Change and Transformation in the Public Sector
In mid-2022, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) asked Capgemini Invent to support its newly launched Insights and Performance Programme (IPP) and help develop robust performance frameworks and KPIs. The aim was to provide reliable operational performance measures to help the DWP meet its goal of providing an accessible, equitable public service while accelerating the shift to a data-driven culture.
Defining KPIs that help people make good decisions and encourage the right behaviours across an organisation of over 90,000 individuals requires a clear understanding of the jobs people do across a vast range of operations-related roles. And such a transformation can only be successful if there is buy-in at all levels, from the customer-facing delivery teams to senior decision-makers.
So we worked with the client to develop a methodology that put metric users – the operational team leaders and decision-makers of the DWP – at the centre.
We held workshops and interviews across a range of roles to comprehensively understand their needs. In total, we consulted over 1,400 DWP staff, whose input helped us divide them into five persona groups, based on the common insights that they needed from KPIs.
Through performance measurement reviews we identified key enhancements that could be made to existing metrics, such as better aligning metrics to the Department’s targeted outcomes with regard to payment timeliness, accuracy and the reduction of fraud, all of which can have a significant impact on citizens’ lives. Replacing these with better-designed metrics would foster more meaningful discussions, help identify service gaps and ultimately set the organisation on the right path to deliver its services even more effectively.
Over just eight months, we worked with stakeholders across 18 service lines, defining KPIs and delivering metrics catalogues. These were designed to be simple for operational team leaders and decision-makers to adopt. This user-centred approach also helped promote a cultural shift in DWP and create compelling insight-driven narratives for senior leaders.
Staff tell us that the new KPIs made it easier for them to relate their work to the end goal of improving the lives of the people they serve. They also found the new metrics useful for ensuring that meetings and decision-making stayed focused on key goals.
The project’s success saw the IPP mature into a permanent Insights and Performance Excellence (IPE) function. We continue to support the IPE, including by helping the Department deploy new KPIs and deliver insightful dashboards.
As well as being delighted with the outcome, our client praised our willingness to build strong relationships with their teams, to flex when needed to address challenges and to conduct a continuous knowledge transfer to their teams. By using a template-based approach, we left DWP with an example to follow for future projects.
The initiative provided the foundation for a shift in the DWP’s organisational ethos towards data-driven decision-making. This is good news for the Department, but the real impact will be felt by the members of the public – pensioners and benefit claimants – that the DWP serves.
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