Running any government unit can be very challenging considering the social issues and economic problems that are faced worldwide by the political leaders today such as inequality, economic slowdown, marginalization in voters, and demanding environment. Government offices operate through targeted delivery units that are made up of small teams that work to provide support to the Chief Manager or a head of the government in materializing efforts and these can operate both at regional and local levels. Some delivery units may be focused on a specific cause. For instance, in 2016, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, has a delivery unit employed nationally for the restoration of the public trust in government. Several delivery units today are organized in an innovative manner such that they can perform well in the fast pace of changes. There are many government delivery units operating across the world. However, not all delivery units are self-sustainable and in the case of lack of political backing and working momentum, they lead to a closure. Some of the delivery units that have been closed in past include government delivery units from Chile, Australia, Wales, and Tanzania. The global trend of setting up government project delivery units is growing such that there have been many case studies exploring the information on delivery units and have made comparisons of past and present experiences.
Delivery units are the teams that are set up by the government to assist the political leaders for meeting the delivery needs of some key public policies. The nature of a delivery unit can differ with region to which it belongs. Delivery units have two major functions to fulfil and these include tracking of the progress of the outcome of government policy programs by collection, analysis and reporting of the performance data and investigation as well as intervention into their work to solve the problems they are facing in case they are going off track and are unable to achieve policy objectives. There can also be additional functions that a delivery unit can perform such as scrutinising of the policy proposals, addressing the gaps in deliveries through training and coordination, and designing the plan for implementation of policies. These delivery units are either standalone entities supporting the government or can be a part of central delivery systems.
Improvement in government performance have been achieved through these delivery units. For instance, Governor’s Delivery Unit had worked in Maryand to bring its infant mortality rate down which resulted into a drop in deaths from 8 to 6.5 per 1000 people between 2008 and 2014. Similarly, Malaysia saw a 35% reduction in crime rates between 2009 and 2010 after introducing a delivery unit for the cause. Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit (PMDU) had worked to reduce people’s waiting time for surgical procedures such that the number waiting patients reduced from 40,000 to 10,000. UK’s Sure Start Children’s Centres programme had the delivery teams employed for achieving the goals of the centre.
The first such delivery model had emerged in 2001 when UK government had set up a delivery unit for the police department called PMDU in which a small team was employed to analyse police data for identifying problems and improving outcomes (Shostak, Watkins, Bellver, & John-Abraham, 2014).
More than 50% of the delivery units of the central government at national as well as regional levels have emerged only in past few years across globe. These include delivery units from France, South Africa, Myanmar, and Namibia. There are some major trends seen in the development of these delivery units. They are emerging not just in the central government but also appearing at regional and local levels. Ministers also replicate central delivery units in their departments such that multiple delivery units are created by a ministry. Within the local government itself, mayors and local chief executes have also replicated the formation of delivery units. Another common trend that has been seen globally is closing down of older units and the formation of new ones parallel. The units close down in the face of uncertainties that arise due to key team members leaving the unit or the unit losing its influence on the government. Some governments have identified this flaw that leads to a unit closure and have come up with second and third generation models by taking different approaches and improving design flaws in earlier delivery models. Maryland and UK , for instance, had their units rebranded keeping them at a distance from the previous administrations. Investments on delivery models have also been on rise as governments have started to put emphasis on reinforcement of delivery mechanisms that can deliver demonstrable results (Brown, 2015).
With rising expectations of public, governments are facing extreme pressures in response to which they have started to adopt ‘delivery 2.0’ framework so that better and faster outcomes can be achieved without much expenditure by the government. Governments have interdependent departments that work in silos. Thus, deliveries become very challenging as they have a very complex stakeholder arrangements because of these silo working. With the use of online media and technology based innovations, the governments can attain more transparency into its performance providing support to the government through an increase in their capacity to meet the delivery challenges.
An Asian country has experienced a reduction in street crimes by 35% post launching its digital transformation program. The government could also connect over 35,000 rural householders with the power supply, reduce the waiting list in public hospitals by 80%, and increase the percentage of top level graduates choosing teaching profession by 50%. These programs are coming from diverse countries but they have some common best practices followed. One of the practice is to define priorities for outcomes such that most needed outcomes are delivered first. The priorities are often set based on the review by political and service leaders of the respective country (Gold, 2016).
Structural barriers are often the major cause of difficulties in the deliveries by the government and thus, special committees or task forces are assigned for executing a specific delivery plan with actionable details. Governments always aim to delivery more with less. For this, a number of measures can be taken such as reallocation of resources to priority outcomes, making the funding more flexible to address the current needs of a project, setting up a criteria for continued funding, raising additional funding or applying value management practices. IN several delivery units, the pressure to perform is increased by making ministers accountable for their actions. A Prime Minister would review this performance against the set targets and report the results. However, the government reported results are sometimes not believed by the public (Uttar Pradesh Development Systems Corporation Ltd. , 2017).
Small high powered delivery units can be employed to achieve better results in public sector agencies. Such units can make a huge difference because of some key elements. One of this is successful track record of a leader who could have delivered big results in past and thus, has strong influence in the public sector. Role of the delivery unit can be specified by the government as a mandate. However, there is a gap between the policy enforcer and the beneficiaries. A delivery unit can bridge this gap between the government and public. A stand practice of government delivery units is to not just communicate but also engage stakeholders by taking inputs from them and acknowledging their participation. Delivery 2.0 approach can be used to make deliveries of the outcomes within 3 years and the resulting transformation would be affected by factors like priorities of the government, political context, and organizational structure (Daly & Singham, 2012).
Key components of a delivery unit that cane make the entity or a group successful include reliable data, right skills, use of right tools and techniques, setting priorities, and connection to decision making. The performance of a delivery unit can be judged using performance metrics and thus, these metrics should be valid and reliable enough. The metrics must be able to capture the performance from the perspective of a citizen and must be used with the right frequency to make a difference. Further, the delivery unit must have analytical capabilities, qualitative skills, creative problem solving capabilities, and ability to work collaboratively.
Delivery units can use certain tools that can be effective in bringing achievements such as delivery planning, delivery system mapping, policy reviews, statistics reviews, delivery preparation, and customer journey mapping. Lastly, the work of the delivery unit must be connected to a decision maker which can be achieved through monitoring and an appropriate level of reporting. Delivery capability can be improved in the system through collaboration. Problems can be drafted and solved through mutual participation as well as guidance from a government on policy change behaviours. As every country or region could have specific values, institutional patterns and programs, a delivery unit must have to fit these in order to be able to succeed (Alessandro, Lafuente, & Santiso, 2013).
CM dashboard is one platform that collates all the delivery units of the organization into a single entity through the use of web such that all the services and programs of all the delivery unit operating in a state can be viewed from the single location. For this, technology can be used for creating a centralized system of delivery or update of the same.
CM dashboard is a web based application that contains three key components on the main page of the website including activities, associated organizations, and social media updates. The page lists a number of different bodies, programs and services of the government, each provided with a link to specific pages. The dashboard lists down five major service components including groups, tasks, discussion, poll, and blog. Group tab contains a list of all the organizations that operate under the Madhya Pradesh government and for each of the group, a user can allocated and pending tasks, discuss on specific organization or task, participate in the polling, or read a blog article. Each group page has some statistics and visualizations presented on the respective page. All the figures and statistics are obtained from the business intelligence software that is run at the backend. Each page may have different types of visualizations and statistics such as:
On each of these pages, there are tabs that allow users to see more details along a tabs and each graph can be shared along the social media.
For constructing and delivering the CM dashboard service to the users, a number of delivery systems can be chosen from including native app, server delivery, remote application, direct download, windows installers, mobile applications, web-based applications, desktop virtualization, external web links, SCCM, App-V, Parallels RAS, secure download, VMWare horizon, and unified application delivery. Each of these delivery systems have their own share of advantages, challenges and drawbacks that have to be explored to be able to make a choice of the right delivery system for the CM dashboard.
Mobile Applications: Mobile based applications can be developed easily but at the same time it would need a strong data speed and significant space on the user device to be able to deliver sufficiently. While this can be an effective way of delivery but it would depend on users to accept the applications and install them in mobile devices.
Web-based Applications: web based applications can be most flexible and easy to development as well as would be easy to access and easy to use for the users. They are run inside a browser which is a client-server program which is delivered through HTTP which is used as the primary communication protocol on web. There are several benefits of this delivery mode such as cost effective development, anywhere accessibility, easy customization, accessible through different devices, improved interoperatability, easy installation, easy maintenance, adaptable to increased workload, more security, and flexibility in technologies.
Direct Download: This would need an application user to directly download the data but considering the need of so many pages and a large BI network at the backend, this may not be a very organized solution for delivering the output.
VMWare Horizon: It is the virtual desktop infrastructure that can be used for delivering the window based or cloud based application to end users online. A single digital workplace can be created connected to all the virtual desktops and applications that are developed.
SCCM: Microsoft SCCM is a BYOD scheme that involves management of servers for the employees allowing them to access corporate applications. However, as the current application needs to incorporate the reports from multiple departments, organizations, and program teams, this solution may not remain feasible considering the complexities involved.
Desktop Virtualization on mobile devices: Desktop virtualization can be done on a mobile device to sere users over mobile with features possible through web application development. However, this type of delivery system would need a very reliable connectivity at the end of the user. Some of the applications may provide offline features but if the data has to be updated then it has to keep connecting to the server frequently for which a reliable connection is still needed. However, the challenge is that the virtualization may not always translate the desktop services on the mobile devices in the best possible manner. It can be a more effective method to use on the tablet devices than on the mobile devices.
Unified Application delivery: It brings all the different technologies together integrating all the systems including mobile and web based features at the back end such that the services can be accessed from anywhere.
As the organization needs a lot of customization that has to be done per page based on the program, group, or service listed on the application and also need an easy to use interface as the users could be the normal people who may not be very familiar with the technological advances, a web based application would be the most suitable delivery method for the CM dashboard. It would also allow the government to reach out to the audience through any devices and would have flexibility to make the system more scalable (Provazza, 2018).
While executing a website development project, a number of different types of contracts are needed to be developed to formalize the processes. The contracts would include hardware supply contracts and website development contracts. The website development contract would contain the following details:
For the development of the website, there would be hardware and software components required. These would have to be procured by the government in order to build the website. The hardware components that would be procured include servers, personal computers, networking equipments, Disaster recovery servers, redundancy servers, data base server, and more. Software components would include the cloud space, website DNS, and the application for integration of different modules and organizational information. The procurement method used by the company would be tendering process, as it is a government website. Tendering would be exercises using the following steps:
The scope of the project would include:
There can be several software development methodologies to choose from including waterfall model, agile development, RAD, DSDM, spiral model, FDD, JAD, Lean development, RUP, and SCRUM. The choice can be made based on the requirements of the project, its resource structure, experience with development, and objectives of the development project. Some of these methodologies need extremely skilled development team such as RAD and RUP which can be challenging as such a software would be developed first time for the government of the state and thus, the team may not have the experience of delivering similar applications in past and the work would be new (Shields & Jones, 2012).
Dynamic System Development Methodology can be a suitable methodology for the development of CM Dashboard application as it has a variety of benefits that can assist the organization such as quick delivery of functionalities needed, easy access to the application users, and users can understand the development process. The only drawback of this methodology is high cost. However, considering the case of government and the project that involves a huge number of units for which the web application to be developed, sufficient budget can be easily allocated and thus, cost would not be a major issue.
DSDM is an iterative and incremental development methodology which follows the principles of Rapid Application development that include active user involvement, empowered teams that can take critical decisions, acceptable deliverables considering business criteria, frequent delivery, iterative and incremental development, high level requirements baselining, reversible changes, testing integrated throughout the development lifecycle, and collaborative approach to development.
The implementation of the project would involve development of the dashboard and planning for the future needs of the project. This includes design specifications of the software system and a design proposal.
The system requirement specifications can be defined for the project that would include the details of functional and non-functional requirements of the project.
Functional requirements of the project include:
Non-functional requirements of the project would include the following:
A dashboard application would be largely dependent on the database and the systems that run on the backend if the service has to be guaranteed. However, systems can always face problems and are vulnerable to damages in the cases of unforeseen circumstances that cannot be controlled. In such a case, the business should not suffer but continue to run such that the service is still made available to the users. In the case of service interruptions, steps must be taken for immediate recovery such that there is minimum time of disruption. Thus, it is important to build a business continuity and web application disaster recovery plan for the CM dashboard application.
A business continuity plan includes five sections that are governance, business impact analysis, planning, readiness, and QA techniques. Governance involves formation of a committee for the governance that would include people from top management. These would be project sponsor, project coordinator, security officer, CIO, and business operations representatives.
Business impact analysis involves identification of mandatory critical aspects of the organization with respect to the project deliverables, prioritize the deliverables, and identify the impact of disruptions that can be caused in case of disruption of the dashboard system services including expenses and losses. Once the impacts are understood, the service factors are ranked based on the severity of the impacts and a plan would be made for the minimum disruption. Minimum uptime needed and maximum allowable downtime would be determined based on these priorities. Dependencies of the key dashboard services would also have to be determined which can include internal dependencies like corporate assets, employee availability, and support services, and external dependencies like data, visualizations, tools, and other utilities.
The threats and risks that are identified would be managed through a mitigation strategy that has to be planned in advance. For instance, if the company faces a power out situation, the mitigation strategy can be starting of generators that are installed as a power backup. The table below identifies certain risks that can occur in the dashboard project and gives the mitigation strategies that could be used for the same.
|
Risks |
Mitigation Strategies |
|
Power outage |
Use of backup generators that can be run in the case a power supply is gone so that services are not interrupted |
|
Data loss due to disaster |
Backup server to be used for recovery of data that is lost to the disaster |
|
Service disruption due to server damage |
Application of redundant server to be used in case of primary server shutdown |
|
Loss of web server connectivity |
Changeover of the application access to the cloud back up system to avoid disruption |
|
Virus attack on the servers |
Shut down of servers and immediate communication of the disruption information to users. The website would be kept down till the virus is removed after which the services would be resumed. Installation of security systems can help avoid such a situation |
|
Problems of connecting web application with the BI system at the backend |
If the connection cannot be established, the system should have a backup connection plan that should be executed so that services are not affected |
Availability measure would be used to assess the performance of the system and would involve calculation of the percentage time for which the service would be up.
% Availability = (total time elapsed – downtime)/ Total time elapsed. For every 8 hour or 24 hours day, an availability percentage can be defined in the service terms for each availability percentage that can range from 90% to 99.99%. The table below shows the time for which the system can remain down in a year for respective %age availability of the system.
|
Availability% |
24 hour day |
8 hour day |
|
90% |
876 hours |
292 hours |
|
95% |
438 hours |
146 hours |
|
99% |
88 hours |
29 hours |
|
99.9% |
9 hours |
3 hours |
|
99.99% |
53 minutes |
18 minutes |
|
99.999% |
6 minutes |
2 minutes |
|
99.9999% |
32 seconds |
10 seconds |
If the organization is promised with a system availability of 99.9999% then as per the SLA contract, only 32 seconds of downtime in a 24 hours day would be tolerated beyond which the service provider has to do the rectification or make the payment of penalty for downtime of the dashboard (Microsoft, 2005).
Security needs of the Dashboard system includes behaviour profiling, trend analysis, and anomaly detection for root cause analysis. To determine if the performance of the security systems that are taking care of these needs is as desired or need work, some performance metrics can be used such as:
The process of writing test plan involves a number of steps that include analysis of products, defining a testing strategy, defining the objectives for testing, define the test criteria, resource planning, testing environment plan, scheduling and estimation, and determination of testing deliverables.
Analysis: This would include details of audience, usage, its working, and software or hardware usage. The CM dashboard would be used by citizens of the state and those include political or social business for viewing the services, programs, provisions and the progress of the government and the state performance.
Testing Strategy: This involves defining the scope of testing, identifying test types, documentation of issues, and creation of test logistics. In the case of a the CM dashboard, testing would include functional database testing and performance testing which would be done using unit tests on specific features, API tests for integrated software, integration testing to test the whole website, and system testing to evaluate compliance.
Documentation of risks: Risks that would be faced by the software post development are identified and a mitigation plan is made which would be documented in the system.
Creation of test logistics: This would include answer to who would perform the test and when respective test would be carried out. The testers can include the coders for the unit testing or functional testing. However, there can also be the audience or the actual users who could be involved in the acceptance testing. Individual tests can be performed at different levels on the project timeline. For instance, Unit testing can be done before the delivery of the software system while acceptance testing can be used upon completion of the whole project before the delivery is made to a client.
Test Objectives: Objective of testing is usually delivery of a bug free software. Objectives can further be refined for specific features of the software including GUI, individual functionalities, and performance parameters.
Test Criteria: It is defined for suspension or exit such that when a specific outcome is achieved, the test cycle would either be terminated or suspended for some time. For instance, if 40% of test cases fail then it would be followed by a suspension until the time the bugs are fixed. Test cases would follow certain criteria defined for success such as 95% of test cases must be passed. Run rate should be 100% or less in specific cases. The goal is always to achieve a high run rate.
Resource Planning: based on the analysis till now, a resource plan would be developed summarizing all resource requirements for testing that can include people like test manager, tester, and test administrator
Testing environment: A test environment would be created resembling the real business environment and testing would be done using a test team. Use of test environment would ensure that the tester ca work in a simulated environment which works like real and thus, can be used for identifying bugs that can later be removed to get the best results.
Scheduling and estimation: The testing manager has to create a schedule for testing activities using inputs like project deadline, project estimates, project risks, and more. Each of these activities are carried out along a specific timeline that can be presented in a Gantt chart format as shown in the figure above.
Test deliverables: Test deliverables include pre-test deliverables like testing plan, test cases, and test design specifications, during test deliverables including test scripts, simulation, test data, test traceability matrix, execution logs, and error logs, and post-test deliverables like test report, defect report, test procedure guideline, and release notes (Guru99, 2018).
SWOT analysis can be used for the assessment of the project.
Strengths of the project include:
Weaknesses of the project include:
Risks or Threats faced by the project include:
Opportunities delivered through the project include:
References
Abbadi, Z. (2006). Security Metrics: What Can We Measure? The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
Alessandro, M., Lafuente, M., & Santiso, C. (2013). Governing to Deliver Reinventing the Center of Government in Latin America and the Caribbean. Inter-American Development Bank.
Brown, S. (2015). The Government Communication Service Modern Communications Operating Model. GCS.
Daly, E., & Singham, S. (2012). delivery 2.0: the new challenge of Governments. McKinsey.
Gold, J. (2016). Tracking delivery Global trends and warning signs in delivery units. Institute of Goverment.
Guru99. (2018, April 6). How to Create a Test Plan. Retrieved from Guru99: https://www.guru99.com/what-everybody-ought-to-know-about-test-planing.html
KAHRAMAN, E. (2010). Evaluating IT security performance with quantifiable metrics. Institutionen f¨or Data- och Systemvetenskap.
Microsoft. (2005). Understanding Availability, Reliability, and Scalability. TechNet.
Provazza, A. (2018). Breaking down application delivery options: It’s the apps, stupid! TechTarget.
Shields, G., & Jones, D. (2012). The new age of application delivery methods: More than just install. TechTarget.
Shostak, R., Watkins, J., Bellver, A., & John-Abraham, I. (2014). When Might the Introduction of a Delivery Unit Be the Right Intervention? . World Bank.
Uttar Pradesh Development Systems Corporation Ltd. . (2017). Selection Of Call Centre Agency For Establishment & Operation Of Chief Minister Helpline In The State Of Uttar Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh Development Systems Corporation Ltd. .
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