Practice 1: Recognize and communicate the urgency to change information management practices

Specific Attributes

• Assess mission performance and the contribution made by information and technology assets
• Clearly understand how information management is critical to solving performance problems and exploiting opportunities
• Communicate specific mission-related performance problems and make the business case for changing the current information management approach

Without senior executives recognizing the value of improving information management, meaningful change is slow and sometimes nearly impossible. Significantly increasing the rate of change requires new techniques, new processes, and new ways of doing business. Given the competing demands on senior managers, building a sustainable level of commitment to and involvement in a process improvement program requires a thorough understanding and recognition of information technology’s critical role.

In recognizing and communicating the need to improve, successful organizations assess specific mission-related performance problems; clarify the linkage to information management: and emphasize the need for a priority solution that integrates mission and information technology decision-making organizationwide. Almost universally, they also aggressively study, or benchmark themselves against, other leading organizations both to challenge accepted habits and to set appropriate targets for change.

Senior executives usually decide to change for one reason--strong pressure to cut costs or increase service quality. As such, they are forced to assess ways of achieving cost reductions or service improvements, including improving mission benefits captured from information systems investments. Many find their information systems are both a large, uncontrolled area of expenditure and a neglected tool. Once the decision to change this situation is made, top management typically communicates goals for improvement with a clear, concise vision or principle statement that describes how information technology will be used to improve mission performance.

How to Get Started

To assess and make the business case for change, senior executives should l initiate a thorough review of (1) current performance, (2) information systems spending, (3) projected versus realized results, and (4) major information management problems; and benchmark information management practices against leading organizations--preferably chosen according to objective data or recognized criteria.

Practice 2: Get line management involved and create ownership

• Hold line management accountable for the mission impact of information management
• Get line managers meaningfully involved in critical information management decisions

Line ownership and accountability starts with the chief executive. In every one of the successful organizations we studied, chief executives played a strong leadership role in strategic information management. Once the need to change is established, executives soon realize that getting line managers to work differently means putting them in charge of the change process. Consequently, they move to set clear expectations and reinforce responsibility for information management decisions and results with line executives who deal directly with the customer. Where mission goals require work process innovation and information systems that cut across program or functional lines, accountability must also be aligned with the decision-making authority necessary to raise issues above existing stovepipes.

Increasing line executives’ accountability and involvement works because it immediately focuses information management decision-making and systems development activities on measurable mission outcomes of strategic importance. In successful organizations, such a focus ensures more realistic benefits projections, greater attention to improving performance, and more extensive and intensive line actions to realize benefits throughout the life of a project. Without such accountability, it is too easy for the line organization to delegate decision-making irresponsibly, accept project delays, or fail to discern the loss of projected benefits.

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How to Get Started

To increase line management accountability for the mission impact of information management decisions, senior executives should l establish an organizationwide information management steering committee chaired by the chief executive and led by senior line management, and identify executive-level sponsors for each major information systems excproject.

Practice 3: Take action and maintain momentum

Specific Attributes

• Act short term: exploit or create windows of opportunity to signal or reinforce an improvement initiative
• Think long term: clearly set direction, goals, and milestones for an information management program
• Pick and place internal champions to shepherd day-to-day improvement actions
• Establish incentives tied to successful resolution of performance problems identified by top management

A willingness to take action and maintain momentum is the difference between lip service and real improvement. Recognizing a problem and creating ownership are only the first steps toward action. Because of the barriers that exist to improving information management, leading organizations give considerable attention to initiating the change process and ensuring that it maintains momentum.

Perhaps the most important starting point is educating line management. Unless all line executives begin to understand how information management can make a difference in their performance, only marginal change will occur. Carefully picked and placed champions also create daily pressure to change by removing bottlenecks and resolving thorny operational issues that can easily stall an improvement initiative, particularly in public sector organizations. Finally, incentives become the tangible representation of the organization’s level of interest in changing. Once performance evaluations include information management issues, previously embedded behavior frequently begins to improve. Education, champions, and incentives all work because they address the root causes that inhibit change--ignorance, lack of focus, and lack of interest. Without addressing these root causes, even improvement efforts that get a good start tend to fade quickly.

[Managers]...lacking background and experience with information systems projects need to educate themselves about how such projects can and should be used as a lever to achieve performance improvement. Only with such an education are they likely to make information management a key part of their strategic business plans and recognize the importance of identifying and encouraging department and program champions to help them succeed. They are also more likely to monitor and stay involved in the projects, which in turn helps key agency personnel know that the projects are top priority and that they will be suitably recognized and rewarded for their contribution to success.

How to Get Started

To initiate an improvement program and maintain its momentum, senior executives should

• educate senior line management through a combination of conferences, training, colocation and rotation programs at all levels, and joint visits with information management professionals to organizations that use technology well; and
• identify an informed, committed opinion-leader to be a champion in supporting information management improvement.

Once an organization has made a serious commitment to change its management of information and technology, it is paramount that an outcome-oriented, integrated strategic information management process be institutionalized. Our case study analyses indicate that organizations that achieve substantially higher levels of performance (1) make external customer needs and mission goals a central driver of all organizational improvement efforts, (2) make serious efforts to objectively measure performance, (3) focus on process improvement, (4) tightly control information technology investments, and (5) integrate the planning, budgeting, and performance assessment processes.

Conversely, for most federal agencies, strategic management is a well-orchestrated paper chase responding to personal agendas and short-term crises, rather than an integrated, institutionalized process that focuses on producing results for the public. Most agencies also live with loose, undisciplined, and opaque processes for selecting and controlling investments, and these investment results are rarely evaluated against projected benefits. More often than not, information management decisions are made in response to crises, without first examining how to simplify and redesign embedded, complex mission processes. In short, the emphasis lies on conforming to existing processes—which are rarely reevaluated—rather than focusing on results.

Practice 4: Anchor strategic planning in customer needs and mission goals

Specific Attributes

• Match external and internal customer group needs with specific products and services
• Link customer group needs to specific mission problems and assess corresponding opportunities
• Focus strategic planning on highest priority customer needs and mission goals
• Set explicit mission goals tailoring products and services to the needs of key customer groups

At the leading organizations we examined, strategic business and information system plans are almost always tightly linked and predicated on satisfying explicit, high-priority customer needs. This emphasis on customer needs helps an organization understand the source, nature, and priority of demands on its resources. Successful information systems are not only defined as the ones delivered on time and within budget, but as ones that also produce meaningful improvements in cost, quality, or timeliness of service.

Without a customer focus, an organization risks missing its real needs and ignoring what matters to key stakeholders. With it, corresponding mission goals can be more easily developed to satisfy each demand, and the needs of customer groups can be prioritized and matched with specific products or services. [Some content excised.] This avoids treating all customers the same way when they have unique subsets of needs and corresponding services.

Following a customer-driven approach, in turn, provides accurate, detailed descriptions of requirements and specifications, which are needed to drive the design and development of supporting information systems. This allows the organization to set mission performance goals for improving service delivery or product responsiveness, costs, or quality--based on customer needs. Reengineering and information systems projects can also be targeted and designed to improve specific performance areas. In successful organizations we examined, management made it clear that major systems proposals that were not based on business plans would not be approved.

How to Get Started

To begin linking information systems more closely to customer needs and mission goals, senior executives should l choose at least one major mission area to specifically define customer groups and needs (i.e., those identified through mandated customer surveys) and integrate with strategic business and information plans, and choose at least one major information system initiative and determine if its key requirements will meet both external and internal customer needs.

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