Introduction

Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything

Government productivity is often overlooked in the national productivity debate. Productivity discussions and analyses have traditionally focused on market sectors, where goods and services are traded and are therefore more easily valued in monetary terms.
Output in government services is more difficult to define and value.

Course Objectives

• Describe the overall public sector structure and the need for competitiveness to achieve national prosperity and growth
• Translate stakeholder ambition and needs into a strategic plan to achieve an entity’s mandate
• Employ the public policy development process effectively to achieve the strategic plan
• Design and manage strategic initiatives and cross-entity collaboration mechanisms to effectively execute strategies
• Utilize a practical performance management system to develop and sustain a performance culture

Target Audience

All managers and professionals who are involved in influencing, formulating or supporting the planning and strategy of their government or semi-government entity, department or corporation. The course is also beneficial to those who are responsible for linking, measuring and improving the performance of the organization, including sector and department managers, strategy or performance management professionals, balanced scorecard managers, and research analysts.

Target Competencies:

• Policymaking
• Leadership skills
• Critical thinking
• Public sector competitiveness skills
• Strategic thinking and planning
• Service innovation
• Performance management
• Partnerships development

Course Outlines

Day (1) Ambition and role of the public sector

• Benefits of strategic management in the public sector
• Illustrating types of institutions in the public sector
• Strategy management framework in the public sector
• Public sector strategy definitions
• Cascading the national vision to entity level
• Examples of national visions of nations
• Defining strategic themes linked to citizens’ needs
• Role of government in achieving themes
• Determining underlying national outcomes and KPIs
• Using international indices in target setting
• Measuring a nation's ability in building a competitive environment
• Becoming competitive as a nation: Porter’s model

Day (2) Strategic planning in the public sector

• Building a strategy map tailored to the public sector
• Answering the 3 questions of the strategic planning process
• Using SWOT analysis
• Determining stakeholders and customers: building a stakeholder map
• Cascading national outcomes and KPIs into sectors
• Developing vision and mission statements
• Developing strategic objectives and KPIs using the balanced scorecard model

Day (3) Public policy development

• Understanding public policy and its uses
• Linking public policy to strategic planning
• Phases of public policy development
• Determining root causes of a policy problem
• Defining types of policies
• Developing policy options
• Criteria to consider when assessing policy options

Day (4) Managing strategic initiatives and partnerships

• Building initiative charters
• Assessing the impact of initiatives
• Understanding partners’ roles and cause and effect relationships
• Determining accountabilities
• Designing delivery agreements between different stakeholders
• Ensuring cross-entity collaboration

Day (5) Designing the Performance Management System (PMS)

• PMS purpose and guiding principles
• Selecting, validating and documenting KPIs and targets
• Collecting, measuring and documenting results
• Analyzing performance and root causes
• Reporting performance
• Conducting operational and strategy review meetings collaboratively
• Utilizing performance improvement plans