As the “consumerization” of IT has propelled the buzz around workplace mobility enablement to reach a fever pitch, the “bring your own device” (BYOD) approach has become an oft-utilized solution. Faced with two emerging trends – an upward shift in employee demand expectations for what workplace technologies should accomplish, and a shift in market position between RIM’s Blackberry, Apple/iOS, and Android – IT functions have begun to question whether the provisioning of endpoint devices is wise.

Indeed, survey data indicates that even among self-described “technology skeptics,” a majority of employees are already using personally-owned tablets, smartphones, or computers for work purposes. These developments have led many IT executives to conclude that a BYOD approach is central to employee engagement, satisfaction, and productivity. Our 2011 Emerging Technology Roadmap reflects this trend, with over half of IT organizations planning to institute a “bring your own” program for mobile devices by mid-2012.

This trend is not unique to the private sector. In fact, Government Executive’s recent article outlining “5 Trends in Mobility” includes the BYOD wave front and center, a phenomenon seemingly buoyed by U.S. Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel’s vocal embrace of the power of mobility: “Going mobile doesn’t just increase productivity, but it’s a huge cost saver too.” Leading government analysts agree, calling BYOD the “dominant trend in many civilian agencies” and 2012 “the year that tablets become firmly embedded in the government space.”

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Executives around the world are realizing that we have entered a new era in decision making. Our ability to store, access, and analyze vast amounts of information has grown exponentially during the past decade. However, even as federal invest eight- and nine-figure sums to derive insight from information, less than 40% of employees have sufficiently mature processes and skills to do so. There is an good chance that, right now, someone in your organization is about to make a poor decision based on data that you have paid enormous amounts to gather and analyze.  As federal agencies continue to amass vast quantities of data, the concern is that their ability to discern insight from data diminishes.  Across the federal CIO and CFO community, we hear this common refrain.

To overcome this insight deficit, “big data,” no matter how comprehensive or well analyzed, needs to be complemented by “big judgment.” Big data and big analytics will dramatically amplify the effects of human decisions, sometimes to an unimaginable scale. This is great news if those decisions are timely, sound, and properly motivated—and potentially catastrophic if not.

ACTION STEP #1. TAKE OWNERSHIP OF YOUR INFORMATION

At the best agencies, leaders own the following pieces of the information value chain: the process of determining what data is necessary; what analyses they want to run; how they share that data across the agency, vendor and citizen information, and how they staff and fund the work necessary to derive insight from data.

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Federal agencies have invested heavily in finance technology for the past decade, with mixed results.  The private sector hasn’t fared much better — only 24% of the controllers recently surveyed by CEB believe they are realizing a positive return on their finance technology investments; less than half expect to break even or do better in the future.  IT vendors and consultants want to sell you the solutions to these problems; what they don’t tell you is that realizing a return on your technology investment is difficult and rare.

All the major forces that will impact Government Finance over the next five years have a technology component to them – this includes everything from continuous drive for process improvement, standardization of processes, electronic invoicing, faster decision-making and greater regulatory pressures. That said, many of the government finance executives we speak with do not feel prepared to successfully manage these large-scale IT investments.

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I just came across this report from the UK National Audit Office that examines the UK experience over the past 8 years as they tried to move many administrative activities into a shared service center.

In a nutshell, the study concludes that, despite significant cost and effort, the planned benefits of the initiative have not been achieved. By creating complex services overly tailored to individual departments, the government has increased costs and reduced flexibility. There has also been a failure to develop the benchmarks necessary for measuring performance and to date, the government has spent far more on the initiative than anticipated.

In some ways, I’m not surprised. The whole point of having a shared service center is to monitor performance continuously and optimize to common processes. If you’re customizing at every step and you aren’t tracking performance, you shouldn’t be surprised that outcomes aren’t what you expected. One government agency that has done this quite well is NASA — fifty six services consolidated across ten distinct centers with rigorous measurement and transparency in place.

So what’s the moral of the story? Shared services can work in government, but require some very deliberate steps.

Why don’t employees share honest feedback?  Fear of reprisal, and the belief that the organization will do little to address the problem.   CEB research shows that to be consistently true in the private sector, and interestingly enough, recent employee data from the federal government supports the analysis as well.  The last few weeks our team has been in active conversations with US government executives on their individual agencies’ FedView results.  Much of our conversations focus on what agencies can do to improve morale, and unsurprisingly, actively taking steps to deal with poor performance improves the perception of overall quality of work and ability to execute on mission by as much as 2x.

But that’s not all.   Actively managing poor performers can also help to reduce misconduct.   Research from CEB’s program on Compliance & Ethics shows that the best predictor of misconduct (or where it’s most likely to occur) is an environment where employees fear retaliation for raising concerns.  According to the FedView results, in work units where employees feel there is active management of poor performers, 83% of employees feel comfortable disclosing suspected violations of any law or rule without fear of reprisal.  That percentage drops below fifty percent in areas where employees feel that no steps are taken to deal with poor performance.    The same principle applies in the corporate sector — employees with “Least Favorable” perceptions of company culture are nearly 10x more likely to observe misconduct than employees (and less likely to report it) than those with with “Most Favorable” perceptions of organizational culture.

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At a recent meeting with federal finance & procurement executives, that conversation focused on how deeply critical mission support activities (administrative costs) may be impacted in future budget years.  While we are focused on how best to trim these activities, how concerned are we about the morale in these functions?  Judging from the conversation, I’d say a lot.

One executive, from a law enforcement agency, shared a great story.  She discussed how an agent came into a procurement staff meeting and talked about how he had been shot, and how a special bullet proof vest procured by the Acquisitions Department had saved his life.  ”That story went such a long way in reinforcing how important their job is, and really served to energize the procurement staff,” she noted.   In times where administrative functions are under pressure, such gestures go a long way.  Have you shared mission success with your mission support staff lately?

As government agencies brace for protracted pressures on administrative or ‘mission-support’ spend in the coming years, much of the conversations with government finance executives has focused on how to reduce “shadow” administrative activities done in the field which could theoretically be provided centrally.  Executives argue, rightly, that there is tremendous duplication of effort that creates unnecessary complexity, increases errors and prevents an agency from taking advantage of technology.   But centralization doesn’t solve the problem either; in fact, without standard processes and procedures and robust technology, centralization can create more harm than good (at least from an efficiency perspective.) There is no perfect organizational structure and no singular model for which activities or functions should be centralized or decentralized. The decision depends on the agency’s mission and a particular function’s goals. The key is to ensure that functions are “fit for purpose.”

Fit for Purpose

The benefits of becoming a well-connected organization are tangible and compelling: organizations that have invested more in structural “connective tissue” (elements such as incentives, information flow, informal connection points, and decision rules, forums, and collaborative mechanisms), outperform their peers.  At the same time, cost should be one of many considerations. When measuring a function’s performance, Finance and Procurement leaders should select a limited number of metrics (recommended: no more than five) that link directly to agency mission and keep the team focused on what’s important. Keep in mind that if you restructure your function, it should be because either the current structure is impeding mission execution or it is sub-optimizing the performance of a critical business process.  If your goal is actually to get visibility and transparency into performance, centralization is one of many potential solutions to that problem.

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