Summarizing drastically much of the work over the past year of the Harvard Policy Group on Network-Enabled Services and Government (the HPG), we argue that the future will be much different from the past.

The past = the creation and delivery of e-services. "Online, not in line."

The future = the redesign of processes throughout the production value chain. "Cross-boundary transformation."

In this context the "cross-boundary" part means coordination among multiple independent institutions, jurisdictions, and/or sectors of the economy. Think of the work to make electronic health records securely shareable throughout the health care sector.

And "transformation" means that many jobs will change in major and sometimes mandatory ways, resulting in significant changes in service efficiency, equity, and transparency. Think of how electronic health records will change administrative procedures in the small medical practices that now handle some four out of five patient-doctor contacts.

Here's a recent short piece that elaborates a bit on this: Governing article

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Does that view of the future sound right to you? Do you have examples of cross-boundary transformation problems you are working on now and could share with us? Advice for how we can succeed?

We're continuing to work these issues. Our next open workshop is June 25-26:  http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/execed/lnw3

 Best regards,

Jerry

jerry_mechling@harvard.edu

617-495-3036