Building future competencies
The successful transformation of government is largely dependent on the people working in and for government. With the changing context that governments operate in and stakeholders’ ever higher expectations, governments must be able to deploy the skills required to deliver now and in the future. This is true for highly specialized skills such as data security or risk assessment, as well as for skills in more broad-ranging policy areas such as education.
They must also maintain and improve their existing skills base, at the same time leveraging their human assets – creating an engaged, motivated and talented workforce. Good human resources practices are essential. The way governments lead and manage their workforce has a significant impact on the way they perform. Governments must have the internal human capital agenda as a top priority.
Future proofing the skills base
Assessing the key skills that the public sector requires is a challenge for every government. As governments face more complex challenges and adopt new approaches to policymaking, the skills and competencies required to work in the public service ecosystem continue to change. The competencies that will be important in the future are not necessarily those that are important today.
Even government in nations with sophisticated and well-established education systems are experiencing skills shortages. This is particularly true in areas where governments are turning to new technology to deliver services.
A good example is the increasing use of big data and predictive analytics (as mentioned in Chapter 1). For the private sector, the ability to analyse large volumes of data more effectively creates opportunities to provide a better service for customers and obtain a competitive advantage. For governments able to extract insights from the manipulation of large volumes of data, it is an opportunity to provide a better service to citizens.
‘I think the government is awakening to the idea that data science can provide models that have great utility for a variety of missions that are important to the government,’ said Dr. Robert Hummel, vice president and chief scientist at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, speaking at the Government Big Data forum.88
Data scientists come from a wide range of backgrounds. One article highlighting the growth in demand for data scientists gave examples of PhD graduates in astrophysics, biostatistics, cognitive psychology and applied mathematics who have all recently been hired in data scientist roles.89
A data scientist requires a broad range of skills and experience, according to the Singapore government’s first Chief Data Scientist, Prabir Sen, appointed in January 2014. According to Sen, in an interview given to FutureGov, data scientists have to be ‘good at understanding human behaviour, how people go about solving their problems and making decisions, and able to think laterally to engage in cross-cutting strategic dialogues’. Plus they need to be able to ‘learn, unlearn and relearn’.
Sen described his role as finding ‘ways to build transformative products using data sciences, analytics and insights; drive rapid development and adoption of analytical techniques; and develop the local data and tech talent’.90
It is no surprise that with the private and public sector both competing for big-data-handling expertise, data scientists are in such demand. The Harvard Business Review called it ‘the sexiest job of the 21st century’, noting that from 2011 to 2012, there was a 15,000 per cent increase in job postings for the role.91
Transformation at work: cyber security capacity building in Japan
Cyber security is another field in which there is a shortage of suitably qualified experts. In Japan, for example, there are some 265,000 computer engineers involved in cyber security, according to the Information Technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA). However, 160,000 are not suitably expert to provide an effective response to a cyber attack. And even if they all possessed the expertise and skills required, Japan would still need a further 80,000 cyber security experts to meet demand from both the private and public sectors.92
The situation will be alleviated by initiatives from Japanese universities to produce more students with cyber-security skills. Both Kyushu University and the University of Nagasaki are introducing departments or programmes focusing on information security. Universities are also running events aimed at boosting cyber-security-related learning and development. The University of Aizu held a ten-day cyber-defence workshop at which people were exposed to real-time cyber attacks. The event was partly organized by Fumiaki Yamazaki, previously a member of Japan’s central government committee for information security.
For its part, the IPA is taking a number of measures. These include running a cyber-security training camp, where young people can improve their skills. The camps are highly selective – some 300 people applied for one camp, but only 42 made it through.
A sign of the importance that Japan attaches to cyber security is its willingness to work with other nations in order to develop the capacity to combat the threat. The Japanese government is working with the US government, for example. A US–Japan Cyber Dialogue at director-general level took place in Tokyo in May 2013. A joint statement described the dialogue as ‘consultation for exchanging cyber threat information, aligning international cyber policies, comparing national cyber strategies, cooperating on planning and efforts to protect critical infrastructure, and discussing the cooperation on cyber areas in national defence and security policy’. A second dialogue took place in April 2014. In addition, a joint US–Japan Cyber Defense Policy Working Group was held in February 2014 in Tokyo, with the need for more cyber defence experts high on the agenda.
In the US, where it is widely acknowledged that there is a shortage of cyber-security experts, especially at the most highly skilled end of the market, the government is also attempting to close the skills gap.93 For example, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation co-sponsor a publicly funded scholarship, CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service. The programme provides scholarships in exchange for years of service after graduating, and is designed to boost the numbers and expertise of the federal information assurance professionals who protect the US government’s critical information infrastructure.
While talented people make their way through university doctoral programmes and the various educational initiatives designed to bolster the skills base, governments may have to invest in talent for key roles. The hiring of Mikey Dickerson, formerly of Google, by the White House in the summer of 2014 is one example. Dickerson, who had previously worked on President Obama’s re-election programme in 2012, was hired to deploy the knowledge and skills he had acquired working for Google. He used these to good effect on the HealthCare.gov website, and in helping to fix and optimize other government websites.94
This is not only about accessing the skills of the future in certain strategic areas. It can be worth governments acquiring specialist skills in fields traditionally the province of government, but which are often outsourced to the private sector.
This was the case in Hong Kong, where the government acquired mass-transit-related expertise as it constructed its Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system from the mid-1970s. Such was the level of expertise in areas such as maintenance and engineering, infrastructure management, operations and property management, that the part-government-owned MTR Corporation was able to take on external projects with other governments. So the MTR won the contract to operate the Stockholm Metro for eight years in 2009, with a six-year extension option. In Australia, the MTR was awarded the contract to operate Melbourne’s train network in a joint venture.
If governments are to successfully attract and retain the right mix of skilled and experienced staff, there will need to be changes in traditional career structures. Governments are often characterized as entrenched, multilayered hierarchies, where careers are advanced slowly over many years based on time served rather than talent, and job tenure is virtually guaranteed for life.
This picture may not represent the reality of government, but it is close to the truth in many cases. However, if governments are to keep pace with the changing need for different skills and compete for private sector talent, they will need a more flexible workforce. They may also have to face up to commercial realities, including offering competitive remuneration packages. In Singapore, for example, top civil servants receive a bonus tied to Singapore’s economic performance – the GDP bonus – and their salaries are closer to private sector levels than in many other countries.
When HR managers consider the attributes required to fulfil a particular role in an organization they often describe them as competencies (or competences). These can be broadly considered as knowledge, skills, experience, behaviours, values, attitudes and traits. There has been extensive research into the competencies governments are likely to require of their staff in the future. When the OECD looked at the competencies civil servants required in the future, for example, responses varied tremendously from country to country.
In Belgium, there was a focus on adjusting to meet the needs of new situations, and competencies such as flexibility, service orientation and self-development. Additionally, a customer-oriented public service emphasis required public servants to be quality-, customer- and results-oriented. Innovation and creativity were also desired competencies. In the Netherlands, there was an expectation that future governments would be leaner, requiring personnel with a broad skill set at the centre to ensure continuity of government, while ad hoc temporary teams dealt with projects requiring specialist expertise.95
The research suggested that public servants with broad skills will need experience working in or with a wide variety of different types of organizations, from the private and public sector and non-profits. They will need to be good at networking, collaborating and knowledge sharing with colleagues, and with citizens and businesses.
Managerial skills will be important. Competencies required for managerial success as a public servant included being able to manage diverse teams, a willingness to be accountable, the ability to understand and influence situations, and self-awareness.
The OECD study, which we have drawn on in this chapter, identified eight critical competencies that public servants needed for the future: change management, creativity, flexibility, future orientation, innovation, relationship building, vision, and working collaboratively across boundaries.96
These competencies can be grouped together in four clusters: creative thinking (creativity and innovation); flexibility (flexibility and change management); cooperation (working collaboratively across boundaries and relationship building); and strategic thinking (vision and future orientation).
Competency management as an enabler
Governments cannot afford to leave skills and competencies in the workforce to chance. Although many governments appear to adopt an ad hoc approach, it is possible to formalize skills acquisition and development through competency management.
With competency management, organizations assess the skills, abilities and behaviours they need to perform well. They also integrate a variety of human resource management activities within a competency management framework, ensuring that the organization is able to attract and retain employees with the necessary competencies, and that those employees perform to their best ability.
The competency-based approach emerged from the work of Harvard psychologist David McClelland, who wrote about competencies in the 1970s as an alternative to an IQ-testing approach to recruitment. In the 1980s, competency management became more prevalent in the private sector. Then, as governments sought to modernize and become more efficient with the rise of the New Public Management movement in Europe, competency management became more widespread in the OECD countries.
A competency approach looks at what people bring to their jobs. It reflects a shift away from a more functional approach to human resources that looks at outputs, at task performance and the way an individual performs a particular role. Instead, it looks at jobs in terms of the core tasks and functional requirement, at hiring in terms of functional selection criteria and job vacancies, at career development, performance and reward in terms of functional task performance and seniority, and the passage up through transitional job hierarchies.
There are a number of factors behind the rise of competency management. As organizations are becoming more customer focused, the skills of the employees – how they relate to customers, for example – become more important than their job titles or official roles. As globalization creates greater competition, people become the competitive differentiator for organizations. Plus, with flatter, leaner organizations, traditional career paths disappear and employees and employers need to find new ways of providing people with career satisfaction and fulfilment.
Competency management can be a powerful catalyst for change and a powerful tool for governments undergoing transformation. Focusing on competencies during the modernization of government and public administration systems changes our notion of a faceless bureaucratic system, where public servants are just cogs in the huge machinery of government. It places public servants centre stage, acknowledging their role in redefining the way that government operates.
The public sector has to attract talented individuals or lose them to the private sector. Adopting a competency approach to HR helps the public sector to accomplish this, making working for government a more attractive package. It enables governments to track and manage career paths across departments, functions and projects, laterally and vertically, depending on the competence characteristics of individuals. People understand what they need to do to progress; they understand what constitutes high performance in the workplace. For employees, this is likely to appear a more equitable and transparent approach to careers, performance appraisal and reward.
Introducing competency management also allows the use of the common language of competency to formulate and communicate strategy across government. Whatever employees’ work in government, they can relate what they do both to the competency framework and the overall strategy. They can see and understand the difference they make to the success of the organization. Competency management can also be used to align the workforce around organizational objectives, as well as increasing the employability of public servants.
When the OECD compiled a checklist of the main elements to be considered in the ‘introduction, development, and implementation’ of competency management, it also considered the key factors for successful implementation.
The first factor is understanding why the competency-based approach is being introduced and being able to articulate the reasons. Otherwise, it is difficult to tie the competency initiative to its vision, mission and the overall objectives of the organization.
Accountability is essential. Someone needs to be responsible for developing, coordinating and implementing competency-based management. That person (or people) might be in central government, at a department, or both – in which case development is usually at the central level. External contractors might also be involved.
Part of establishing accountability includes defining terms so everyone is clear what terms such as ‘competency’, ‘competency management’ and ‘competency framework’ mean in the context of what the government is trying to achieve. Clear responsibility for who implements which part of the competency management programme must be established. All this must be communicated to the stakeholders involved. It is often possible to adapt an existing competency model, which can save time and money. If this route is taken, it is important to remember to align the competencies and the organization’s strategic objectives, as well as the various HR processes.
One of the most important aspects of implementation is making sure that the competency-based approach ‘sticks’ once it has been implemented. It has to be part of the organization’s culture, encompassing the gamut of HR activities whether it is recruitment and retention, talent management, performance appraisal, reward systems or succession planning.
A popular way to start out is with a pilot project targeting one aspect of HR and one area of government. Once underway, competency management systems need regular evaluation. A number of trends have become evident as governments update and improve their approach to competency management. New practices emerge; existing practices are adapted and amended.
Both Belgium and South Korea altered their competency models in the five-year period prior to 2013, for example, while the UK created and launched a new Civil Service Competency Framework across government in 2013, replacing the previous Professional Skills for Government. The Civil Service notes that the new framework focuses ‘as much on behaviours as on skills’.97
Some countries have re-evaluated job descriptions. The Dutch central government introduced a new set of job descriptions aligned with its competency model, covering the whole of government.98 Other nations have changed the professional qualifications which are acceptable, depending on the competencies required. Governments have also introduced new types of competency assessment, integrated with internal HR practices that deal with internal progression and talent pipelines. This helps improve internal career mobility.
Training and development is another area in which governments continue to improve their competency management systems. In Canada, for example, course content at the Canada School of Public Service was tailored to fit with Key Leadership Competencies, and federal public service employees were provided with online tools to help them create personal learning plans. In Denmark, meanwhile, qualifications were developed jointly by public sector organizations with academic institutions such as the Copenhagen Business School.
Another trend is to use separate learning and development and other human resource management practices for different segments of the workforce. This is often the case with senior civil servants, for example. Senior civil servants are in a uniquely important position, linking strategy creation and execution. They must display the leadership qualities necessary to deal with fast-moving situations, as well as the experience and skills needed to make sound decisions based on the consideration of evidence.
In practice, using a competency approach means developing a competency framework or model. Likely to be centrally developed, these models may be aimed at specific groups of public servants, such as senior managers or senior civil servants, or targeted at the entire civil service, as with the UK and Canada, for example.
Technical elements are often either absent from general competency frameworks or are infrequently mentioned, as they are often highly specific to a role. They may be specified at a departmental level, however. Instead, general competency frameworks usually feature behavioural competencies. Values also feature prominently as key competencies. Countries including the Netherlands, the UK and Australia list values – such as integrity and commitment – among their competencies. Public service values, such as transparency and accountability, are also often mentioned, along with other specific public service references.
Transformation at work: the competent British
In 2012 the UK introduced a new civil service competency framework and performance management system as part of its reform programme for the civil service.
The competency framework set out how the UK government wants people in the civil service to work. The values of honesty, integrity, impartiality and objectivity are central to the framework, as are three high-level leadership behaviours that the government expects every civil servant to demonstrate: setting direction, engaging people and delivering results.
The framework details ten competencies grouped into three clusters based on the leadership behaviours. Each one explains what is expected from all staff, and also at senior levels.
Under ‘setting direction’, civil servants need to see the big picture, understanding how their role fits with and supports organizational objectives and wider public needs. They need to change and improve, being responsive, innovative and seeking out opportunities to create effective change. Effective decision making also falls within this cluster, with civil servants expected to use ‘sound judgement, evidence and knowledge to provide accurate, expert and professional advice’.
Within the strategic cluster of ‘engaging people’, civil servants are expected to lead from the front and communicate with clarity, conviction and enthusiasm, demonstrating a strong vision and direction at senior levels. Collaboration is required at all levels, while senior staff are expected to deliver business objectives through ‘creating an inclusive environment, encouraging collaboration and building effective partnerships, including relationships with ministers’. Civil servants should build capability for all – ‘having a strong focus on continuous learning for oneself, others and the organization’.
Finally, ‘delivering results’ involves achieving commercial outcomes, ‘maintaining an economic, long-term focus in all activities’. Civil servants should deliver value for money, using taxpayers’ money in an efficient, effective and economic way in order to deliver public services. They should manage a quality service, striving to improve service quality while taking account of diverse customer needs and requirements. Civil servants need to deliver performance at pace, ‘with energy and taking responsibility and accountability for quality outcomes,’ even during challenging times.
The competencies are further broken down into the effective and ineffective behaviours expected at different levels of seniority, from administrative officer or administrative assistant, through to director general.99
Realizing the value of human capital: planning and development
Human capital is one of the most valuable assets of any organization. In the public sector, having a workforce of engaged employees focused on delivering the government’s mission and policy initiatives can be the difference between having effective and efficient service delivery or experiencing project failure, poor services and dysfunctional government.
Modern HR functions employ a variety of tools and techniques to get the best out of the workforce. We have seen how government can map out the skills it needs to be effective in the future. It must then ally this exercise with current HR planning and development practices.
Talent development involves talent assessment, combined with the identification of individuals with the potential to make progress in areas critical to the organization’s delivery of its objectives. That might include people destined for senior leadership or technical experts, for example. Alongside specific learning and development opportunities for high potentials, there will usually be learning and development targeted at the rest of the workforce. This skills development can be combined with personal development plans which include possible training and development objectives, and routes to meeting those objectives. In Belgium, for example, public officials have personal training plans, and certified training programmes aim to develop the skills required of officials.
The development of strategies to close the gap between actual and desired skills is sometimes described as workforce planning. Traditionally, workforce planning focused on identifying the gap between the skills the workforce possessed and those it needed, and from that, determining staff resourcing needs. In an increasingly fast-moving and turbulent world, however, the private sector has developed workforce planning into a more adaptive practice, enabling an organization to respond to workforce demands as they arise.
Modern workforce planning in the public sector should involve gap analysis, but also testing different workforce scenarios using forecasting and modelling techniques, analysing the composition of the workforce on the basis of skills and roles, assessing which are mission critical and which are not.
In South Korea the government specified that every central ministry should develop a workforce plan every five years.100 Korean ministries have to assess current and future skills requirements, gauge what skills are lacking, and assess what workforce arrangements are required to obtain those skills in the workforce, whether that’s through hiring or training and development, or both.
In Australia the workforce-planning process takes into account operating contexts, now and in the future, and monitors workforce issues, strategic aims and the environment. Workforce planners have several points in mind: where a particular agency is heading, what the strategic context is, and what specific skills are required accordingly; what the current situation regarding the existing workforce and work programme is; how the agency will get to where it needs to be.
Unfortunately, investment in planning, learning and development is one of the first budgets to be cut when cost pressures increase. Given the poor performance of many public sector projects – in a survey of 974 public sector leaders, McKinsey revealed that only some 39 per cent of large-scale public sector projects completely hit their targets – cutting learning and development seems a false economy.101
Certainly there are some specific things that governments can focus on to squeeze more value from their learning and development, making it more cost effective.
One important element of the learning and development process is the learning method itself. The highly competitive market for business education is a good example of best practice. Business schools have moved away from traditional classroom-based didactic learning, in the form of lecture and textbook instruction. Instead, they are embracing a blended approach to learning, using a mix of theory and practical exercises, business case studies and simulations, interactive seminars and workshops.
Action learning features significantly. Originally introduced by British industrialist and academic Reg Revans during the 1920s, the theory of action learning suggests that managers learn best when they work on real issues in a group, rather than in the traditional classroom. His action learning formula is L = P + Q: Learning (L) occurs through a combination of programmed knowledge (P) and the ability to ask insightful questions (Q).
The action learning approach has been extended to government – at the Korean Central Officials Training Institute, for example.102 And in a report by management consultants McKinsey & Co, Government by design: Four principles for a better public sector, Diana Farrell and Andrew Goodman highlight the example of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Multifamily Housing Programs.103 One learning and development programme run by the department introduced intensive coaching for managers in problem-solving skills. The results were impressive – a 70 per cent reduction in the housing application backlog plus a 35 per cent productivity improvement.
Of course, implementing an effective long-term HR strategy incorporating impactful development practices requires long-term planning. Where governments appoint public officials, frequent changes in government can undermine continuity and attempts to create and implement HR systems that are stable and productive.
One solution is to make the appointment of senior public officials non-political and the responsibility of a senior public official. That is certainly the case in New Zealand, for example, where the state services commissioner hires, supervises and fires senior executives in government departments.
Developing leaders
Increasingly, governments are developing a separate suite of HR practices targeted at identifying and developing potential leaders within the public sector, and improving and sustaining the skills of existing leaders and senior civil servants.
In many OECD governments, senior civil servants are considered to be a separate group of public servants. They are recruited through a more centralized process than the rest of the employees and, in a majority of OECD countries, there is a defined skills profile applying specifically to them. Some OECD countries have mechanisms in place to identify potential senior civil servants early in their careers, which could help not only to attract talent to the civil service but also allow for early coaching and capacity building. Greater emphasis is placed on incentivizing improved performance of senior civil servants. For example, in some countries, the portion of their remuneration that is performance-related is higher than for other staff.
Senior civil servants have a difficult role. On the one hand, they are involved in the policy formulation process; on the other, they are responsible for implementing policy. They are involved in both top-level strategic decision making and the execution of that strategy. Consequently, senior civil servants must combine a range of skills, from leadership qualities to the ability to assimilate and understand technical information across a range of sectors, in order to be able to manage the execution of policy.
As well as this, senior civil servants need a practical appreciation of the mechanisms of government, and this will often be based on their own direct experience or the experience of others. They need to know how things get done if they are to make a difference.
The need for the highest possible quality of leadership talent is clear. Today’s public sector leaders need to be trained and developed to make decisions in a fast-paced and complex, uncertain world. The key areas of strategic decision making for these leaders are setting direction, the way we work and resource management.
Setting direction
It is the role of the leader to determine and communicate the vision and mission of the organization. There will be a hierarchy of vision, mission, goals and objectives. These may be arrived at through an iterative process in consultation with external stakeholders, or collaboratively in-house. Regardless of the methods involved in creating a vision, mission and objectives, the leaders of the organization are ultimately responsible for deciding what these should be and for making sure they are communicated effectively.
The aim is to get everyone pointing in the same direction and engaged in delivering the overall vision, and in the journey that is required to get there. In doing so, the leaders of public institutions must not forget their core purpose: public service. Thus the citizen must be at the heart of the vision and mission objectives, and must be seen to be at the heart – with this clearly communicated and demonstrable to the external world.
The way we work
The vision, mission, objectives and goals set out what the organizations intend to achieve. It is also the leader’s responsibility, however, to indicate how the organization will achieve its aims. This does not mean getting involved in the minutiae of operations on the ground. Instead, it refers to setting the tone at the top.
So, for example, the leader should encourage transparency and accountability, collaboration and innovation, equity and fairness, foresight and proactive decision making. Leaders in public service must also promote ethical government. It is not enough to state that these aspects of government are important; effective leaders demonstrate these aspects of public service through their behaviour and actions.
Resource management
Public service leaders have to make difficult strategic decisions about the resources they have at their disposal. They are required to tread a precarious path between managing scarce resources and fluctuating budgets, while creating, maintaining and delivering improving services for the citizens they serve. The ability to marshal those resources at all points along the service value path is a critical competence for public service leaders.
One of the most important resources available to any public service leader is the experience, knowledge and expertise of the workforce, the human capital of government. As well as improving the lives of their citizens, public service leaders are also responsible for the maintenance and development of the human capital of government. They must ensure that the organization has a workforce that is fit for the future.
It is worth putting this into context. Civil service has a long and rich history. Civil servants administered the Roman Empire. There were civil service examinations in Imperial China during the Sui dynasty (581–618 AD).
Leaders in public service, like the nations and empires they serve, come and go. While they are in their role, they are custodians of the will of government and government policies, their development and implementation. As a result, they must always be mindful that what they do today should be for the benefit of citizens in the long term. Whether they impact the environment, business, infrastructure or intellectual capital, the decisions that public service leaders make in the short term should create prosperity for people over much longer time horizons.
This will only be achieved if the skills required of all those who work in government in the future are understood and used as a dynamic foundation for recruitment, retention, performance management and training and development.
In a nutshell: Building future competencies
As governments face more complex challenges and innovate approaches to policymaking and service delivery, they need to both develop their existing workforces and build new skills to deliver new age government.
People who already work in government need to be nurtured and developed, rewarded and motivated through targeted development, retention and career development planning which leverages some of the successful practices of the business world. The emphasis should be on creating an agile workforce made up primarily of highly skilled knowledge workers with broad problem-solving, critical-thinking and creative capabilities, armed with business intelligence, working in teams and networks, often with citizens, the private sector and NGO partners.
In addition to nurturing existing skills, governments need to develop and attract people with skills in emerging fields critical for the future agenda of government. These include data science and analytics, scenario planning, cyber security, behavioural economics, mobile apps development, gamification, cloud computing and cognitive computing. Given the skills gap within these fields, governments need to compete with the private sector to attract talent through competitive pay, flexible working models and attractive contractual arrangements.
Governments should also leverage their unique position to attract and retain people with these skills for a new age by involving them in high-impact activities which reinforce the societal effect and sense of service that these jobs provide.