Working in Partnership

ICT can enable business change but real improvement in Public Service through the effective use of ICT can only be achieved by Departments and Agencies working in partnership with ISD to deliver transformed services. This does mean changes in perspective:

• Instead of each department viewing their business needs and their public service delivery on an independent basis, now the view has to be from the end clients’ perspective, whether business, resident or visitor.
• Instead of protecting information and knowledge, organisations need to share and therefore expand their information.
• Instead of applying expensive technology to old insular processes with minimal business change (making expensive old processes), organisations need to challenge their processes and look at new, perhaps radical, ways of working together.

The key challenge is to develop a shared vision of what service should look like – service which is responsive and customer focused, service which uses information which is already known and validated, service which delivers demonstrable and realisable effectiveness and efficiency.

Sometimes that vision will cross Departmental and Agency boundaries – seeing Government internal organisations work in partnership, a partnership which may extend to suppliers, customers and industry sector organisations, a partnership which may mean common business processes such as grants, licenses and benefits.

Perhaps the perspective change does mean more thinking outside the box – helping to develop broader on-island competence and capability. For instance, work has recently started to drive a co-ordinated approach to the Island’s ICT sector.

The Island is unique – a microcosm of public service, with a customer base experienced and demanding in terms of technology to enhance service delivery. Technology itself continues to evolve and offer new opportunity. The Island exists in a global economy which takes advantage of emerging technologies, more and more on a consumer led basis, more and more on a basis of virtual social communities.

Government has built a strong ICT Foundation – the goal now is working in partnership to transform Public Service and offer real efficiencies and value to Business and Citizen.