Executive Thought Leadership

Internet-based applications significantly impact the way the world works, lives, plays, and learns. And the public sector marketplace is no exception. People worldwide are demanding that their governments reduce costs and increase efficiency and accessibility to services. Governments more and more are finding that the Internet is a way to meet these goals, and they are reengineering their processes to lay the foundation for robust productivity growth.

The public service infrastructure of a country is a major component in the cycle of productivity that generates economic growth and higher standards of living. Productivity varies by industry over time. Some organizations are early adopters of technology because of external forces or because their customers, suppliers, or employees are willing to experiment. Whether you are a public sector organization or a corporation, you do internally what adds sustainable competitive advantage to your organization, and outsource what others can do more effectively. This type of productivity approach, in my opinion, is going to be the major fundamental change in business for this next decade.

Public sector organizations differ from corporations, but many similarities between the two exist. Last year, I hosted the Cisco CEO-CIO Summit, where the largest, most advanced organizations discussed business opportunities and productivity issues. Without exception, these global companies viewed the network and the applications that run on the network as the enablers of their business strategies. The overwhelming consensus was that simply installing the application and the network would not result in increased productivity unless you changed business process, which then provides the productivity boost that truly comes from this combination.

Investing in systems or new technologies alone also will not allow organizations to take advantage of the productivity increases possible. Public sector organizations must also change their organizational culture toward process improvement and service and deploy formal measurement systems to track operational performance. Productivity results from a change in business processes, implementation of applications and network infrastructure, and providing the right skills, tools, and business environment. As we move into an increasingly global economy, the importance of public sector services continues to increase.

Thought Leadership

This issue of the Executive Thought Leadership Quarterly presents a detailed look at public sector services and productivity. Part 1, Net Impact 2004: From Connectivity to Productivity, provides an overview of a new study conducted by Momentum Research Group and sponsored by Cisco. Net Impact 2004 studied Europe’s public sector organizations and how they are focusing more on productivity as they work to improve the quality, scope, and cost of citizen services.

Improvements result from small, incremental innovations in specific business functions, but this new study goes in depth into the specific improvements public sector organizations are trying to achieve as well as the actions they have they taken and for what reasons. Net Impact 2004 surveyed organizations in eight countries: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Complementing the Net Impact article is an interview with Dr. Stephen Coleman, expert in e-democracy and professor at the Oxford Internet Institute. Dr. Coleman offers insight into recent trends in e-democracy and touches on similarities and differences between e-democracy and public sector results found in the Net Impact 2004 study.

I hope you enjoy this issue of the Executive Thought Leadership Quarterly .