Total Enterprise Reinvention in Public Service

In brief

• In recent years, public service organizations have become well equipped to navigate disruptions amid ongoing instability and disruption.

• Now, public service organizations can adopt a mindset of continuous innovation—enabled by Total Enterprise Reinvention—to manage future scenarios.

• By fostering greater agility and resilience, public service organizations can withstand constant change and better meet people's needs.

A New Performance Frontier in Public Service

Leaders in industries across the globe are navigating a newly complex and dynamic environment.

The world is in an extended period of instability and insecurity, or “permacrisis,” driven by geopolitical conflicts and extreme political division, public health emergencies and more. Amid this upheaval, the world’s people, communities and businesses rely on the public sector for service stability and continuity. 

The core functions of the public sector, from infrastructure to public health, are more critical—and more strained—than ever. When crises hit, public sector agencies are at the center of an effective response. How resilient these agencies are can have a meaningful impact on outcomes for individuals and entire communities.

In recent years, we’ve seen public service organizations make rapid, innovative changes in response to crises. These same organizations are now grappling with a “new normal,” including redesigned internal operations and evolving constituent expectations, often in the context of ongoing volatility. The good news is that the public sector’s accelerated transformation during the past few years positions these organizations well to navigate current circumstances—and the road ahead.

Introducing: Total Enterprise Reinvention

Public sector organizations must embrace a more deliberate strategy of continuous reinvention if they want to successfully anticipate and manage future scenarios. Creating a more agile and resilient public service organization starts with establishing a strong digital core that unlocks human potential and enables the next-generation capabilities necessary for short- and long-term success. We call this new strategy Total Enterprise Reinvention.

It leads to a New Performance Frontier that moves beyond today’s best practices. It aims to reinvent, over time, every part of an organization, centered around a digital core. In doing so, these organizations can achieve perpetual innovation that can improve outcomes in the face of any disruption.

In simple terms, this strategy comes to life through:

• Continuous reinvention with digital technologies at the core.
• An organization-wide mindset shift to big, open and boundaryless thinking.
• People at all levels embracing new ways of working.

On the Path to a New Performance Frontier

Those that recognize change is constant will be the best equipped to deliver the more successful outcomes. We’ve plotted a roadmap for public service organizations so that they can:

Reset the vision and expand horizons

In the permacrisis context, public sector organizations must reassess their missions to ensure they meet the needs of tomorrow. While this might seem like an obvious checkpoint, revisiting the mission is not as regular a practice as it should be. In reexamining missions, public sector leaders need to lean in more ambitiously to address even unknown future challenges. Organizations must also prepare to pivot, not just act, to make forward progress in crisis response.

Reimagine experience and response

Good or bad, experiences people have with public service shape their perceptions of government. Lengthy and confusing processes can limit access to service and hinder an agency’s ability to provide better outcomes. Governments that consider “how people want and need to be served” and “how employees want and need to work” can seize opportunities to improve service in measurable ways.

Reorient operations toward outcomes

Optimizing operations is essential, as strong operations help organizations deliver on their core mission, including improving outcomes for those they serve and employ. Legacy systems, siloed operations and limited collaboration block valuable insight and impede successful service delivery as well as innovation. Organizations and their stakeholders benefit when operations functions are at peak performance and elevated technologies improve intelligent business processes.

Rethink talent and workforce

Public sector leaders, perhaps more so than leaders in other industries, are acutely aware of the convergence of socioeconomic and labor market disruption. With advancements such as Generative AI changing how, where and when work is done, now is the time to embrace a new identity as a talent leader and new ideas for the public service workforce.

Engage and ignite your digital core

All these capabilities are centered around a strong, enterprise-wide digital core that integrates the power of cloud, data and AI to create an interoperable set of secure, flexible platforms. The result? Reinvention. While the digital core sits at the heart of our proposed framework, building it is not a one-time project. It is a forward-looking and continuous progression, including a cloud-based, secure and nimble IT infrastructure that propels organizations into a new performance frontier.

Total Enterprise Reinvention prepares organizations for constant disruption

Total Enterprise Reinvention is a state of continuous evolution, enabled by digital infrastructure, that allows for rapid outcomes. This is not a typical government approach. Yet it is imperative in our current permacrisis environment. Tackling the big issues and keeping jurisdictions sustainable over time entails asking new questions and taking steps to rewire the organization—through new talent strategies and new technology tools, among others—to be more agile and resilient.

Coming out of the accelerated transformation cycles of the pandemic provides a fortuitous foundational momentum to begin realizing the promise of exciting new capabilities. Public sector agencies have never been more ready to tackle transformation in response to constant change and better meet the growing demands and expectations of those they serve.