Breaking down silos and building collaboration can boost government agencies
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COMMENTARY | Having a strategic path forward, good partnerships with the private sector and a common purpose can all help departments better collaborate.
Fragmentation. Resource constraints. Capacity gaps.
These are just a few of the challenges confronting state and local government agencies working to fulfill their mission amidst tightening budgets.
A more efficient path forward focuses on cross-agency, cross-ecosystem collaboration, starting with a strategic roadmap to align the organization on a common purpose and engage external partners through public-private collaborations.
Strategic Roadmap
Building a strategic roadmap is needed to increase and improve collaboration in government agencies. This roadmap should be informed by the decades of cross-sector collaboration and lessons learned in the private sector. The details of each step on this roadmap should be defined in a way that leads to more efficient and scalable government organizational structures and operating models.
One concept that has worked well in the private sector is imagining the organization five years in the future and defining a portfolio of initiatives and investments in people, process, technology and data required to achieve that future. We have found this ‘future-back’ approach helps to challenge the status quo, inspire new ways of thinking and encourage cross-agency collaboration in government organizations.
Another approach is thinking through ‘jobs to be done’ for various stakeholders, including constituent personas, business partners and collaborative stakeholders. What should the future look like? Once a roadmap is in place for that vision, the agency can work backwards and fix issues along the way to migrate the organization’s programs, services and operating model toward that desired future state.
For example, we recently worked with a state Medicaid agency to align leadership on a 10-year aspirational purpose statement as part of their systems modernization program. We reimagined the future by mapping the end-to-end, cross-constituent experience for multiple personas, identifying unmet needs and future capability requirements and developing a prioritized and sequenced portfolio of process, technology and organizational initiatives to achieve the organization’s purpose.
A Common Purpose
This future-back approach only works if the organization is aligned on a shared mission, vision, values and purpose across various departments, divisions and functions. Many government organizations have not taken the time to explicitly define an aspirational and motivational purpose statement — a mission-driven concept that is core to public service.
Aligning on a common purpose to focus the organization’s strategic roadmap can help inform decisions on where and how to build better operating models and improve collaboration in the government and public sector.
Too many agencies, departments and programs operate independently, often resulting in duplicative functions and capabilities across the organization. Increased internal, cross-agency collaboration focused on a clear purpose should reduce this fragmentation, create greater efficiency and support a culture in which workers are more aware of what is happening outside their areas of focus.
Likewise, improving external collaboration through public-private partnerships could increase efficiency and effectiveness of programs and services.
Public-Private Sector Collaboration
While these approaches can make a difference, there are equally significant benefits to be gained through external and public-private sector collaboration. Aligning public sector goals with private sector priorities can create mutual benefits while improving outcomes. In fact, public sector leaders are increasingly exploring new approaches to collaboration with private sector organizations to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
In the health sector, we are working with several state government health and human services organizations to establish hub-and-spoke networks of community partners that address social determinants of health such as food insecurity and transportation.
This journey has just begun and will transform the future of health care delivery. The opportunity for government organizations to do more with less will be enabled by public-private sector collaboration.
The Future
There are no easy solutions. However, by breaking down internal and external silos we can begin to inspire innovation, collaboration and ultimately transformation of government agencies. For government agencies, the future will be defined by internal, cross-agency collaboration and external, public-private sector collaboration.
Michael Botos is EY-Parthenon Americas’ public sector strategy, innovation and transformation leader