Why Government has to Reclaim Processes

Danish public-private partnership and longtime research has fostered a groundbreaking approach to government digitization based on formalized methods and standards. Digitizing all types of work processes and services, from internal to citizen-facing, it is based on executable process libraries and a new combined process-driven and data-centric software architecture designed for digital bureaucracy.

Advanced analytics, blockchain, cloud first, robotics, artificial intelligence, and open source; across the world, government continues to apply new technology and new technology based strategies to transform themselves, digitize, and automate citizen services. Yet, as new technologies have emerged and left, government has been struggling for decades and still does struggle to convert ambitious digitization plans into deliverables and measurable results.

Processes first, technology second.

Originated in Denmark and proven in a number of countries across EMEA, a new approach to digitization offers government fast track digitization and strong measurable effects. It is based on a formalized model for government production, referred to as “digital bureaucracy”, and supported by a new type of standard software and a highly structured implementation method. Government production is based on bureaucracy. Yet, as the classic bureaucracy is now challenged by a shift from paper-based to digitized information, this shift also offers transparency, significant productivity gains, and more efficient service delivery. While technology continues to change, government means and duties remain. Technology trends and a limited understanding of how government works often hinders digitization. Further this often results in technology based business transformations where technology itself becomes the goal.

Rather than investigating new technology, the offset for the new approach to digitization was studying the processes and resources enabling government service delivery, as well as understanding the nature of government work and the bureaucracy. This led to a generic model for government work based on best practices independent of technology, named “digital bureaucracy”. With the generic model, next step was to design and build a configurable production system, which could be configured to support individual authorities. This was accompanied by a deployment method to guide the design of specific internal and citizen facing processes, and to guide the internal organizational implementation. The research made it clear that government has to reclaim the ownership and insight into work processes, which during the last decades has been buried with IT systems, often controlled by external experts and suppliers. In the same way, government must be in control of organization and the responsibility for service delivery.