The five cornerstones of effective governance
Source: Cities Today Published: February 16, 2020
By Bas Boorsma, Vice President EMEA, Cities Today Institute (CTI)
For urban innovation and digitalisation efforts to succeed, a municipality needs to think through its internal organisation and governance structures. Few ingredients more sharply define the difference between success and failure than having the right governance structures in place. We asked member city leaders from the Cities Today Institute to share their organisational structure and governance choices. What does their mandate look like? How do they operate across silos? And what to do with the traditional IT manager?
Community digitalisation initiatives can and should primarily be conducted by means of a broad, well-thought through governance structure. The degree to which leaders can be effective depends, more than anything else, on the governance structures established. When examining governance structures as part of a community digitalisation agenda, what I mean is the governance structure within a municipality, a state or provincial government, or the government of a national state, with the required extensions into an ecosystem of partners to include companies, academia, citizens, collaborating municipalities within a regional context, local neighbourhood initiatives, and more.
Digitalisation concerns a phenomenon, a set of efforts, investments, choices, rules, and degrees of adaption that cut across silos and departments. The role of government in fostering community digitalisation is a rich and diverse one: it has the role of regulator, of investor, of strategist, of launching customer, and protector. It also serves as the orchestrator of ecosystems of partners that would otherwise not convene or would be unlikely to collaborate, citizens included. Given the complexity, and given the comprehensiveness of how these roles impact different disciplines and verticals (within government and beyond), it is clear that digitalisation cannot be the job of one department or ministry. Digitalisation is certainly not a job for the traditional IT department. Digitalisation is about organisation, regulation, culture and business outcomes, enabled by multiple stakeholders acting in collaboration. Interestingly, many a city’s IT department can in fact be the showstopper to next-generation digitalisation efforts, since these experienced IT leaders often define what is possible and what is not within the parameters of the technologies they know and for which they are responsible.
For many IT stewards, keeping the machinery running is mission number one. That is not to say that IT department managers should not be involved. Depending on the initiative or project, they often should. However, most IT department leaders would be unaccustomed to dealing with the business outcomes that digitalisation strategies tend to define, nor would they necessarily be the right professionals to deal with complex ecosystems. In short, digitalisation should not become another silo.
Where, then, does effective governance of digitalisation start? What are the key variables upon which effectiveness depends?