Why is it important to focus on the public sector?

My research looks at engagement on public sector IT projects, so

Why is it important to focus on the public sector?

This might be a viva question and I can say that I justify this focus in the literature review (page 14) where I've written:
IT projects are important to the public sector because they are a key means of implementing government policy requiring often rapid changes to how the public sector department functions and provides services.
But maybe I've justified only the focus on IT projects, not on the public sector. The public sector makes policy and implements it through IT. Examples of failures of such implementation are:

• Libra system for the magistrates courts
• the National id scheme with an initial budget of £3 billion that went up to £5 billion.
• in 2003 the government introduced two credits: Child Tax Credit and Working Tax credit. The Inland Revenue's IT supplier created a new IT system for processing the tax credits, a system that went live in April 2003 with problems that took ten weeks to solve. Volumes were higher than expected and the testing window had been cut. Both suppliers and IR senior managers had to account for the fiasco to a Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee.

Public Sector IT continues to be problematic. The day after I submitted my thesis, a Public Administration Select Committee was interviewing IT expert witnesses on good governance and the effective use of IT (pd report is here). Witnesses pointed out that IS is there to implement government policy and government business change.

Hence, I see a need to focus on the public sector.

Why is engagement important?

Engagement is important

• to gain commitment
• for influencing
• for bonding
• to lubricate the wheels of IT implementation
• to align individual work with business strategy
• for understanding
• for feedback
• for good communication.
  

and a common cause of government IT failure is lack of effective engagement with stakeholders.

I notice that the government has just had another Parliamentary Select Committee Enquiry on government IT: Good governance and effective IT. A hearing on 8th March is watchable here and the minutes of 15th March are here.

And that is since I handed in my thesis, less than a month ago.

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OGC. 2002. Common Causes of Project Failure. London: Office of Government Commerce. http://www.ogc.gov.uk/documents/cp0015.pdf
Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology. 2003. Government IT Projects - Analysis of the Problem In POST (Ed.). http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/pr200.pdf

Public sector IT cuts

Our new government plans to cut consultancy and IT in the public sector. I hope they know what they're doing because if the Management Consultancy Association is right here about clients getting £6 value for every £1 spent on consultancy, then the government is on its way to losing a lot of value.

The IT industry too questions the sense in cutting IT - see here.

Why the public sector?

A new report on the market for public services, commissioned from Oxford Economics by the CBI, demonstrates the growth of the public services industry in the UK. Government procurement of services in seven key sectors is now worth £44bn. Providers in this market generate £25bn in added value and employ over 700,000 people, making the industry bigger than the pharmaceutical and automotive industries combined. Surely such a big market is of interest for researchers. Surely, since it's public money that provides these services, media and stakeholders and politicians must demand transparency and accountability for the expenditure, so any research into how that money is spent on services must help improve transparency.

Assumptions about engagement

I'm assuming that the unit of analysis is the project. Why is it the project, because if it's the project is there a problem with the project? Is there a problem with IT projects in the public sector? And if there is a problem why does engagement have anything to do with the problem?

• The NAO report (NAO, 2006) assumes that engagement is a good thing.
• I'm assuming engagement is a process.
• I'm assuming engagement is not a widely recognised management construct.
• I am assuming one kind of engagement exists. Or does it vary depending on something? What? Perhaps it's its quality that varies. I note that the quality of engagement requires: reciprocity, shared decision making, a high level of interest, and is action for something worth doing.

But some studies measure engagement, such as the IES. Though I don't have free access to its reports its summary defines engagement:

"a positive attitude held by the employee towards the organization and its values"

I'm not sure that the NAO writers meant the same thing. The IES survey used a diagnostic tool that ranged from training & development to job satisfaction, which to me sounds like motivation and motivating factors {Marcum, 1999}, so something other than engagment. And I don't think the NAO would measure its senior responsible owners engagement on the same characteristics as the IES uses.

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NAO (2006) Central Government's use of consultants: Building client and consultant commitment National Audit Office
Marcum, J. W. (1999) 'Out With Motivation, in With Engagement', National Productivity Review (Wiley), 18 (4), pp. 43-46.

Argument for research question

I started by noting that

1. the consultancy market has been growing, and
2. that the public sector increasingly uses consultants.
   
3. In order to get from value for money from using them, the NAO recommends that senior management engage with consultants.
4. However, how engagement is happens, is not clear.
5. So, research might elucidate how engagement works and how it adds value to a project.
   

That makes my research question:
How does public sector engagement with external consultants contribute value to projects.

My argument links engagement to value, which in turn allows accountability, which was where I started over a year ago.


Social capital helps increase intellectual capital, which is what consultants deal in someone says, so finding how engagement increases social capital will also help show how consultants add value to intellectual capital.

Project management and risk

Supervisor #2, who has experience of projects, suggested that I look at risk evaluation and analysis in project management.

Gray & Larson (2008) devote a whole chapter to managing risk [1]. They look at the process, breaking it into steps:

1. identification,
   
2. assessment and
   
3. risk response development.

I can see the relevance of managing risk to project management. Identifying risks is a senior management responsibility [2]. In the public sector people may evaluate strategic choices in a risk averse culture . Consequently, people may go for a project where there is a lower chance of success but a paper trail exists to show that it's not their fault, rather than a project with a high chance of success, but no paper trail. At least that’s my hypothesis and how do I check it?

Risk avoidance strategies make it harder to implement change. Risk averse contracts that put the onus on the supplier or the consultant do not improve the probabilities of success.

Beck & Mobs [3 ] discussed motivations of the various stakeholders when they proposed a longitudinal case study research of a large public private project in Germany. They thought that private managers tended to be more risk averse than politicians leading public agencies. Politicians can demonstrate groundbreaking investments in IT. Perhaps politicians hold a different attitude to risk from the public servants that must implement the IT projects.

Other researchers have used quantitative analysis to explore risk factors that may influence decisions [4], [5]. But I don’t think I want to go the quantitative route. I need to be aware of risk management but that it’s not the focus of my research question.

Smith et al (2006) analysed risk factors relevant to software projects and identified most important risks as lack of top management commitment to a project, and lack of client responsibility, ownership and buy-in of project and its delivered systems [4]. That's what interests me.

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[1]GRAY, C. F. & LARSON, E. W. (2008) Project management: the managerial process, NY, McGraw-Hill.
[2]INTELLECT (2000) Getting IT Right for Government A Review of Public Sector IT Projects.
[3] BECK, R. & MOBS, A. (2006) The Public Hand and IT Mega-Projects: Lessons from the German TollCollect Case. Inaugural Research Workshop for IT Project Management Milwaukee, WI, Association for Information Systems Special Interest Group on IT Project Management
[4] SMITH, D., EASTCROFT, M., MAHMOOD, N. & RODE, H. (2006) Risk factors affecting software projects in South Africa. South African Journal of Business Management, 37, 55-65.
[5]BARKI, H. & HARTWICK, J. (2001) INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT AND ITS MANAGEMENT IN INFORMATION SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT. MIS Quarterly, 25, 195-228.
[6]AUBERT, B. A., BARKI, H., PATRY, M. & ROY, V. (2008) A multi-level, multi-theory perspective of information technology implementation. Information Systems Journal, 18, 45-72.