PwC touts management strategy

PwC Consulting, a business unit of Pricewaterhouse Coopers of New York, unveiled its business strategy Jan. 30 to help government agencies meet the goals outlined in the administration's President's Management Agenda.

The strategy, called G2E, for government to extended enterprise, can provide solutions for the five governmentwide performance improvement initiatives detailed in the president's agenda, PwC executives said at a meeting of government and industry representatives in Washington.

The agenda, issued last August, calls for improved personnel management, competitive sourcing of government work, improved financial performance, expanded electronic government and integration of budget and performance data.

"This administration has a gigantic opportunity to be a historical administration on the basis of its management agenda. ... taking what's going on in the private sector and what's going on in technology and applying it to the public sector with huge results," said Grady Means, managing partner of the PwC Consulting Washington practice.

The G2E strategy of moving work to the Web is the way to meet the goals of the President's Management Agenda, according to a PwC Consulting white paper released at the meeting.

"It is an approach that sees the corporate intranet as the foundation for immediate opportunities to do the work of serving 'customer citizens' better, faster and cheaper. It is a way to make sense of available solutions and alternatives, and a means to develop a road map of projects that will deliver significant improvements in organizational performance," according to the white paper.

The strategy can help meet the agenda's goals in myriad ways, according to PwC Consulting. They include e-learning and Web-based work-force planning programs, a secure portal for federal business opportunities, Web-based financial systems that close the books accurately every day, and Web-based analytics applications that can put performance scorecards on managers' desktops.

The beginning of moving work to the Web can be as simple as connecting employees to their e-mail, allowing them to receive customized news and conduct human resources transactions, such as name changes and insurance updates, through the corporate portal. From there, work on the Web can be expanded, so it becomes indispensable to each employee's work, an enterprisewide endeavor, PwC consulting executives said.

"We fundamentally believe the key to realizing the promise of government is moving real work to the Web, making e-government happen from the inside out by connecting and empowering employees, giving them the ability to deliver their services and get their jobs done more effectively ... putting at their disposal the critical information they need, the work processes they need to access to be effective, and enabling this through the technology," said Robert Reeve, a PwC Consulting partner.

The G2E strategy grew out of PwC Consulting's work with private-sector clients. For example, a Web portal designed in eight months by PwC Consulting for the 90,000 employees of Palo Alto, Calif., computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard Co. streamlined operations, improved communication and consolidated multiple portals, saving $50 million in its first year, Reeve said.