As the industrial age is transformed into the digital economy of the information age, our civil service face countless sets of new and growing pressures such as decrease budgets and reduced workforce combined with demands to better serve “customers” requires a new approach.
Agility may be the last word people associate with civil service. Nevertheless we have seen that they can certainly be agile, predominantly in times of crisis.
An agile organisation is a term applied to organisations which are quick in responding to changes in the marketplace or environment.
The agile organisation is focused on its customer’s needs which call for customized rather than uniform offerings.
Government through it machineries (civil service) needs to respond quickly to problems and working together with different departments and the end-users of a product to accelerates decision-making and problem-solving.
Working with the end-users throughout the design process helps civil servants to create services that are better tailored to the people that will be using them.
Agile organisations excel in four core areas. First, strategy gives employees a clear vision and direction. Second, organisational structure defines the distribution of people and resources. Third, processes determine how things get done. And fourth, people practices determine who does them and the culture in which they work.
In the civil service, agility can provide a stable framework that forms and adapting rapidly to changing needs which combines stability with a dynamic capability.
All organisations are subject to evolving technological change as well as those changes driven by regulation, policy and customer demand. With an agile by design mind-set, civil service can more easily adapt to inevitable changes with efficiency and speed.
This must be seen as a leverage for structure to make agile operational changes, as civil servant work on a cultural shift towards greater flexibility, innovation and learning through trial and error.
