Zappos does it differently. Clearly successful: are there lessons for government?
- Phone numbers everywhere: you want to interact with your customer
- Accept and deal with calls on anything (even pizza delivery)
- Suggest competitors if you can’t fulfil a requirement
- Don’t market: put the money into customer service
- Surprise upgrade repeat customers / reward loyalty
As government tries to minimise costs of contact, I wonder if there is any traction in being more flexible for citizens, rather than more automated?
Deloitte warns LAs not to outsource in bulk. This is contrary to the efficiency-based outsourcing deals underway like Cardiff and TCS and tenders from, for example, West Sussex.
How about sharing staff: the figure given is that 30,000 people work in government IT. A Cipfa survey suggests that 50% of public service organisations will be in partnerships or actively sharing services by2010 (I’m sure the respondents’ definitions aren’t all consistent).
Published on
November 26, 2009 in
ICT.
Government-wide IT strategy draft emerges. As I read it, most was already known such as the link with the Operational Efficiency Programme, g-cloud, and government app store. That said, all these are sensible routes to follow.
Interesting to see how it links with the “Restructuring government” / “smarter government” report also due out shortly.
The strategy-on-a-page.
What kind of freelancer are you? I’m not sure I fit into any category, so maybe I’m not a freelancer?
Payback and Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) is a valuable paper from DDB and the COI. Lots to digest in there.
Shared services that seem to work in local government:
- Post sharing
- Two organisations (not sure how this is shared services)
- Cross sector organisations
- Outsourcing
Models with a tendency to fail:
- Multiple organisations, where one clusters in one sector
- Outcome-system, payroll and benefits
via Ken Cole on the lessons of shared services in local government.
Published on
November 24, 2009 in
ICT.
DVLA doubles annual IT spend. Government ICT spending heads for plateau. So there must be quite a few departmental cuts, if these reports are both correct. To my mind better online service provision is one of the key routes to efficiency. This might argue for increased spending on ICT rather than reduced.
Home office ICT. Nothing too surprising there, although I would be interested in the aggregate cost of the sub-£5m projects ignored in the table.
Justice ICT. Lots of meaningless acronyms: I wonder what they are all for? OMNI Transformation, anyone? (A: Steria’s Offender Management National Infrastructure).
Ten key lessons from the Total Place pilots:
- Prevention versus cure
- Case management – look at the whole person, not the symptom
- Junctions – avoid people falling through gaps
- ’80-20’ – public sector demand is very focused; can be expensive
- Dispersed infrastructure – multiple locations all providing service
- ‘Marbled in’ bureaucracy – “because that’s how we do it”
- Decommissioning – realise benefits
- Community connection – first port of call for service
- Commissioning not producing – don’t be a factory
- Programme working – programmes of work, not silos of delivery
Useful stuff: none of this is new. What is new is the appetite to do something this time.
PEPPOL looks like it is trying to address a number of the issues that NPEP is tackling. It is also working along the lines of interoperability and standards rather than single systems.
I found it from a link on a website giving guidance on procurement from the Norwegian government.
There is some other work on EU-wide interoperability as well.