Gov on the Go Boosting Public Sector Productivity by Going Mobile By William D. Eggers and Joshua Jaffe Second of a series of studies on mobile government About the authors William D. Eggers William Eggers is a leading authority on government reform. He is responsible for research and thought leadership for Deloitte’s Public Sector industry practice. His seven books include the Washington Post best seller If We Can Put a Man on the Moon: Getting Big Things Done in Government (Harvard Business Press, 2009), Government 2.0 (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), Governing by Network (Brookings, 2004), and The Public Innovator’s Playbook (Deloitte Research 2009). His books have won numerous awards including the Louis Brownlow award for best book on public management, the Sir Antony Fisher award for best book promoting an understanding of the free economy, and the Roe Award for leadership and innovation in public policy research. Solution Revolution, his next book (co-authored with Paul Macmillan), will be published in September 2013 by Harvard Business Review Press. He can be reached at [email protected]. Joshua Jaffe Joshua Jaffe is a manager in Deloitte Consulting LP. His work and research focus on public sector thought leadership, advanced analytics, and big data. Joshua has more than a decade’s worth of experience in public sector consulting and has authored or contributed to dozens of studies on government and government service. He can be reached by email at [email protected]. About Deloitte’s Mobile Government Leaders Rob Frazzini leads Deloitte Digital at the federal level. Rob has been a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP for over 14 years, where he has served in many capacities including as the global managing director of Deloitte’s Technology Integration practice. Before joining Deloitte, Rob spent much of his time as an entrepreneur, launching several companies across a wide variety of business sectors. In 2001, Consulting magazine recognized Rob as one of the top 10 consultants in the United States. He can be reached at [email protected]. Jason Salzetti is a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP in Deloitte’s Public Sector consulting practice. He serves as the mobile leader for state government and state leader for Deloitte Digital, and is the lead principal for the State of California. Jason has more than 19 years of technology integration experience implementing large-scale systems across industries. He has led engage- ments for a number of Fortune 500 clients and the State of California. He can be reached at [email protected]. Boosting Public Sector Productivity by Going Mobile Contents Executive summary | 2 Introduction | 4 The public/private productivity gap | 6 Mobile tech and productivity: The evidence | 8 Harnessing mobile | 11 1. The mobile government worker | 11 2. Citizen services 2.0 | 17 3. Co-creaton and co-production: Citizens as the solution | 19 Implementation: Putting mobile to work | 24 Conclusion: Getting mobile right | 27 Appendix | 28 Endnotes | 30 Contacts | 34 Acknowledgements | 35 Recent Deloitte Research public sector thought leadership | 36 1 Gov on the Go Executive summary VER the past 25 years, productivity in the private sector has risen by more than 50 percent. OGlobalization, advanced manufacturing processes, and a deeper understanding of individual and organizational psychology have all contributed significantly to this growth. But the single most significant contribution to this growth has been the private sector’s ability to harness the disruptive power of technology and to use it invent better and more efficient processes. The public sector, on the other hand, has been unable to keep pace, despite, in some cases, eventually adopting similar technologies. At the same time that private sector productivity grew 50 percent, productivity in the public sector actually fell. A productivity gap has emerged between the public and private sectors—one widened by government’s inability to dynamically absorb and capitalize on new technologies like we’ve seen in the private sector. Mobile technology, a very powerful productivity booster, offers the public sector a chance to hit the reset button. It can not only improve internal communications and access to information within public agencies, but also enable the government to fully redesign service delivery by leverag- ing the power of citizens as co-creators. Mobile presents the government with a unique opportu- nity to drive efficiency and productivity and—at the same time—create vast improvements in the services it provides citizens. Our analysis shows that if mobile adoption rates in government were to double to 70 percent, additional value generated (in terms of government output) could exceed $50 billion annually. This report examines three key areas where mobile acts as an enabler of productivity for the gov- ernment and its citizens: • The mobile government worker. Mobile technology not only helps front-line workers do more with less in the face of shrinking workforces and tightly stretched budgets, but also allows them to do their jobs better. No longer constrained by location or time, field workers—human services caseworkers, emergency responders, and law enforcement officers—can operate as truly mobile workers and remain productive on the go. In Florida, more than 2,300 foster care caseworkers use camera-enabled smartphones and laptops to remotely capture time- and-location-stamped images, notes, and observations that immediately upload to the state’s online database. This way, they spend less time on paperwork and can better manage their workloads. According to our analysis, mobile adoption could result in a 45 percent increase in caseworkers’ productive time. • Citizen services 2.0. Mobile technology offers great promise in making interaction with government easier, requiring less of citizens’ time, money, and effort. Myriad mobile applica- tions—from apps that provide basic information on public services to sophisticated sensor- and GPS-enabled, real-time, “thinking” apps—have opened fresh channels of exchange between citi- zens and the government. The City of New York’s NYC311 mobile application lets users report 2 Boosting Public Sector Productivity by Going Mobile civic problems—street potholes, damaged street signs, graffiti, and other quality-of-life issues— at the tap of a button. The city also has a telephone service for 311 complaints. Our estimates indicate that even if half of these complaints were to shift to the mobile app medium, citizens would collectively save 513,888 hours of their own time—equivalent to $11.3 million a year. • Co-creation and co-production: Citizens as the solution. Mobile technology allows gov- ernance to shift from one-way service delivery to a more collaborative, co-designed, and co- created model. As citizens come to play a more active role rather than being passive recipients, public service delivery can be transformed. Greater emphasis on creating solutions with citizens rather than just for them improves not just service delivery, but also the way the government approaches a problem. In San Jose, the Pulse Point mobile app—via sophisticated location-based services—alerts qualified citizens in a public place of the need for CPR. With the help of technol- ogy and citizen rescuers, governments can deliver effective emergency response without devot- ing significant new resources. Making mobile the standard The effectiveness of mobile in the public sector will depend largely on how it is implemented. These seven steps can help the public sector capture productivity benefits from mobile: 1. Rethink business processes 2. Define the problem you are trying to solve 3. Adopt a “Mobile First” approach 4. Focus on user experience 5. Iterative design: Prototype, test, prototype again 6. Make mobile a source of security, not a threat 7. Define a governance structure Government agencies aren’t the only organizations struggling to adapt to mobile technology. Many private companies struggle with this as well. But if mobile is a challenge, it is also an opportu- nity: a chance for the public sector to start closing the productivity gap, reassess its business prac- tices, boost its efficiency, and renegotiate its relationship with the public it serves. Used right, mobile can transform government’s capabilities. 3 Gov on the Go Introduction N the past 25 years, the productivity of however, government must adopt it differently IAmerica’s private sector has risen by more than it did past disruptive technologies. This than 50 percent, buoyed by new technologies, change in approach can help governments globalization, advanced manufacturing pro- avoid investments that fail to produce com- cesses, and a deeper understanding of individ- mensurate productivity improvements. ual and organizational psychology. The public One example of the potential of mobile sector’s productivity, by contrast, actually fell comes from Nike. The company has worked during the same period, despite the availability to strengthen customer engagement after the of many of the same advances.1 initial transaction, creating a long-lasting Desktop PCs—and perhaps even desks— customer experience. To do so, it has intro- may soon become passé, with laptops, tablets, duced a range of Nike+ products that support and smartphones becoming the norm in its customers’ athletic activities through mobile business. Mobile devices and mobile-infused devices and social media. A combination of workplaces are the latest in a long list of tech-