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 In the early years of this decade the ANZ embarked on an ambitious cultural change initiative that saw them emerge from the back-markers of banking service in Australia to the front-runners for several years in their position as the country's "lender of the year". Unlike many organisations, they started this massive program of change at the front-end with the tellers and field agents who came face to face with the bank's customers every day. Promises made at the front-end then needed to be enforced on the back-end which provided the necessary inertia to focus the bank on its end game of customer service. Making money was the business that came second to and as a result of improved service.
We know that the bank didn't have all the systems and tools in place to make it happen when they started but simple things like internet connectivty, CRM, and account and customer management training were all a part of the solution. It boggles the mind to think what may be achievable in terms of public sector producivity with a similar approach in the face of lagging mobility standards, limited and rationed access to internet services, frighteningly minimal instances of CRM and "service and solution" training. Connecting and mobilising the public sector back-office (in conjunction with the front-end discussed in Policy #5), beginning with a laptop for every public servant, would be a laudable internal policy initiaitive. Despite massive "desktops" procurements still being the norm within the public sector, desktops are a comparatively expensive and passé option for 90% of what office workers do today. There are in fact no technical reasons to do so. In fact access to perceived "fancy gadgets" may provide an attractive and necessary packaging option for jurisdictions to attract and retain younger alphabet generation talent. The right kind of package that included technology would provide some relief from salary parity with the commercial sector by allowing the government to maintain existing levels of salaries but modernize the workplace. As has been proven time and again, money is not everything. For many public sector workers, a laptop currently represents a sign of cultural empowerment which is not an issue of elitism for the worker but a sorry side-effect of the experiential hierarchies that drive machinery of government. The desktop "memo stamper" does not conjur the image of an empowered policy maker inside this machine, so as a packaging option, at the price of netbook, why not give it to them and not ask for it back? Why notindeed; the government is giving them to students anyway. Countless studies (and if this was a research piece I would list them) will highlight increased productivity as an output of the empowered mobile worker. Rather than interfere with the 7 hours and 30 minutes of allotted work time each day inside the office, it in fact encourages and enables teleworking, and flexible hours. To draw in the youth focus again, Gen Y's perception of a suited person chained to a desktop machine is nothing if not counter-productive. Such issues aside, let's be frank and say that a laptop for every public servant would win votes. In south east Queensland that represents at least 250,000. And as the Gadget Guy pointed out on Channel 7 and YouTube, the government's internet pipe will not fill up as a result of opening its wonders to the workforce. To return to the sensible and mundane, we must but recognise the impediments of such a policy initiative. First and foremost is perception. There is a nagging sense of loss of control for things that occur behind closed doors or within a little black box with a flding lid. Following close behind that is the problem of how asset management is dealt with inside public sector treasuries. Laptops have always been considered "portable and attractive" items (a real term) and as such have always been a problem for government. Unfortunately theft is a real problem and we must acknowledge it. And the other impediment is that such a blanket policy would not suit everyone including reasons ranging from ergonomic functionality, to high-end processing concerns. However business models that deal with the data, access, storage, identity, and security of such a policy already exist so they cannot be considered serious impediments. Add to this the increasing proliferation of mobile phone usage and accompanying policies within the public sector, the closer aligned that mobile devices become then the laptop for every public servant will be a tangible reality. It would simply seem a better option to not wait for innovation to force the hand.
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