[The following article appears in the February 1995 edition of _Public_Sector_Quality_Report_, pages 5 and 5.] LESSONS LEARNED: GLEANING BPR DOS AND DON'TS FROM EIGHT U.S. AGENCIES Last year the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) went looking for lessons to be learned from federal agencies using business process reengineering (BPR) strategies to improve service and streamline systems and processes. GSA's Federal Information Resources Management, Planning and Development staff focused on eight agencies in all: Bureau of Prisons, Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Geological Survey, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Securities and Exchange Commission and Social Security Administration. Results of their work are available in a report titled Federal Government Business Process Reengineering: Lessons Learned. The free, 34-page publication (#KAP-94-2-I) includes case descriptions of BPR efforts ongoing or complete within each agency (no contact names are provided, unfortunately). It also describes nine "critical success factors" which GSA researchers found common among the ongoing BPR efforts. Those mostly familiar-sounding factors include: * Top-level management support. All the people managing agency BPR efforts cited executive buy-in and support (in this case, from the agency head and the Secretary) as a key ingredient for success, especially because approval and any funding for BPR efforts in government often must be sought and fought for at two levels-executive and legislative. This matches the findings of authors Michael Hammer and James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation, who found that a lack of adequate understanding or leadership from senior management was the primary reason underlying BPR failures in the private sector. * Long-term commitment. Frequent political turnover tends to make BPR efforts more difficult to sustain in the public sector than in private business. The researchers don't offer any particular remedy for this fact, except to say that government BPR efforts might need to be given extra time to bear fruit. * High-quality staffing. Agency managers surveyed by GSA recommended taking a cross-functional selection of your agency's "best and brightest" people, and freeing them to work on a BPR project unencumbered by other tasks or responsibilities. * Business as the driver of change. Although information technology often is a critical ingredient in a successful BPR effort, the managers surveyed advise that you let the business process itself, not technology, drive the reengineering In other words, some processes can be improved dramatically with no additional reliance on technology. If your "as is" process turns out garbage, overlaying advanced technology simply helps you churn out fancier garbage, or garbage faster. * Substantial customer input. The best place to start a BPR effort? Analyze the process from the customer's perspective. On this point the report cites Hammer and Champy, who argue that focusing on the customer doesn't mean "asking the customer what they want" so much as it means "looking at their needs and problems and seeking to provide an appropriate solution." * Coordination between organizations. Be mindful of the links between your organization's BPR effort and other agencies and departments that will feel the impact of any changes you implement. Often those organizations can benefit by replicating your improvements. * Appropriate use of technology. Involve your information technology staff from the very onset of a BPR effort, to help ensure that "appropriate technology" can and will be applied to the reengineered process as needed, when needed. "Agency program managers are often not aware of the latest technology available and how it could be used to support the changes they would like to implement," the report notes. "Or they may be overly optimistic about what technology can do and the timeframes needed to accomplish changes." * Good up-front planning. In order to migrate BPR from the drawing board into day-to-day operations, it's critical to plan for implementation, identifying tasks, staffing, training and other steps and resources that will be needed to make the change happen. * Need to change agency culture. "To succeed, the BPR implementations must take people's values, beliefs, concerns and fears into consideration," the report states. Leaders must help employees understand the impact BPR will have on them. For example the IRS, as part of a BPR effort, issued a policy which stated that all employees displaced by technological changes would continue to have jobs at their current grade levels. In other cases, presumably, outplacement services or retraining might be the best an organization can offer to address employee concern about workforce reductions. The report cites a recent study which showed that lack of communication was among the four most common reasons why BPR projects fail. Interestingly, the report points out that many of the federal change efforts now being described as BPR should be labeled more modestly as BPI, business process improvement. GSA researchers say several factors inherent in the federal government -- short tenure/frequent turnover of top-level management, legislative mandates that restrict an agency's ability to implement certain business decisions--make it tough if not impossible to pursue BPR (radical redesign) in its truest sense. Given that, their report argues, incremental gains (10-30 percent) are perhaps the best that can be expected from most federal reengineering initiatives. CONTACT: U.S. General Services Administration, IRM Reference Center, (202) 501-4860. [For further information about PSQR or to subscribe, contact: Public Sector Quality Report 17733 Kingsway Path Lakeville, MN 55044-5209 Phone: (612) 898-5058 Fax: (612) 892-7710 e-mail: 74363.3644@compuserve.com]