The task of designing organisational structures to accommodate strategy can be approached in many ways. In practice, organisations prefer an incremental approach that combines components of several methodologies, which is the approach taken by Centrelink (Wills 1999).
The DSS staff members moving to Centrelink were used to operating primarily on functional and geographical lines as a result of 50 years of political imperatives, legislation, social policy initiatives and communication and information system changes. The wide range of policies and payment types that was planned and delivered for the government made it difficult for the DSS to align its programs throughout the organisation; however, each regional service outlet had adopted a pragmatic solution over the years and settled into broad, program-based groupings at its service counters (nominally, families, pensions and benefits) on the supposedly sound basis of mutual administrative and client convenience. This arrangement facilitated technical support and maintained discreet IT platforms until consolidation practices were introduced in the 1990s.
Other structural reforms were incorporated in the twilight years of the DSS. State offices were abolished in the early 1990s and the fledgling network of area offices grew to absorb their roles as more demographically based regional groupings. Tele-service centres proliferated to provide another service channel as well as reducing or at least controlling the flow of customers into offices. Regardless of the prevailing DSS rhetoric about improving customer service, the organisational structure retained its bureaucratic character with strict lines of top-down policy and management control, a rules-based process culture and limited recognition of devolution of decision-making authority at the counter-officer level.
The one continuing experiment in structural adjustment was the centralised management of the design and layout of DSS network offices. As early as 1990, DSS property staff had been planning to replace the closed, counter-ridden, front-and-back partitioned model with open-planned offices based on successful trials conducted by the US Social Security Administration.[3] By the mid-1990s, an overall replacement plan had been formulated for a wholesale refit of DSS offices. This provided a sound basis for Centrelink planners in changing the image and environment of offices in the new network.
Centrelink inherited a customer service network of regional offices, DSS offices, Family Service Centres, Retirement Service Centres, Visiting Services and Teleservice Centres. These offices provided the front line for contact with customers seeking advice and assistance, registration, referrals, assessment of claims and determination of entitlements (Vardon 1997c). Area offices managed and coordinated groups of offices and centres with their own supported functional structure.
Vardon recalls one facet of designing the organisation with Divett: ‘We spent one Friday night at the blackboard designing it…a funny diagram of circles. We couldn’t think in terms of programs, we had to think in terms of customer groups’ (Interview).
In keeping with its overall program of change to implement the customer-driven, service-provider strategy, Centrelink opted for a relatively flat management structure, taking note of the size and scope of its operations. The organisation renamed its offices Customer Service Centres (CSCs) and Teleservice Centres became Call Centres. Area Offices became Area Support Offices and retained their management role of geographically based groups of CSCs. Centrelink kept its headquarters in the National Support Office in Canberra.
As traditional public sector departments, DSS and DEETYA staff were organised into Canberra-based divisions, branches and sections, with equivalent hierarchies in the field. The new structure was reorganised radically.
Customer segment groups reflected the change in relationship with the government through the introduction of purchaser–provider measures. Although the title was about customers, as the recipients of provided service, the customer segment groups were required mainly to liaise with client departments about standards, outcomes, training requirements and IT needs. They also were the conduit for informing client departments about the interaction with customers, the impact of programs and policies and defining customer service delivery practices. The initial customer segment groups reflected the pre-existing program-management groups of the DSS: aged, youth, families, unemployed and special.
‘Theme teams’ effectively segmented corporate support for the customer segment groups and everyone else, at least initially, into teams responsible for customer/quality/complaints, people management, innovation, strategic, IT, finance and communication functions.
The Business Development Group was formed to establish working relationships with identified client departments and to negotiate BPAs with these and potential purchaser bodies.
The new structures were implemented with remarkably little fuss. Once Centrelink was formed, Vardon and Divett used the newly structured organisation to facilitate service delivery and to streamline work processes.
In time, Centrelink expanded and modified its structures to match changes in policy and to align the implementation with corporate strategies. Some area support offices experimented with structures that aligned staff skills more effectively and reduced operating costs. Romeijn (2000) notes that despite the push from Canberra for changes, some areas were reluctant to forgo hierarchical structures, possibly due to the attitudes and experience of the long-serving managers in those areas. In other, more innovative areas, clusters of CSCs were formed, taking on centralised and specialised corporate roles that supported all the other CSCs. This left the area support office with a more coordinating role and fewer staff. Areas also experimented with matrix arrangements, with ‘vertical-slice’ teams comprising area service office staff, CSC managers and team leaders becoming area-based leadership teams to support area-based business planning.
The role of the renamed community segment teams changed from having responsibility for the implementation of processes to the purist role of policy and research on customer segments, accountability for delivery of what was signed up to in BPAs and accountability for providing clients with feedback on policy issues (Bashford interview).
By 2004, the organisation had a clear divisional structure with four deputy CEOs responsible for customer service, business, business transformation and service management. Business referred to corporate management and performance while business transformation incorporated the roles of chief information officer, business solutions and e-business among other duties. Service management covered the area network, call centres and self-service operations (Centrelink 2004a).
There was another major element to the management structure, the guiding coalition, which is examined in the next chapter.
[3] Several prototypes were installed, which received mixed responses from staff and customers. Some DSS and CES offices combined as part of these experiments, reminiscent of the Coburg trials of the 1980s.