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Technology

Process-driven govt enjoys higher efficiencies

By Kelly Ng | 9 February 2010

Citizens are demanding better and faster services from a more open government. Lars Bengtsson, ASEAN Managing Director, IDS Scheer revealed how a process-driven approach can improve efficiency to meet rising expectations from the public.

“Business Process Management (BPM) is not about technology. It is a management enabler. It creates a handshake between management goals and IT,” explained Bengtsson. “Public sector leaders want to create value and be more efficient. This is done though optimising processes with the use of IT. BPM gives management and IT a common language so they can co-exist.”

Process-driven governments have reported measurable returns. Optimising custom clearance cuts 500,000 hours of waiting time per year. A supply chain integration project yielded a 92 per cent reduction in transaction costs. A fine and debt collection and ledger system resulted in lowering of IT costs by 65 per cent.

While the concept of process management has been around for ages, tools were not available to document and communicate processes effectively, added Bengtsson. “It is pretty easy to describe and document a process on paper or PowerPoint. But maintaining the record can be tedious because processes change all the time within government. Today, you can create a repository of common objects, which makes documenting and changing processes more efficient,” he explained. “New tools also allow you to communicate processes easily, whether internally – to new employees for example – or across agencies.”

BPM and Enterprise Architecture (EA) provide transparency for better management and control. “Many governments may have processes in place, but how can you be sure agencies are practising them?” he asked.

Having a system to monitor processes allows the public sector to benchmark across government. “You can see why an agency is doing better than another agency in a certain area. That facilitates learning from one another,” he added.

Bengtsson suggested a few questions which public sector agencies could ponder: - Do I know what are my business critical processes and IT systems? - If my critical IT system is down, which parts of the business processes within the government are impacted? Who needs to be informed? - How can I do an impact analysis on affected agencies and processes when implementing new systems? - How can I ensure consistent and up-to-date business lines and ICT information? - How can I improve communication between business lines and IT? - How can I clearly define my service level agreements?

Governments in Asia Pacific differ greatly in their understanding and adoption of BPM, he added. In order to figure out the next step, he recommended agencies to do a maturity assessment.

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