Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic II

Part 2 of a series in the lead up to this year's Public Services Summit @ Nobel in Stockholm...

Let’s start by putting the current discussion into some sort of context.  See what you think of these initial ideas – and feel free to challenge them or, better still, add a perspective of your own.

According to one view, the public sector is in crisis, reeling from the impact of wrenching changes in the political, social, economic and technology context in which it operates and struggling to respond effectively to the new risks and opportunities that increasingly shape the destiny of the society it serves.

A more benign view would characterise the current period as one of transition as a large, complex and vital institution in our public life evolves new structures and capabilities to ensure it remains relevant, resilient and respected.

But however you choose to tell the story, the practical reality is the same. 

For many countries, the public sector is a core institution at the heart of the aspiration for good governance , quality public services and an effective response to the new challenges of growth, sustainability and inclusion. But it is a vital national asset that is under considerable stress.

A generation of public servants is retiring as the baby boomer generation complete their careers.  Replacing them with a new generation of smart, capable and committed people is, for many jurisdictions, proving difficult.  A cocktail of organisational, social and technology changes that has wrought massive changes in the corporate sector has had much less impact on the public sector. As a result, the public sector often offers people a working environment that is poorly designed, inadequately equipped and wedded to old fashioned organisational cultures with little appeal to a younger generation of workers. 

And the policy context in which the public sector’s role and purpose is fashioned offers a daunting and increasingly crowded array of ‘wicked’ problems whose solutions seem increasingly out of reach to the instincts, attitudes and capabilities of the traditional public sector.  The demand for a new more connected, flexible and collaborative operating model seems at odds with the public sector’s stubborn embrace of hierarchy, fractured silos and competitive territorialism.

But, by all accounts, people retain an instinct for public service and younger people have a genuine respect for public, shared values with which they are often keen to engage in both traditional and new, more direct ways. And the public sector itself remains wedded to instincts that should prove to be as critical to its value in the 21^st century as they have been in the past.  These include a passion for rigorous analysis, a capacity to weigh ideas and options with independence and disinterest, to speak truth to power and to hold firm to a lively and pragmatic conception of the public good.  Merit has gradually entrenched itself as the currency of progress and success is increasingly measured by a capacity to combine policy analysis with effective execution.

At its broadest, the dilemma facing the public sector is that, in large measure, it remains an institution still trapped in the rhythms of what one analyst has described as the “World 1.0” while confronting new expectations, and the demand for a new, more flexible and agile culture fuelled by the instincts of “World 2.0”.[1] 

In the World 1.0, for example, knowledge sharing and collaboration is an added imposition, but in World 2.0 it is a natural and expected part of working. Work is open and transparent, and not undertaken behind closed door. People are controlled in the old world, but in the newer world freedom and autonomy comes with more responsibility and accountability. In the World 1.0, information tends to be centralised and controlled; in the World 2.0, it is widely distributed and relatively freely accessible. In the more open world of 'everything 2.0', information is accessed when and how people need it, not pushed to them in a form that suits the producers.

But the unavoidable message is that the transition, in some form and at a gathering pace, is both necessary and inevitable. 

The success with which the public sector fashions the new tools and capabilities it needs to thrive in this new world – open, connected, fluid and, above all, hypercollaborative - and the extent to which it creates the working environments whose culture and ethos is infused with these values, will largely determine the extent to which it can expect to find and then retain the workforce on whose skills and commitment it depends. 

Cisco’s The Connected Republic is a vision for a new way of governing and a new model of government whose benefits are hostage, at least in part, to a public service that can navigate the structural, cultural and operational changes implicit in these transitions. That means profound change and a program of sustained institutional innovation. 

At the heart of that endeavour is not just technology, but a whole new way of thinking about the impact of pervasive connectedness powering a fit-for-purpose operating model that puts people and communities at the centre of networks of service, trust, accountability and knowledge.