
- Collaborate and drive innovation
- Integrate business and technology
Business models
Not only did the overall study find that business models matter, it matters even more for Public Sector (slide 9). The trend is that Governments are continually finding ways of operating differently. Outsourcing/shared services is one obvious choice Krishna mentioned. Other market-based examples listed by Krishna included competitive sourcing, public-private sector partnerships, competitive grants and auctions.
My comment is that the Malaysian Government, too, have explored several models, e.g. BOO (build, operate, own), but I recommend further reading of the source cited by Krishna, i.e. Six Trends Transforming Government:
- Trend 1. Changing rules
- Trend 2. Using performance management
- Trend 3. Providing competition, choice and incentives
- Trend 4. Performing on demand
- Trend 5. Engaging citizens
- Trend 6. Using networks and partnerships
Collaborate and drive innovation
In an earlier post when I touched on the Global CEO Study, I highlighted that generally CEOs emphasize the importance of collaboration but acknowledge their organizations are not doing so well at it -- thus a "collaboration gap". From what Krishna presented (slide 13), the study revealed that for the Public Sector, even more CEOs cited the importance of collaboration, compared to the private sector. But Public Sector CEOs, too, admit not doing well in collaboration, so the collaboration gap also exists in the Public Sector.
I also mentioned in that earlier post how important it is for organizations to innovate by collaborating with others outside the organization. Krishna showed the study finding of how true this is for Public Sector (slide 15) -- most of the new ideas taken are from the outside instead of from internal Government employees. However, the amount of ideas from the citizenry is still low -- in this respect, I think it is it is worthwhile to examine Trend 5 (Engaging Citizens) of the Six Trends Transforming Government.
So, the message here is: to innovate, collaborate, especially externally.
Integrate business and technology
Krishna presented the stark finding (slide 18) that the "integration gap" is even larger in Public Sector than private sector! Reasons cited for the challenge of integrating business and technology were:
- Legacy bespoke (in-house developed) systems limit collaboration and flexibility
- Hard to find people who can span business and technology spheres
- Shortage of capabilities (including project managers) makes business modernization slow and challenging
- Technology programs are too often budgeted for and pursued independently of business and process modernization
Summary of Krishna Giri's presentation
Government can innovate by executing newer business models. Collaboration, especially with the external is an important factor to achieve innovation - i.e. open collaboration and open innovation. Technology is an enabler; the challenge is to integrate technology to business strategy.
The next presentations by John Moran and Todd Ramsey offer ways forward to achieve the above. I will discuss how open collaboration and integration can be achieved by collaborative technologies and architectures, as well as cite case studies.
But not tonight! There will be part 3 coming. Shortly, I wanna watch football (England VS Greece friendly) - or they may be watching me on the sofa...
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