Recent digital advice – the challenges currently facing public offices

Recently we’ve been very active out and about talking to public offices about their digital projects and the information management issues they are facing.

Scenarios we talked about included the redevelopment of client management systems, expanding ECM/EDRMS systems to enable collaboration across agencies in a cluster, and the consolidation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. We talked about digital contract management, cloud computing risk assessments, and the proliferation of communication, messaging and collaboration platforms. We talked to a diverse set of organisations: large operational departments, local councils and small specialist agencies.

The public offices we talked to are involved with providing fundamental services and assistance to citizens. The discussions always came back to having the right tools and processes for collection of information, efficient systems and protocols to manage that information, and accountability arrangements so that things are unlikely to go wrong and to redress them if they do. Every scenario was in some way attempting the challenge of fixing suboptimal system designs and implementations from the past, while being flexible enough to adopt innovative digital technologies.

These situations reflect the broad, ongoing trends in government which public offices are adapting to. These include:

  • Coordination of services in conjunctions with other States and the Commonwealth
  • Delivery of services through non-government partnerships
  • The technology industry’s prioritisation of cloud computing platforms
  • The information management challenges of mergers
  • Managing the consolidation of legacy systems
  • Legacy data retention and disposal considerations

Coordination of services in conjunctions with other States and the commonwealth

Government organisations are increasingly being asked to deliver services in a way which provides for smooth transitions in service between States and with the Commonwealth. In some cases, the services are to be delivered in partnership.

These projects are intended to provide more efficient and seamless services to citizens, but they can pose significant challenges for the management of information. Key issues include consistent specification of data requirements, and the governance arrangements to monitor, support, and enforce these.

Delivery of services through non-government partnerships

Government has identified opportunities for services to be expanded and/or shifted to delivery through partnerships with non-government organisations. Public offices are considering the challenge of how to manage the accountability they have for protecting information when it is operationally managed by a non-government organisation.

As for cross-jurisdictional arrangements, key issues include consistent specification of data requirements, and the governance arrangements to monitor, support, and enforce these.

The technology industry’s prioritisation of cloud computing platforms

Cloud platforms provide enterprise platforms which can rapidly incorporate innovations and improvements, rather than having to wait for the next release cycle and conduct an upgrade project. On the other hand, this means that organisations will often have less flexibility to adapt the solution and integrate it with their other applications. It also means that for certain categories of application, the cloud platform will become the de-facto standard because non-cloud applications will be significantly inferior.

Challenges include understanding the standard terms of service regarding location, ownership, and export capabilities for the organisation’s data.

The information management challenges of mergers and splits

Organisations constantly have to tidy up the information systems when mergers and splits occur. Entities on different technology have to merge systems in order to understand critical aspects of organisational performance, such as financial performance and human resources statistics, as well as for allowing secure document sharing and collaboration. This also means that entities leaving a larger organisation are trying to figure out what information they need to extract from their enterprise systems, and how it needs to be structured in order to be incorporated into the information management frameworks and enterprise applications of the destination organisation.

Managing the consolidation of legacy systems

A number of organisations have multiple legacy systems performing the same functions. This is both to do with partial internal migrations that have previously occurred, as well as previous mergers where systems were not integrated. These organisations are now looking to consolidate these legacy systems, and have to make decisions about what information is needed for operational business purposes, what information is needed for audit and accountability, and what information is extraneous.

Legacy data retention and disposal

Even where organisations do not have major issues with complicated legacy systems and unresolved mergers, they are still accumulating massive amounts of data and information and are now considering whether their older information is necessary to meet for operational business purposes, as well as for audit and accountability and other governance functions.

While a lot of organisations are looking to some quite sophisticated technology to assist them in categorising and understanding accumulated legacy data, the key questions remain recognising the value and importance of the data and the risks which they must weigh when determining arrangements for ongoing access and retention.

Resolving these challenges

It is satisfying when we are able to offer some advice to organisations which assists with these projects, and to be involved as they address these challenges through the course of the project. Many of these organisations are approaching us early at the commencement of the project, while some of them are coming back to us mid-project after first talking to us when the project commenced. In both cases, it’s great to be able to add an external perspective and emphasize some considerations for the management of digital information.

Many of these initiatives were in the earlier stages, but we look forward to blogging about the resolution of some of those challenges as we hear about these projects, and others, coming to a successful conclusion.