Sustainable Public Financial Management

Doug Hadden, VP Products

Almost of full house for our Financial Management Institute of Canada (FMI) presentation on methodology, IT governance, risk in the age of transparency and Government 2.0 earlier today. The presentation is embedded here, complete with full script, hyperlinks and sources.

The FMI Professional Development Week is focused on finding the balance between risk and control. We’ve been tweeting about many of the sessions (check out @freebalance to learn more).

There are still 2 more days to go. My impressions so far:

• There is great concern that governance structures to support risk mitigation and control can reduce productivity and innovation in the Government of Canada.
• Risk-based processes where IT governance processes are proportional to risk are starting to gain traction.
• Government organizations are improving planning and performance management.
• There is an increasing recognition that IT investments need to be sustainable and the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) has become a more important measurement.

Doug Hadden, Vice President Products at FreeBalance, to Present at Financial Management Institute (FMI) of Canada Professional Development Week

Ottawa, Canada (November 22, 2010) – “Governments are faced with a ‘new normal’ of responding to increased citizen demand with reducing budgets,” according to Doug Hadden, Vice President Products at FreeBalance. FreeBalance, a global Government Resource Planning (GRP) software company, will participate in the FMI of Canada Professional Development (PD) Week. The annual conference is taking place at the Hotel Lac-Leamy in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada from November 22 to 26, 2010. The FMI conference is focused on striking the right balance of risk and control.

Doug Hadden will host an interactive session on how transparency and accountability have become strong themes in government. Titled “The Emperor Has No Clothes” – Risk and Results in an Increasing Transparent and Government 2.0 World, this session will explore how social media and open government initiatives have introduced a new risk and reward paradigm for public servant careers and for government organizations. Transparency, in itself, has become a key performance indicator. An updated methodology on calculating open government value and improving governance structures will be discussed. The session will be held from 1:30 – 2:30 pm, Wednesday November 24, 2010 in the Hotel Lac-Leamy Krieghoff Room.

“Government 2.0 supports government economic incubation and services modernization,” said Doug Hadden, Vice President of Products at FreeBalance. “Innovation is alive and well in government and will be further transformed thanks to Government 2.0. How Government 2.0 technology enables managing for results will be discussed during the session.” Many of the subjects to be discussed are being expanded on the FreeBalance Sustainability Blog – www.freebalance.com/blog.

The FMI of Canada 2010 PD Week will trace government efforts to counter the effects of the global recession. It features a series of workshops and information sessions that elaborate on risk and control, striking a balance and public service renewal. The annual five-day conference draws more than 2,400 public financial management professionals to the National Capital Region of Canada. Panel discussions and exhibits provide an opportunity for participants to explore a range of new ideas, products and services.

Members of the FreeBalance team will be available for the duration of the conference to discuss and demonstrate FreeBalance web-based Government Resource Planning (GRP) solutions. FreeBalance Version 7 supports the unique and evolving requirements of government, including GRP, Government Performance Management, Government 2.0, Shared Services and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). FreeBalance Version 7 covers the entire budget cycle and provides fiscal control over fund allocations, expenditures, appropriations, revenue administration, and human resources. FreeBalance Version 7 is a fully compliant J2EE solution. The n-tier architecture allows departments and agencies to leverage existing web, application and database clusters. Unlike traditional software solutions, the FreeBalance Accountability Suite is fully web based and has no hidden client/server technologies.

The FreeBalance Accountability Suite is one of the most widely deployed financial management systems inside the Government of Canada. More than 50 government departments and agencies use FreeBalance software for enhanced public financial management.

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Doug Hadden, VP Products

Two public servants speaking about Government 2.0:

Public Servant 1: “Now that we are open and transparent, the public is finding examples of our mistakes.”

Public Servant 2: “That’s better than the alternative. We’re not open and transparent. The public assumes that everything we do is a mistake because we’re trying to hide something.”

If authoritarian regimes can’t keep secrets from leaking, does the Canadian government have a chance of controlling the message and information? That’s one of the reflections about risk and results for Government 2.0 for my upcoming presentation at the Financial Management Institute. For all the risk of Government 2.0, the risk of not being transparent seems greater.

Not that governments can control the message because “little brother is watching”. Governments can engage citizens in dialog. They can become trusted.

It’s better to be “in-network” than “out of network”.

Bad News is Good News?

Mistakes and bad news might be good. Governments have been constrained by limited and faulty feedback loops – the ever-increasing sensational press, the odd letter from the public, the lobbyists. Government 2.0 can provide improved performance information enabling governments to increase effectiveness. At a low cost.

In the era of “doing even more for even less”, Government 2.0 is good news. This is a lesson that we’ve learned at FreeBalance. We seek out bad news so that we can improve our products, services and support.

So, feel free to comment right here on any bad news you’d like to share!

Doug Hadden, VP Products

Web 2.0 is about the continuous beta. Iteration. Constant tweaking. This seems to go against the typical project governance and enterprise architecture disciplines practiced by governments.

More agile development methods like extreme programming can be effective for the continuous beta. While considering methdology, risk management and IT governance for my upcoming seminar at the Financial Management Institute (FMI) in Gatineau – it occured to me that government might be ready for the extreme. Or, other forms of agile development.

Here’s a first draft on why this makes sense, with some generalizations that may not be true in all cases:

My analysis suggests that more agile implementation methods are likely to generate quicker success in Government 2.0 than traditional governance methods. My experience is that agile development can present problems when software architectural design or significant extensibility is required. However, these techiques are very effective for project development, adapting existing software and experimentations. Some benefits of these methodologies include:

• Short iterations to ensure meeting changing needs and user feedback
• Focus on creating the interface wireframe, so solidifies usability quickly
• Small improvements over time give quick wins rather than the traditional roll-out of complex new feature sets and usability changes

It stands to reason that this approach can enhance tools used for Government 2.0:

• Open source and commercial tools enable configuration and customization from changing templates to adding functionality like rich text editors
• Use of existing social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or Ning
• Ability to add widgets and embed content without programming
• Integration standards such as RSS feeds and Web Services enables integration of data across applications
• General ease of deployment to mobile platforms
• Ability to monitor or beta changes to see usage through analytics

Doug Hadden, VP Products

I’ve been updating my Government 2.0 information sources in preparation for my presentation at the Financial Management Institute (FMI) Professional Development Week in Gatineau Quebec. The subject for the conference is “Risk and Control: Striking the Right Balance“. It seems apropos to talk about control and risk for new technology, particularly Government 2.0.

If you are like me, you appreciate when interesting analysis is put into Scribd or SlideShare format to enable quick browsing. Here are some of the sources that I’ll be using in the presentation, The Emperor has no Clothes - Risk and Results in an Increasing Transparent and Government 2.0 World presentation.

Hewlett Packard Government IT Survey

IBM Publication on Leveraging Web 2.0 in Government

Leveraging Web 2.0 in Government

Matthew Hodgson from WSG Web Standards Group

Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce

Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce Report

I was co-author with Martha Bartoski on this paper on Knowledge Management 2.0 in government

Embracing Government 2.0 Leading Trans Formative Change in the Public Sector

Additional good links from those with good content, but don’t seem to get the Web 2.0 deployment advanatages include:

• Deutsche Bank: How companies are tapping the benefits of Web 2.0
• Victorian Public Service: Government 2.0 Risk Register and Management Plan
• Deloitte: National Issues Dialogues, Web 2.0: The future of collaborative government
• McKinsey: E-Government 2.0
• Booz, Allen, Hamilton: Enterprise 2.0

My presentation is entitled: “The Emperor has no Clothes - Risk and Results in an Increasing Transparent and Government 2.0 World.”

Transparency and accountability have become strong themes in government. Social media and open government initiatives have introduced a new risk and reward paradigm for public servant careers and for government organizations. Transparency, in itself, has become a key performance indicator. This presentation explores the effects of social media on risk management in government and how Government 2.0 technology enables managing for results. An updated methodology on calculating open government value will be discussed.

For those interested in more, the presentation is on Wednesday, November 24, 2010, 1:30 to 2:30pm at the Krieghoff room.

Doug Hadden, VP Products

The Government Accountability Office in the United States has published a statement of the use of Web 2.0 by Federal Agencies.  The statement by Gregory C. Wilshusen, Director Information Security Issues, focuses on – well – information security issues. There has been an undercurrent of risk avoidance and general fear of Web 2.0 technologies in government. This statement is fair and balanced (really fair and balanced, not the tag line) with a good assessment of the privacy, access to information and records management limitations of the Government 2.0 state-of-the-art. And, Mr. Wilshusen describes some of the work taken to overcome these concerns.

The audit function in government has transformed in the past few years from compliance – making sure that rules are followed – to performance. Analyzing programs for effectiveness in meeting mandate and achieving value for money. That’s what we need here. Government decision-makers need to understand the benefits – not just the risks. Otherwise, government transformation opportunities slow.

The difficulty with most analysis of Government 2.0 is that there is little distinction made between purely internal collaboration efforts and external public-facing. There’s no question that both types of activities share some elements of benefit and risk. But, as I’ve pointed out in the past, internal Government 2.0 represents a significant opportunity for mission achievement. And, lessons from internal efforts can be used to reduce the risks associated with external Government 2.0 initiatives.

Imagine our surprise when we were invited to speak at the Financial Management Institute Professional Development Week about the value of ERP in government. Why? For one thing, FreeBalance is not an Enterprise Resource Planning vendor. We’re a Government Resource Planning (GRP) vendor, as we have spoken about frequently in this blog. ERP vendors operate in many vertical markets – FreeBalance provides software for governments only.

Nevertheless, we took up the challenge. The presentation was focused for Government of Canada financial managers, but it is applicable to many countries. We focused on three elements of the Treasury Board Secretariat Investment Planning Policy: value for money, total cost and project governance.

We think that we did a very good job presenting an objective viewpoint. We didn’t talk about FreeBalance and how our solutions are more applicable than generic software for governments.