Process mangement in the public sector

In the last few years, western economies didn’t flourish much. As a consequence, companies started focusing on more efficient, or smarter ‘production’; also in for example the service industry. Companies are improving productivity, thereby keeping cost prices at an acceptable level and reinforcing their competitive position. Not only the private sector, but also the public sector has to start working more efficient these days. Also in the public sector, more work has to be done with less people, and at the same time, results are to be achieved faster. In addition, supervisory committees (e.g. the government) demand more and more transparency about the business processes of public sector organizations: directors need to be able to explain their results and performance, and need to improve over time. In that sense, the public sector faces much the same difficulties as the private sector.

The public sector has to:
- reduce its costs
- deal with subcontracting of service
- become more transparent
- be in control

How can the public sector deal with these difficulties? By introducing process-oriented management and a process-oriented organisation. Business Process Management (BPM) can help the public sector to master, influence and check organizational processes. Besides, it can make sure that processes become more predictable.

Why BPM and not some other theory?

Process management in general is not a new subject. Since the introduction of Business Process Reengineering (BPR), organizations have thought about their processes and the way these should be organized. But most of the time this resulted in radical process changes, and not in permanent improvements. BPM, in contradiction to BPR, takes the current situation and gradual improvement actions towards this situation as a starting point. Using BPM, organizations stop thinking about their hierarchical structure as the basis for executing activities. Instead, organizations use their activities and the processes needed to execute these, as the starting point for defining the organizational structure. With BPM, organisations start to look from a process point-of-view to the problems of today. One of the key benefits of doing so, is that there is no sub-optimisation between departments. Instead, the entire organization is optimized.

The problem with many public sector organization is that they have to get rid of the hierarchical structure they have been used to for so long. To change this, requires changing responsibilities. Managers are not responsible anymore for delivering a semi-finished service, or completing a subsection of a form. Instead they need to be able to oversee an entire chain of activities, and deliver a worthwhile product or service to the final customer.

To be able to meet the future requirements of working with less and cheaper resources but producing the same quality and service, process management and especially BPM can be of great help to the public sector.

If you would like to have more information about BPM, take a look at:

http://www.bpm-academy.org/