What I think this conference reflects is a determination to follow through on a cultural shift that has been taking place in the public sector—where we are finally shaken loose from our silos, where we move past the rhetoric of whole of government working, to what I think of as an active or dynamic form of program management.
What do I mean by active program management? I mean that it is not sufficient to simply have the elements of good corporate governance in place—to have ticked the boxes—corporate plan—tick; strategic plan—tick; service charter—tick. Rather, what is required is a framework that actively supports program managers (and project managers below that) to manage their piece of the puzzle and to understand and manage the intersections with other areas of their business. [3] Some of the important elements of such a framework include:[4]
sophisticated scoping, planning and timing (including business case, setting of milestones etc);
putting in place appropriate milestones, success criteria, and measures for quality assurance;
proper and early assessment of risks and strategies for their handling;
stakeholder management and communications strategy;
ensuring all the resources are in place (human as well as financial);
ongoing monitoring to ensure that the program continues to meet its objectives;
we should also build into the management of our programs:
consideration of whether the program is having its intended effect and, if not, take corrective action (for example, suggest policy changes or changes to guidelines);
processes for advising the Minister of progress, developments and outcomes;
measures to achieve efficiencies or improvements in administration of our programs;
audit and evaluation processes, including sound management information systems, to assess how program and project outcomes are shaping up in relation to the objectives of the program;
given the trend to increasingly work through others for the delivery of Government services, we also need to employ partnership approaches, effective contract design and management and procurement processes; and
we need to come to grips with the new governance and accountability issues these approaches bring—to find effective ways of marrying vertical and horizontal lines of accountability, and to understand that ultimately (whether we like it or not) accountability for program performance and outcomes still remains with us.
Active program management promotes efficient and effective use of Commonwealth resources, particularly by ensuring that expensive rectification measures—for programs gone wrong—are not required.
We’ve been on a fairly steep learning curve in the APS as the financial management and related skills (including contract management and procurement) expected of us have expanded. I think there’s been a tendency for over-confidence, followed by some predictable fall-out. Financial management is a core competency and has to be managed year in and year out to ensure not only that existing projects are supported, but that new projects—responding to new challenges and new policy directions—can be implemented well.
Program failures, through botched program management, result in damage to the reputation of the APS, and undermine the level of trust in government amongst those that are the focus of the program and amongst the community more generally. The snowball effect of unhappy customers equally applies to the public sector as in the private sector—word spreads quickly; therefore active and effective program management is essential.
Programs, in whatever form, are never static. They need to be actively managed with a critical eye for their nuancing and further development or even their replacement by something better—bringing us back to organisational change and project management. [5]