Events

Date: 25/09/2019

Attendance:  32 ACESA members, and a number of members of the DPER Innovation team.

A copy of Dr Lucy Fallon Byrne’s presentation and other documentation relevant to the workshop can be accessed at this link.

Summary

ACESA Chair Pamela Byrne welcomed attendees and the DEPR team led by Dr Lucy Fallon Byrne.

Dr Fallon Byrne gave a presentation to ACESA members, outlining:

• The future direction of Civil Service Renewal.
• The emphasis on innovation and collaboration.
• The team of over 70 people across the Public Service who are engaged.
• The Innovation fund, through which funding grants are being allocated between 10k and 100k euros.
• Upcoming dates and events of interest. (These are outlined in more detail on Page 15 of the presentation).

After Dr Fallon Byrne’s presentation, four breakout groups discussed three topics:

• Impacts on our Public.
• Impacts on our Organisations.
• Impacts on our People. (2 breakout groups)

FEEDBACK FROM BREAKOUT GROUPS

The following are summaries provided by nominated persons from the breakout groups:

Impacts on our Public

• We first focussed on the cultural challenges of getting our staff to consider some of our service users as customers.  Examples ranged from the prison service to the courts service to students to tenants.
• We also discussed the diversity of engagements of our respective organisations and the need to identify all customers regardless of the level of engagement with the service.
• We explored the issues around organisations having both contacts with business in a B2B type scenario and simultaneously with citizens.  This gives additional communications issues in messaging and addressing the service needs of what can be very different customers. This is further complicated at times when services are delivered through intermediaries who might not be the consumer of our services.
• We then considered the technological issues around handling the diversity of our customers in call centres and the strives to improve the time to resolve queries and closing out queries first time, also how best to provide information such that only very detailed calls in up in our call centres.  There was also a discussion around KPIs to monitor service level and impact.  This discussion also explored the technology supporting customer service including the multiplicity of CRM type databases within our organisations, the use of cloud etc.
• We also considered the reporting challenges both of our respective organisations and that of central government in having a clear understanding of reporting requirements in terms of measuring impact.

Impacts on our Organisation

• Our initial discussions started with a suggestion to consider innovation as to how it might benefit people as rights holders as opposed to simply being members of the public. By looking at individuals at this level, then the innovative services developed will be truly impactful.
• Innovation should also be considered as having limits in terms of societal or regulatory basis.
• For an organisation to become truly innovative, it has to have the leadership and organisational capability to develop a culture of innovation (innovation mind-set). An innovation mind set can best happen when an organisation is less risk averse and more agile. However, as a general rule, the public sector is traditionally risk averse, afraid of making mistakes and not so agile.
• Innovation does not have to be focused on the next big idea; rather it can often start small and local. By going the small/local route, this can help develop the innovative culture.
• It was recognised that while the overall framework envisaged from DPER is needed; it will take time to cascade down so the small/local efforts were needed and should be encouraged. Eventually the top down-bottom up approaches would meet in the middle.
• Developing this innovation culture/mind-set in an organisation is ultimately tied to the people strategy – for example, how we recruit and develop people to think wider and take the service users perspective into account when providing a service. It was suggested that reviewing the competency framework for recruitment so that we actively seek out and hire those who can be innovation leaders; generally the competencies for grades in the public sector don’t cover ways to check how innovative someone might be.

Impacts on our People

Workforce Planning – Some members of the group have experience of implementing strategic workforce plans (‘WFP’) in conjunction with their lead departments.  All agreed that developing strategic workforce plans was a significant challenge for those organisations that were struggling to retain staff and fill posts as the internal expertise required to develop and progress a strategic workforce plan or even a workforce plan more generally was not available to those organisations.

It was also noted by those with experience in relation to WFPs that when such plans were considered by lead departments there was a tendency to bring the discussion back to headcount, grades and budget without regard to the wider strategic context of the organisation, which would include key matter such as the strategic direction of the organisation over a 5 to 10 year span and its culture.

The group welcomed DPER’s initiative in this area in terms of seeking expert advice on what a WFP should be and the key elements of a good WFP

Challenges of churn and periods of stasis in the context of staff turnover – With regard to the significant staffing and retention challenge facing public bodies arising from the extensive level of churn among staff, it was agreed that a related issue for some bodies was that of stasis i.e. a lack of staff changes in organisations with smaller staff numbers.  The effect that this can have on an organisation in terms of its ability to embrace change and innovate was noted along with implications for diversity.  The need for greater mobility options for staff of such organisations was mentioned.

Empowering leaders in the public service – With regard to staffing requirements more generally, the need to link staffing to requirements arising from other key strategies such as digital and data strategies was noted.  By way of example, it was noted that most organisations had a need for qualified ICT staff to drive digital and data strategies, which are aimed at using available staff resources more efficiently.  Despite this, there often appeared to be no appreciation on the part of Government Departments of the significant competition for ICT staff in Ireland at present and the difficulties caused by pay grades set at too low a level given overall labour market demand for ICT resources and common pay restrictions imposed in the context of public jobs such as requiring new entrants to start at the first point of a given grade’s scale.  This formed part of a wider discussion around the need for CEOs and other leaders of public bodies to be empowered to carry out their role and to be given the freedom, subject to generally applicable parameters, to make key staffing decisions relating to their organisations.