By any measure, government administration demands excellence. It requires both efficient and responsive performance in the service of a range of stakeholders. Agencies need to provide timely, quality service to create the best value for all constituents while promoting ongoing improvement and innovation. Carefully stewarding state resources is a must, as is assessing current constituent needs while anticipating future demand. Perhaps most challenging is the need to communicate and coordinate across multiple agencies and outside entities to provide critical service and reduce interdepartmental redundancy.

These intertwining needs explain why the Center of Excellence (CoE) model is a fruitful tool for effective governance. The CoE is a robust process improvement instrument designed to provide rapid access to critical subject matter expertise and thought leadership in maximizing performance and innovation in an organization. Centers of Excellence have shown increasing utility over the last decade at both the state and federal level. This utility is powered by an intentional approach that considers all stakeholders, draws on data, and emphasizes best practices. If your agency is considering implementing a CoE, here are the top four considerations you want to incorporate into your methodology:

1.   Factor In All Stakeholders

With so many different groups invested in the outcome of government agency work, it is essential that your government center of excellence factor in all stakeholders to its efforts. Your CoE may need to listen to constituents, agency staff, staff at other agencies, legislators, even vendors. Begin with identifying those stakeholders, which should happen in the strategic planning phase when the center is first established. But because constituencies can change and evolve, your CoE needs to constantly reevaluate who constitutes its current stakeholders and how well it communicates action plans, successes, and service provision to each of them.

Communication is especially critical because, generally, a CoE must liaise across multiple business units, departments, divisions, and agencies, bridging their gaps. For instance, an IT CoE will need to integrate with other department divisions and bureaus to support and maintain a viable, centralized resource. It will need to effectively catalog business processes, stakeholders, and systems across the enterprise while actively supporting successful IT project delivery, facilitating knowledge sharing and transfer.

CoE team members work collaboratively with identified stakeholders to sustain effective support for service delivery and maintain organized process management across the enterprise. This collaborative approach requires agility. While still addressing the perspectives and wants of all stakeholders, the team needs to:

• Work with a variety of groups and stakeholders,
• Quickly adapt to changes,
• Continually provide recommendations based on best practices,
• Perform innovatively within a necessarily limited budget, and
• Deliver service quickly.

2. Draw on Data

To understand and meet the needs of all stakeholders, a CoE must have rapid access to reliable data. For example, when Momentum works with a government client to develop a CoE, we rely on a data-driven assessment and re-assessment cycle. We focus on challenging stakeholders to consider not only their organizations but the surrounding organizations. This cycle helps establish formal processes, tools, and resources surrounding innovation and research and development while emphasizing robust communication and collaboration and supporting organizational and cultural change management. It also guides the collection, storage, and use of benefit and customer service metrics.

We begin by developing an assessment plan and template that guides our evaluation process. We use various tools, from technology assessments and surveys to interviews, focus groups, job shadowing, and perception testing, to gather qualitative and quantitative data and develop a baseline assessment. We then develop a strategic roadmap that includes areas to be addressed along with recommended solutions. These regular assessments offer real-time capture of the expected return of investment (ROI) and progress. They also serve an organizational change management function: celebrating success while providing a learning opportunity to apply to strategic roadmap revision.

3. Emphasize Best Practice

While every government CoE might have its own unique set of needs and stakeholders, some practices are universally applicable — or close to universal. Similarly, your agency or agencies may have their own established best practices for the focus or foci of your Center of Excellence (e.g., IT or Business Analysis). These should absolutely be deployed when establishing a new CoE.

For instance, Momentum supported the US Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Document Services organization in establishing a Best Practices Program (BPP) that guided managers and leadership to be highly effective stewards of resources while delivering high-value document services. We worked closely with DLA Document Services to establish the program using a three-phased approach: Assessment, Recommendations, and Implementation. Momentum then provided a best-practice-based, IIBA-endorsed, Business Analysis training to introduce DLA personnel to the Business Analysis discipline. Through this project, DLA Document Services established a viable BPP framework, implemented BABOK® best practices, and achieved significant benefits to its operations, including a reduction in risks associated with achieving critical business objectives and newfound project consistency through enterprise collaboration and governance practices.

4. Get Support from a Seasoned Vendor

Leveraging best practices only work if they meet the needs of the organization. A terrific way to ensure that those needs will be met is to work with a consultant experienced in developing Centers of Excellence for government entities. A seasoned vendor can aid you in adjusting standard templates and processes to meet the needs of your enterprise on each specific project. This “right-sizing” ensures that your CoE meets the needs of stakeholders, as well as the organization as a whole.

An experienced vendor acts as a strategic partner with your agency and its partners through every phase of CoE development and maturity. Meeting the needs of all stakeholders while aligning with your overarching strategy should be your consultant’s primary directive. They should be equipped and committed to providing industry-leading solutions to specific business and IT problems.

Expect Excellence from Your CoE

If properly established, a government center of excellence should be a comprehensive, data-driven, and best-practice-based resource designed to meet your stakeholders’ specific needs. It will allow executive management and business process leaders to take an enterprise view of all necessary departmental systems through the documentation of systems and processes. It will ensure repeatable practices, consistent project results, and efficiency gains while building cohesion between resources and promoting shared customer service. And it should improve customer satisfaction with a focus on innovative approaches to all aspects of the organization: people, processes, and technology.

You should expect excellence from your CoE. If you need assistance developing a center of excellence to address a particular challenge or challenges in your enterprise, drop us a line. We’re ready to help you build a world-class CoE to lead your state government enterprise to process improvement, growth, and transformation.