Dinobusters Magazine

Dinobusters!

Magazine Spotting dinosaurs in government Harum quatur aut hiliscid eum fugit excere simusdae

Create a swarm of happiness

Itasi cus, quiae quo estru

The movement of the Dinobusters!

Bis aristo con poritas diorent optiatum rem fugit

Et quodi to beatius minullore estest utemque eiustest

From the editors Bye bye, Dinosaurs in government…

We are Elke Wambacq, Nancy De Vogelaere and Joke Renneboog. Three cicil servants working everyday in government. We wrote the book “Tot uw dienst” telling the story of the future of Belgian government. Our dream is making citizens and customers proud of their government. We collected stories and interesting facts about government illustrating how we can build the government of our dreams.

Do you know the difference between citizens and customers?

They are in fact the same, but citizens have rights and obligations. Customers are getting services from government.

If you would like to put the citizens and customers of government back in the center, we have to get rid of „dinosaurs”. Dinosaurs are outdated habits.

You know, like printing a lot of documents in a digital world or sending your customer in the maze of bureaucracy.

This magazine is a summary of our book. Because our book is written in Flemish and almost no one in the world understands this language, we translated the highlights of our book in English.

We make a diagnosis of government today and show how we all can make it more flexible and innovative tomorrow.

Bye, bye dinosaurs in government…

Elke Wambacq Joke Renneboog Nancy De Vogelaere 3

“C’est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose qui fait ta rose si importante” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry -Le Petit Prince

01. Spotting dinosaurs in government A long time ago government was very modern with its bureaucratic structure. The French Revolution made government in Europe more independent from absolute kings and aristocrats.

But in our modern world it is mostly outdated. We call it the reptile brain of government.

02. Acting like a dinosaur 03. Trapped in a cage Once a civil servant is working at the government, your contract is signed in blood. Certain and comfortable in a golden cage civil servant are muted. How to get out?

04. A meteorite strikes in 05. From dust till swarm 06. The movement of the Dinobusters!

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Spotting dinosaurs in government

A long time ago government was very modern with its bureaucratic structure. The French Revolution made government in Europe more independent from absolute kings and aristocrats.

But in our modern world it is mostly outdated. We call the dinosaurs of government.

The word „dinosaur” means „powerful”.

Dinosaurs lived billions of years on Earth, but despite of their power and huge shape, they died massively. Dinosaurs weren’t able to adapt to their environment.

Sometimes government is also called a dinosaur: huge and powerful but unable to change. Some civil servants think it is not necessary to change. They worked for ages in a particular system and government looks like a save harbor protecting them from the crisis.

At the other side society is calling for action. Citizens are paying taxes and are expecting something back. Civil servants are often seen as a louse.

How can we change that? How can we make sure that government puts added value to their services?

doing. A procedure is done for ages, but is it still efficient? Is it serving needs of society?

It is important to recognize the barriers for change.

All the time you have to dare to ask the right questions. It has become a taboo to question the way we work, but it can be a great relief to spot what goes wrong and do something about it.

Spotting dinosaurs is spotting the barriers for change. How can we recognize those barriers?

It is a way of acting. People sometimes don’t recognize what they see. Context is changing all the time. New technology for example is creating new opportunities. You have to be open to what is happening around you to be able to see it. In some other cases we see people not saying what they think. For example: a new computer system is implemented in your organization. People say they will work with it. But deep inside yourself you actually don’t like the change. You keep on working with your good old paper list to manage things. You don’t say what you think.

What can you do if you have spotted dinosaurs in your organization?

First of all it is important to find people who think the same. Most of the time a lot of employers are willing to enhance the way they work. It is good to talk about it and try to get the challenge clear. Sometimes you need to collect some proof with facts and figures in order to make it a project. It is also important to give the right example by yourself. Say what you do, do what you say, say what you think and see what happens around you. It are simple rules to make everything much more easy.

Another way to recognize barriers is how people don’t see what they are 6

All the time you have to dare to ask the right questions. It has become a taboo to question the way we work, but it can be a great relief to spot what goes wrong and actually do something bout it.

Do you know good examples of spotting dinosaurs and doing something about it?

In the Netherlands we found a very good example of how you can spot dinosaurs.

They call it „do-tanks”. It means that you spot a concrete, relevant and actual problem in society. For example a citizen having debts and living on the edge of poverty. A lot of governmental entities are occupied with the civil servant but at some point it goes wrong when the different entities are not communicating well with each other.

In a do-tank all the stakeholders, including the civil servants and citizens, are sitting together to figure out where it went wrong.

When the problem is clear, all stakeholders formulate the best way to solve it.

The purpose is not thinking too much, but acting very fast. Sometimes you have to break the law to help the citizen but maybe you have to. Laws can be changed too if they became outdated or inefficient.

same time paying a lot of money to a private consultant. We sometimes hire a consultant to give him our watch to say how late it is.

In Flemish government they launched „Radar” to give an answer to this chalThis initiative of „do-tanks” was introlenge. Radar is an easy marketplace where duced by a network of civil servants everybody can publish jobs and temporary called „Slimmer netwerk” www.slimmer- tasks. Everybody in government can regisnetwerk.nl (translated in English: „smarter ter to tell about his or her talent and be a network)” and „de kafkabrigade” candidate to fulfill a job. No contracts or www.kafkabrigade.nl . formal papers are needed to start. So it happens that a civil servant working for Another example is using the skills of a public affairs is making a small movie for an consultant to analyze what is happening entity occupied with welfare. Everyone can in your organization. Actually the employ- temporarily stand by or exchange knowlers know very well what is going on, but edge in different organizations. through time they lost credibility. That is a shame because we are not using all the talent at the working floor and at the

Acting like a dinosaur

Can you imagine how it feels to walk with an egg hidden in your pants? It will make it difficult for you to walk and you might not know how to sit, move and turn around any more.

Governments are dealing with eggs like this. Not the ones like the egg of Columbus, but an egg that is obstructing an easy solution. Still: the challenges are huge‌Financial crisis is getting closer. Citizens are having more climbing expectations from their government. Customers also want to get their services online, being able to contact offices after regular closing time etc.

Government is a big institute. Expecting it to be as flexible as a small company with only a few employees is maybe one step too far but it definitely should be more adaptive to what society needs. Giving government a personality, a face to talk to so customers will be able to identify themselves with government.

Politics

Off course, the top management has had to succeed throughout some strong selection assessments. And still, in the end, politics decide.

Power, influence and control are even in this multilevel organization most of the time the way decisions are made. This is in conflict with trust, honesty and a customer friendly way of acting.

During the 19th century a bureaucratic environment was a solution to prevent cronyism. The separation of politics and administration is unfortunately not a reality. It is important to face this fact and to ask the question which procedures are helping civil servants and which are obstructing a good service. Dare to challenge your own procedures and ways of working in order to enhance public services.

Hostage of projects As a project manager in government you have to follow certain steps before you can start. You need to find support of your manager, colleagues and politics. Every entity you have to pass takes around one month in order to convince your peers. Every entity can block your project and every objection takes another 6 months of delay. In the meanwhile you can rewrite your projects and business cases at least ten times.

The advantage is that at the end of the road you will gain enough support to start your project. The disadvantage is that innovation is strangled in slowness. At the end of the reign, everything changes. Discussion and support are losing importance. Before elections everything must go fast and sometimes politics pushes to realize projects without following much procedures.

The reptile brain government is struggling with, has something to do with internal politics. In Flemish government for example more then 70% of top management is politically appointed.  8

And when the day arrives government invests in ICT, all entities are having their own system. Systems talking another language and difficult to connect.

Far away client Sometimes government forgets that it actually works for civil servants. People are visiting government because they expect a particular service. People are no machines but are real flesh and blood. Procedures sometimes make government very impersonal. Citizens are a number. Government talks about a customer friendly service.

A department works out a strategy about how to come closer to the customer. In practice it doesn’t work well. One of the reasons why is because government sometimes forget to talk with citizens.

Some local initiatives have great practices of how you can co-create services with citizens. With the aid of a technique called „service design” public services are for example able to construct participative budgets in order to accomplish social projects.Ideas are made very concrete in a short time with pictures, drawings and prototypes in order to tune it with the citizens.

There is no one size fits all solution. Different aspects live in society and government has to face it. When you bring different people together and take the time to listen you can discover the true needs. Building social capital doesn’t go from one day to another. It goes very slow because you have to make a foundation of trust. Where private initiatives have no answer, government has no competition. Customers want the best service and if they don’t get it they talk about it.

Within the Flemish government a new policy is coming in: radical digital. It is most of the time not really a technical challenge to digitalize documents and to create open data, but a cultural challenge. A lot of civil servants are used to paper and the power it sometimes evokes. Important information has to be on paper. Black on white.

And when the day arrives government invests in ICT, all entities are having their own system. Systems talking another language and difficult to connect.

Non-papers In the lobby you can do good business. In every organization you have gossip and informal information channels. In government there is even a document setting this up: a non-paper. A non-paper actually doesn’t exist and it helps decision makers to clear out some points before decision is made.

The inner circle knows about it, but the outside world doesn’t have a clue. And then, all in a sudden, parliament votes „yes”.

Non-papers appear to be hacking democracy to gain difficult and fast decisions. This kind of practice lowers confidence in government and politics. Of course they can be very useful in times of trying new thinking and doing. We’re not saying it can or should never be used again. Only: it would be more transparent if the existence of this kind of decision making is known and publicly acknowledged.

Paper dinosaur When you enter government, you sometimes can smell paper. Rows of filing cabinets that are barely consulted.

Paper archives eating dust. It is often a habit to print and save in a closet or on a desk or window sill. The tragedy is that we mostly forget where we’ve put our paper prints, and when we do actually need it, we’ll just have to print it… again…

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Trapped in a cage You have probably seen it before, a terrarium. The concept is very simple: you take an empty aquarium and put some earth, branches, leaves and a reptile in it. The animals forget they live in captivity.

They will never get out and stay in the protected zone.

03. Civil servants often work in a system of time clocks instead of results.

In a time where most work is done from a computer, this all seems so weird. Civil servants seem to be paid for being at the office and not for the results they achieve. Time clocks are cultivating this attitude.

There are different ways governments are keeping their employees in a terrarium: the permanent appointment, acquired rights, time clocks, etc.

Al lot of civil servants actually want to go out of their cage. They see how things are going on and sometimes know the solution to make services better. The cage stops them doing so it is not part of their job. Job profiles tells them what to do and everything outside the profile is not their business.

01. The statute gives a golden ticket for lifetime job security. It is a golden ticket, but also a golden cage. Permanent appointments keep people in their comfort zone, but outside the world is changing.

02. Civil servants have gained a set of acquired rights. The can for example earn a better paid retirement than contractual employers or are paid a long time without wage loss when sick. All these advantages prevent them from going after an other challenge.

Give civil servants some scratching area so they can innovate.

Give them space to innovation, trust and all talents we have within our organization.

Governments are made by, for and with customers, so they can get what they deserve: a performant, client friendly and new government.

Innovation can only become true if people can color outside the lines.

Give them some scratching space to discover other things and projects.

Space to network and connect talents.

This does not mean we should abandon all we know…

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A meteorite strikes in When a meteorite strikes in, a huge cloud of dust appears. Government is facing a series of meteorite attacks and must try to see throughout the dust.

Answering great expectations Citizens are expecting more then ever before.They want to ask a question trough the channel they choose and get a clear answer right ahead. It will not be enough only to digitalize the way government works. That will only digitalize bureaucracy. Government needs to

rethink the way it communicates to citizens.

transport or answering questions much faster than the civil servant at his desk.

People are getting older

New media ecology

People are living longer and at the same time there will be less people available at the labour market. Government has to deal with the war for talent and be prepared to activate society.

Media is becoming part of peoples lives.

Smartphones and internet are growing inside people and becoming part of their biorhythm.

Connected world

Smart machines Technology grows faster and is taking over governmental challenges. For example apps organizing alternative public

The world is connected and this means that problems of government will soon become a broader problem. We focus on email but customers expect answers through social media.

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From dust till swarm If you want to beat the dust it is important to figure out where the dust actually comes from. Why is it so difficult to see clear and why are the challenges in society so complex?

We just like to make things complicated.

We have built government throughout history and before we realize it we are dealing with exceptions, complex procedures and even services that are outdated. It is important to focus on what really matters. During the past we always focussed on what goes wrong.

Government analyses numbers about

poverty, wants to decrease crime, and so on. .In the contrary we see that poverty and crime is increasing. If you focus too much on the things that go wrong, it might really go wrong. This self fulfilling prophecy is blocking our mind to look at positive possibilities.

If we look at society as a swarm, you see people like to fly to stories and things that make us happy. What if government would spot positive trends about health, friendship, freedom, education, etc. ? Government can stimulate society to fiend the happiness it is

looking for. Professor Ruut Veenhoven made the World Database of Happiness and figured out what makes a society happy. One of the most important elements is the quality of life. The more modern a society is, the more happy people are.

Government should go back to basics and become a swarm. The swarm contains flexible talents going from one challenge to another. This means also a new form of leadership based on working together instead of demand and control. It also means government can always be challenged by society.

Let’s introduce “the right to challenge” so the swarm can begin!

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The movement of the Dinobusters Of course we (Joke, Elke and Nancy) are not alone. A lot of civil servants are trying to make government a dynamic and innovative place. We can make these brave civil servants more powerful simply by connecting them to each other.

The laws of the Dinobusters We’ve made the “10 laws of the Dinobusters” (p. 15). With a little smile we would like to offer a positive alternative to the laws of power. (for example: Always Say Less Than Necessary…)

To all the Dinobusters in the world: let’s connect!

Social media is a blessing to connect and share knowledge. It can help you to get out of your cocoon and give an extra boost to your Dinobuster actions.

The movement to a new government has already started. It only takes you to get you seeing, doing, saying and thinking in balance.

This is not the end. The government will need to change through time and adapt to new challenges over and over again. More than ever it’s not the most powerful that will survive -but the ones most adaptive to change (Charles Darwin).

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10 laws of the Dinobusters 1. I am proud to be a civil servant and I bring positive news from government.

2. I have the guts to do and to think, to see and to say without fear.

3. I will support other Dinobusters and I will protect them so they can innovate.

4. I am flexible and I will always be open for new opportunities, learning experiences and ideas.

5. I will always be an ambassador for my government.

6. I will do my best to learn how public services work.

7. I talk to my customers instead of just talking about them.

8. I promise to keep procedures and decisions short and simple.

9. I search diversity and recognize talents.

10. I dare to think and do outside existing structures and I’m not afraid of innovation and change.

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Spreading the word Dinosaurs are not only a problem of government. You can find them also in big organizations. It is important to talk about it so we all can figure out how to get rid of dinosaur situations.

We have written this book during our free time and invested a lot of our private money to get it published. Crazy? Maybe..But again‌We have a dream. We think media can help to spread the message that change is possible.

Our book reached a lot of press in Belgium after the launch. We received letters, phone calls and messages on social media from all kinds of people recognizing our story. Lots of people want to get started and break out of their golden cage.

The road ahead is still long, and yet we keep on going.

We give lectures, workshops and write opinions to inspire people to start their own change.

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Our story was published in several Belgian newspapers, it was spread in the Flemish Parliament and we even managed to pin the Minister President a Dinobuster badge :-)

The Dinobuster book in Flemish Parliament A picture taken by a member of the Pariament.

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Giving lectures and workshops We try to inspire people to start their own innovation in government.

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Inspiring the Flemish elections The Flemish newspaper ‘De Tijd’ published a special article about the ideas in our book as one of the most interesting actions to save money in government and to be more effective.

Building bridges with different generations We got inspired by people like Fons Leroy (Director of VDAB) and learned from them how government works.

Presenting workshops at congresses and seminars We shared our story by giving lectures and workshops.

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Nancy De Vogelaere Joke Renneboog Elke Wambacq

LICHAAMSTAAL

DINOBUSTERS VEROVEREN DE OVERHEID

TOT UW DIENST

WAAROM DE NIEUWE AMBTENAAR KLANTVRIENDELIJK IS

Published 30/01/2014 - 24,05 €

Published 22/10/2014 - 29,95 €

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