Information Technology and CommunicationPKM611
Business Process Re-engineering and Digitalization in Government
Government institutions are increasingly expected to deliver services that are faster, more accessible, transparent, cost-effective and responsive to citizens.
Overview
However, many institutions continue to operate through fragmented structures, paper-based procedures, duplicated data collection, excessive approvals and outdated administrative controls.
Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) provides a systematic approach for examining and radically redesigning these processes. Digitalisation then enables redesigned processes through workflow automation, online services, integrated information systems, digital payments, data sharing and emerging technologies.
This programme equips public-sector leaders and practitioners with practical tools for analysing existing processes, eliminating non-value-adding activities and designing efficient digital services. It emphasises that inefficient processes should be simplified before they are automated.
Participants will use actual institutional processes throughout the programme and develop a complete Business Process Re-engineering and Digitalisation Action Plan.
Programme objectives
By the end of the programme, participants should be able to:
- 01Explain the principles of Business Process Re-engineering and digitalisation
- 02Distinguish between digitisation, digitalisation, automation and digital transformation
- 03Identify inefficient, duplicated and non-value-adding government processes
- 04Map and analyse existing processes using appropriate BPR tools
- 05Calculate process time, cost, delays, error rates and service performance
- 06Redesign processes around citizens and other service users
- 07Reduce unnecessary approvals, controls, handovers and documentation
- 08Translate redesigned processes into digital workflows and services
- 09Identify suitable opportunities for automation and systems integration
- 10Develop data-sharing and interoperability requirements
- 11Manage the human and organisational aspects of process transformation
- 12Establish governance, accountability and performance measures for redesigned processes
- 13Develop a practical BPR and digitalisation implementation roadmap
Who should attend
- Permanent secretaries and directors-general
- Heads of government agencies
- Senior and middle-level public-sector managers
- Business-process owners
- ICT directors, managers and officers
- Digital-transformation and innovation teams
- Strategy, planning and policy officials
- Public-service reform and modernisation units
- Operations and service-delivery managers
- Human resources and organisational-development professionals
- Internal auditors and risk-management officers
- Monitoring and evaluation professionals
- Procurement and public-finance officials
- Quality-assurance and customer-service officers
- Local-government and municipal officials
- Regulatory and revenue-authority officials
- Representatives of state-owned enterprises and public utilities Training Methodologies The programme will use a practical and participatory approach incorporating:
- Facilitator-led presentations
- Government case-study analysis
- Process-mapping workshops
- Individual and group assignments
- Problem-solving exercises
- Service-user journey mapping
- Role-playing and process simulations
- Digital-maturity assessments
- Technology and workflow demonstrations
- Peer learning and institutional experience sharing
- Group presentations and facilitator feedback
- Development of institutional action plans
- Pre- and post-training assessments
Programme outline
9 modules · 143 topics
01Foundations of Business Process Re-engineering and Digitalisation
To introduce the concepts, principles and strategic importance of BPR and digitalisation in public-sector transformation.
- Definition and evolution of Business Process Re-engineering
- Understanding a business process
- Core, support and management processes
- Difference between: Digitisation; Digitalisation; Automation; Digital transformation; Business Process Re-engineering
- Incremental process improvement versus radical redesign
- Characteristics of an effective government process
- Common public-sector process challenges; Excessive bureaucracy; Duplicate approvals; Paper dependency; Fragmented responsibilities; Repeated data collection; Long turnaround times; Weak accountability
- Relationship between BPR and public-sector reform
- “Simplify before automating”
- Critical success and failure factors
- Leadership responsibilities in process transformation
Case scenario
Practical exercise Participants identify one institutional process and describe its problem, users, outputs, delays and expected results.
Learning outcome
Case scenario
Participants will understand the relationship between BPR, automation and wider digital transformation.
02Process Identification, Selection and Governance
To enable participants to identify, categorise and prioritise processes requiring improvement or radical redesign.
- Developing an institutional process inventory
- Identifying end-to-end processes
- Distinguishing functions from processes
- Core, support, regulatory and strategic processes
- Establishing process boundaries
- Identifying process triggers, inputs, outputs and customers
- Defining process ownership
- Roles and responsibilities of: Executive sponsors; Process owners; BPR teams; ICT teams; Users; Internal assurance functions
- Criteria for selecting processes; Citizen impact; Strategic importance; Transaction volume; Cost; Delays; Complaints; Error rates; Fraud and corruption risks; Digitalisation potential
- Process-prioritisation matrices
- Establishing a BPR steering committee
- Developing a BPR project charter
Case scenario
Practical exercise Participants create an institutional process inventory and use a prioritisation matrix to select a high-impact process for redesign.
Learning outcome
Case scenario
Participants will be able to identify priority processes and establish appropriate governance for a BPR project.
03Mapping and Documenting the Existing Process
To equip participants with tools for accurately documenting how a government process currently operates.
- The importance of understanding the “As-Is” process
- Process-discovery techniques: Interviews; Observation; Document review; Workshops; System and transaction logs
- Identifying formal and informal process steps
- Process-mapping symbols and conventions
- Flowcharts and swimlane diagrams
- Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs and Customers analysis
- Identifying decisions, controls and approval points
- Mapping handovers between departments and institutions
- Documenting manual and digital activities
- Identifying process variations and exceptions
- Capturing supporting legislation, policies and procedures
- Process validation with staff and service users
- Introduction to process-mining tools
Case scenario
Practical exercise Participants develop an “As-Is” swimlane process map showing activities, departments, decision points, systems, documents and waiting periods.
Learning outcome
Case scenario
Participants will be able to produce and validate an accurate map of an existing institutional process.
04Process Analysis and Identification of Inefficiencies
To develop participants’ ability to diagnose the causes of delays, costs, errors and poor service performance.
- Analysing process performance
- Value-adding and non-value-adding activities
- Process-cycle efficiency
- Measuring: Processing time; Waiting time; Turnaround time; Cost per transaction; Error and rejection rates; Complaint levels; Rework
- Identifying process bottlenecks
- Duplication and unnecessary handovers
- Excessive approvals and controls
- Repeated requests for the same information
- Root-cause analysis
- Five Whys technique
- Cause-and-effect diagrams
- Pareto analysis
- Failure Mode and Effects Analysis
- Identifying corruption and fraud vulnerabilities
- Separating legislative requirements from inherited administrative practices
- Developing a process-problem statement
Case scenario
Practical exercise Participants analyse their “As-Is” process and prepare an inefficiency register showing each problem, root cause, impact and proposed intervention.
Learning outcome
Case scenario
Participants will be able to distinguish symptoms from root causes and identify activities that should be eliminated, simplified or automated.
05Designing the Future-State Process
To enable participants to develop simplified, citizen-centred and digitally enabled “To-Be” processes.
- Principles of radical process redesign
- Challenging existing assumptions and procedures
- Eliminate–Simplify–Standardise–Automate methodology
- Combining related activities
- Reducing handovers and approval levels
- Introducing parallel rather than sequential processing
- Decision-making at the point of service
- Risk-based approval and verification
- Straight-through processing
- Exception-based management
- Designing services around life events
- Applying the “once-only” principle
- Designing mobile-first and omnichannel services
- Addressing rural communities and vulnerable groups
- Developing the “To-Be” process map
- Comparing current and future processes
- Validating proposed changes against legislation and policy
- Estimating expected benefits
Case scenario
Practical exercise Participants develop a redesigned “To-Be” process and calculate anticipated reductions in steps, documents, approvals, cost and turnaround time.
Learning outcome
Case scenario
Participants will be able to create a simplified future-state process aligned with citizen needs and institutional objectives.
06Translating Redesigned Processes into Digital Services
To show participants how redesigned processes can be converted into functional digital workflows and services.
- Moving from the “To-Be” process to digital requirements
- Preparing functional and non-functional requirements
- Workflow-management systems
- Electronic forms and records
- Electronic document-management systems
- Digital signatures and electronic certificates
- Online applications, approvals and payments
- Case-management systems
- Customer relationship management
- Robotic process automation
- Artificial intelligence and intelligent document processing
- Chatbots and virtual assistants
- Low-code and no-code development platforms
- Mobile applications and USSD services
- Cloud-based service delivery
- Selecting processes suitable for automation
- Build, buy, reuse or share decisions
- Avoiding automation of inefficient processes
- Prototyping and user-acceptance testing
Case scenario
Practical exercise Participants translate their future-state map into a basic digital workflow containing user roles, forms, business rules, notifications, approvals and system outputs.
Learning outcome
Case scenario
Participants will be able to convert a redesigned process into clear digital- system and workflow requirements.
07Data Management, Integration and Interoperability
To enable institutions to redesign information flows and support seamless service delivery across government systems.
- Data as an input and output of government processes
- Data requirements for digital services
- Identifying authoritative data sources
- Master-data management
- Data quality and data-cleaning requirements
- Government interoperability frameworks
- Application Programming Interfaces
- Integration of legacy and modern systems
- Shared government platforms
- Digital identity and authentication
- Integrated population, business, tax, land and property registers
- Eliminating repeated data collection
- Data exchange between ministries and agencies
- Open-data opportunities
- Data protection, consent and lawful processing
- Data-ownership and stewardship responsibilities
- Developing a data-flow diagram
- Inter-institutional data-sharing agreements
Case scenario
Practical exercise Participants produce a data-flow and integration map for their redesigned process, identifying data owners, systems, exchange points and privacy requirements.
Learning outcome
Case scenario
Participants will be able to identify data and system-integration requirements for an end-to-end digital service.
08Change Management, Capacity Building and Managing Resistance
To prepare participants to manage the organisational and human changes arising from BPR and digitalisation.
- Why technically successful projects may fail organisationally
- Impact of BPR on jobs, roles and authority
- Stakeholder identification and analysis
- Assessing organisational readiness
- Understanding employee resistance
- Communication and engagement strategies
- Role of executive sponsorship
- Establishing change-champion networks
- Involving frontline employees and citizens
- Training-needs assessment
- Digital skills and competency development
- Redesigning job descriptions and performance agreements
- Managing fears concerning automation and job losses
- Supporting employees during transition
- Piloting new processes
- Collecting user feedback
- Institutionalising continuous improvement
- Managing organisational culture
Case scenario
Practical exercise Participants develop a change-management plan covering stakeholders, key messages, communication channels, training activities and resistance- management actions.
African case study: Huduma Kenya
Case scenario
The establishment of Huduma Centres required employees from different agencies to operate within a shared service-delivery environment. The model highlights the need for common service standards, staff training, cross- institutional coordination and a citizen-service culture.
Learning outcome
Case scenario
Participants will be able to prepare and implement a people-centred change- management strategy.
09Implementation, Monitoring and Sustainability
To consolidate the programme by enabling participants to develop an implementable BPR and digitalisation roadmap.
- Developing the BPR business case
- Linking the project to institutional strategy
- Defining project scope and deliverables
- Estimating implementation costs and benefits
- Establishing project governance
- Agile and phased implementation
- Prototyping and pilot projects
- Technology procurement and vendor management
- Managing vendor lock-in
- Risk management
- Cybersecurity and business continuity
- Legal and regulatory compliance
- Benefits-realisation management
- Process-performance indicators: Turnaround time; Processing cost; Number of process steps; Number of approvals; Error and rejection rates; Digital uptake; Citizen satisfaction; System availability; Employee productivity
- Process-performance dashboards
- Post-implementation reviews
- Continuous process improvement
- Scaling redesigned processes across government
Case scenario
Capstone practical exercise Participants prepare and present a Business Process Re-engineering and Digitalisation Action Plan containing: • Process description and institutional problem • Process users and stakeholders • Current “As-Is” process map • Identified bottlenecks and root causes • Proposed “To-Be” process • Activities to eliminate, simplify, standardise or automate • Digital solution and functional requirements • Data-sharing and interoperability requirements • Change-management and capacity-building plan • Implementation phases, risks and governance arrangements • Performance indicators and expected benefits
Upcoming dates
No open dates are scheduled at the moment. This programme can be delivered in-house for your organisation.
In-house training
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We can deliver PKM611 at your premises, anywhere in Africa, with content aligned to your organisation's internal policies.
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