rethinking how we work together @ dg connect prabhat agarwal european commission making egovernment...

Rethinking how we work together@ DG CONNECT

Prabhat AgarwalEuropean Commission

Making eGovernment work: Improving Organizational Processes

Brussels, 1 October 2013

DG CONNECT

We reorganized in 2012 to

• to facilitate knowledge creation and exchange

• to unleash the creative talents of staff

• to ensure a better integration of R&D, innovation, policy, and regulation

We needed a new tool, new processes and new skills to work in this new way.

Knowing what's going on

Before• Senior Management

Meetings closed• Formal records only in

ARES• Difficult to 'see how it all

fits together'• Connections between

meetings are mainly ad-hoc

Now• Same day open recording

of all senior meetings and many operational meetings

• Commenting, linking and searching to make linkeages

• Active senior management and many operational blogs on visions

84% of interviewed staff say they are more aware

of what's going on

Gathering inputs broadly & quickly

Before

• Idea gathering mainly in small, local teams

• Physical meetings necessary

• Staff find it difficult to make time to contribute everywhere

Now

• Open discussion enables broad collection of input

• On-line ideation allows to sample cross-DG views

• Voting gives ideas of collective priorities

• Time requirements on staff are considerably reduced

Needs definition for a horizontal project in 3 weeks with 25% of

staff involved

Easier spontaneous collaboration

Before• Collaboration based

essentially around document repository

• Discussions limited to email

• Limited discoverability of on-going project

Now• Collaboration transparent

and discoverable

• Documents & discussions in one place

• Participants join depending on their interest and expertise

72% of interviewed staff say it's easier to collaborate beyond their

unit

User

Ad

op

tion

Active: at least viewing content

Engaged: commenting, linking, editing

Creating content

Distinct users over 30 days

Challenges

• It takes time and effort to build a new working culture, but our usage statistics are well above accepted industry norms.

• New collaborative tool requires new skills, so we are working with DG HR to address this.

• Providing mobile access to the platform has been difficult to implement; we are working with DIGIT to explore solutions.

Thank you

prabhat.agarwal@ec.europa.eu