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Questions and Answers on Business Transformation Enablement Program (BTEP)
1.0 What is the Business Transformation Enablement Program (BTEP)?
2.0 Why do we need a standardized
approach for planning and designing business transformation?
3.0 What does the BTEP Toolkit do?
4.0 Planning and design takes time – are the benefits worth
it?
5.0 Who will use the BTEP Toolkit?
6.0 What are the main elements of the BTEP Toolkit?
7.0 Why is the Chief Information Officer Branch (CIOB) coordinating BTEP?
8.0 Are other governments doing anything like this?
9.0 How is BTEP rolling out the Toolkit?
10.0 How do the BTEP Tool kit and the GSRM fit with
the Government of Canada's Management Accountability Framework (MAF)?
11.0 How can departments and agencies participate?
1.0 What is the Business Transformation Enablement Program (BTEP)?
BTEP is an initiative coordinated out of the Chief Information Officer Branch (CIOB) of Treasury Board
Secretariat to develop a set of standardized tools for program and service alignment and business design.
The BTEP Toolkit is intended for use by all Government of Canada departments and agencies to expedite
transformation and progress towards interoperability and integration.
To enable individuals and businesses to access seamless public services
tailored to their needs and circumstances, there must be steadily more
interoperable and integrated business processes across the whole of government. In addition, significant operational efficiencies can be achieved by
"moving to common" in governments' back end systems and
infrastructure. To achieve both, departments and agencies need a
common language and methodology for planning, designing and implementing
business transformation. The BTEP Toolkit provides this. It contains tools
tailored for the public sector to identify and align programs and services, and
to plan, design and implement transformation projects that meet the demanding
accountability and transparency requirements expected of governments. The tools
make it possible for governments to pursue transformation projects in a manner
that is easier to coordinate, manage and sustain, and to develop integrative
solutions that can be more rapidly designed and implemented.
2.0 Why do we need a standardized
approach for planning and designing business transformation?
The Government of Canada is under escalating pressure to transform its
business processes to "move to common" – to move towards greater
interoperability and integration. Pressures include improving service delivery,
enhancing public safety and security, and improving the efficiency,
effectiveness and transparency of government operations. To design new business
processes that support interoperability and integration, executives and managers
need a common language for strategic management and alignment, and a clear,
step-by-step process for defining, planning and implementing change. As the
number of interdepartmental and inter-jurisdictional transformation projects
increases, using a common approach will enable business strategists and
designers to capitalize on previous work and "re-use" designs and
plans.
Because the BTEP Toolkit provides a common language and transformation
methodology tailored to the unique requirements of governments, executives and
program managers who use it will be better able to collaborate. They will also
be better able to communicate with and direct systems architects and designers,
in and outside government. This will ensure that design work fully
responds to the government's business requirements because these will have been
clearly defined and described to architects and the information systems
community in a language and format that they understand.
3.0 What does the BTEP Toolkit do?
BTEP's vision is to build the planning, design and implementation
capability for sustainable whole-of-government client or citizen-centred
transformation and to provide the design and alignment tools that will enable
rapid change.
The BTEP tools provide the reference models frameworks to identify and fully
define opportunities for transformation, and a step-by-step methodology to
develop visions, strategies, designs, business cases and implementation plans
for transforming business processes. The Toolkit accommodates everything
that has to change to successfully transform business processes – from office
furniture and real property, to HR and training, to network systems and
information technology.
The Toolkit is meant for executives at all levels:
- Deputy Ministers and
Assistant Deputy Ministers concerned with strategic management and the alignment
of business processes to achieve operational efficiencies and better outcomes
for citizens;
- Directors General engaged
in collaboration to design and implement business solutions, particularly ones
crossing administrative and jurisdictional boundaries, and
- Directors implementing and
managing change.
4.0 Planning and design takes time – are
the benefits worth it?
Most large organizations are financing the next wave of business applications
from within their existing operating budgets. Many are aggressively pursuing
opportunities to streamline and standardize their information systems to free up
resources currently used to maintain duplicative and overly complex systems. They are designing new "enterprise architectures" that support a much
higher level of integrated client or customer centred service delivery across
functional areas within the organization. This extracts more value from
operational investments and strengthens the capacity of the organization to
adapt more swiftly to change and adopt new innovations when they make business
sense.
The BTEP Toolkit has been designed to enable governments in Canada to do
this. It provides a new way of thinking about the business of government,
to change how departments and agencies currently plan, design and implement
business transformation in favour of a far more structured, formal, disciplined
process of strategic analysis, business modelling, and transformation planning
and design. This will make the planning and design phase more rigorous.
Furthermore, the BTEP Toolkit enhances the likelihood that transformation
projects will succeed due to more reliable analysis and business design, and a
methodology for implementation rooted in proven techniques and best practices.
In addition, because they are common, the BTEP tools and techniques will, as
business strategists become more familiar with them, make the design process
more efficient. Once they are in wider use and more departments use them
for their transformation projects, an "archive" or catalogue of
business models will develop. Using this archive, business managers and
designers from across government will be able to learn from one another,
leverage expertise, and "re-use" solutions, which will save time and
resources, along with enabling more coherent business designs.
Ultimately, the BTEP tools and methods will help simplify the multitude of
different, often incompatible systems governments currently use. BTEP will help
bring "order to chaos," enabling the Government of Canada to control
and manage its operational environment in a far more strategic manner than it is
able to do today, making the best possible use of legacy systems; identifying
and prioritizing the new systems, components, standards and policies required;
and, ensuring that all this supports the business goals of departments and
agencies and those of the government as a whole.
5.0 Who will use the BTEP Toolkit?
The Toolkit is NOT intended for the exclusive use of systems architects in
government. Indeed, if its use it limited to that community, it will fail.
Key elements of the Toolkit, notably the Government Strategic Reference Models,
are meant for executives who need a common language in order to collaborate to
identify opportunities for integration and develop new business solutions that
will improve services for Canadians and deliver operational efficiency gains.
The main user group for the business transformation methodology in the
Toolkit would be business transformation teams. These teams typically
include a business executive sponsor, project manager, business analyst,
transformation specialist, HR specialist, planner, policy analyst (to identify
potential legislative requirements), and last but not least, business modeller
and designer, otherwise known as the architect. The methodology enables all
these players to coordinate and carry out their work, but of critical importance
to the value of the architect, it ensures that the architect knows what
to model and design.
Beneficiaries of the Toolkit (and the whole-of-government models it would
produce) include government executives, who would be better able to identify
redundancies and gaps to determine strategic opportunities for savings and
investment, as well as areas where collaboration can improve and simplify
service delivery. Business managers will be able to describe their operations in
the context of whole-of-government functions, and determine what other agencies
or departments play a role in their line of business to pursue opportunities for
collaboration and cost-reduction.
Procurement outcomes will improve. Suppliers and service providers to
government will be provided with clearer and more detailed project requirements
and specifications, improving the accuracy of the costing process. Parliamentary
oversight will also benefit, because the many complex processes of government
will be far more thoroughly and accurately "depicted" and aligned than
they are today.
6.0 What are the main elements of
the BTEP Toolkit?
There are five major elements in BTEP's tool kit. They are:
- A Transformation Roadmap, which
allows business owners to locate where they are on a "maturity curve"
towards transformation.
- The Governments of Canada Strategic
Reference Models (GSRM), which is the tool used to depict or map how a
government enterprise, or program or process works (or could work), such as by
identifying what services are there, why are they there, who benefits from them,
and how service design can be changed. The GSRM standardizes business modeling
for governments, using public service language and concepts. These "whole
of government" business models enable cross-program alignment and the
identification of redundancies, gaps and opportunities for joint or integrated
program or service delivery. One model in the GSRM is the Public Sector
Business Model. It provides a "view" of all of the business
of government that enables direct links to be made between policies, programs,
services, clients and outcomes, irrespective of administrative or jurisdictional
"silos". It provides an organized way of looking at the business
of governments aligned with the Government of Canada's existing performance
model (i.e., Canada's Performance), and serves as the foundation for
strategic management and alignment and integrated planning, including the
development of a governance model.
- The BTEP Transformation Framework, which brings together a blueprint and an agenda
for scoping and producing the deliverables necessary to move to implementation. It provides
the structure for the GSRM, including defining and organizing all the elements of an
enterprise, one or more programs, or a business process, that must be considered in
transformation planning and business design.
- A set of core Enablers and Requirements Domains that are the core business
capabilities common across all departments and agencies that enable interoperability and
integration. For example, a common IT infrastructure or platform is an Enabler, as is a common
set of standards, specifications and patterns for information management, and a common
approach to HR management across government.
- An overall methodology for transformation, which provides a step by step, iterative process to
follow in business transformation projects from planning to implementation, to produce rigorous
and "executable" visions, strategies, designs, standards, business cases and
implementation plans.
A sixth element currently in development is a transformation governance model
that could be supported by an office of strategic management and alignment to
facilitate disciplined, standardized business transformation using the BTEP
tools, and provide oversight to guide transformation towards the achievement of
national goals. The governance model is being designed to ensure that the use of
the BTEP tools enables collaborative and innovative business transformation, and
that senior management decisions are taken at appropriate points to move forward
toward interoperability and/or integration.
7.0 Why is the Chief
Information Officer Branch (CIOB) coordinating BTEP?
Functional responsibilities for policy, stewardship and strategy concerning
business architecture, information management and IT infrastructure lie with the
Chief Information Officer Branch (CIOB) at TBS. Fulfilling these
responsibilities means CIOB has an interest in enabling departments and
agencies, and levels of government, to work collaboratively to identify
redundant service delivery network elements, and enable the identification of
opportunities for integration to improve service delivery, operational
efficiency and reduce resource pressures on the public sector.
TBS provides leadership and contributes to a common service vision for the
Government of Canada by defining common business processes, technologies and
architectures, and by shaping enterprise management models and accountabilities
to drive the rethinking and integration of services, the reuse of information,
and the realignment of programs to better achieve desired outcomes. This work
includes delivering a comprehensive (business to technical) enterprise
architecture program that includes strategy and design, which are the pieces
that the BTEP Toolkit focuses on.
Rigorous analysis and design of the sort enabled by the BTEP tools
strengthens CIOB's ability to play its role challenging the IM/IT directions of
federal departments and agencies to ensure alignment with the Government of
Canada's architectural strategy and design. This will mean fewer inconsistencies
and will strengthen the Government of Canada's overall ability to take advantage
of new technologies at the right time and for the right business reasons.
Successfully fulfilling CIOB's stewardship role, and accommodating the business
requirements of all departments and agencies in developing standards and
guidelines for IS in government, are also supported by the rigour and
comprehensiveness that the BTEP tools enable.
8.0 Are other governments doing
anything like this?
Yes. The US government, through the Office of Management and Budget, is
developing a Federal Enterprise Architecture to serve as a business-based
framework to simplify agencies' business processes and reduce costs through
integrating and eliminating redundant systems. The Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management
Office (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/a-1-fea.html)
is developing a comprehensive business-driven blueprint of the entire federal
government to inform executive decision-making and allow for increased
collaboration and resource sharing across US agencies. FEAPMO published
"The Business Reference Model Version 2.0: A Foundation for Government-wide
Improvement" in June 2003, which is available from their web site.
The Government of Australia is taking a "town plan" approach to
building a whole of government architecture to deal with the operational
challenges of e-government. Its main objectives are "to promote
interoperability between systems, application, data and infrastructure
connectivity between new and legacy systems, flexibility and the ability to
respond to change and re-use rather than re-invention."[1]
The Australian government recognizes that e-government initiatives, which
require shared architecture and systems, can be difficult to achieve because
agency-centric budgetary and accountability processes tend to discourage it.
It has established a working group of senior executives from leading federal
government agencies focussed on addressing the issues of IT architecture and
governance to overcome these barriers. It is also developing a detailed
interoperability framework to guide government departments and agencies in
leveraging the value of interoperability from streamlining information
management processes, reducing operational costs and enabling collaborative
capabilities such as procurement and supply chain management.
9.0 How is BTEP rolling out the
Toolkit?
Since the first release of BTEP in April 2003, the BTEP team at TBS has made
over 70 presentations and briefings to departments and agencies, other
governments and private sector organizations. Ten projects are "early
adopters" of the Toolkit. These include federal departments and
agencies working collaboratively in service delivery, information management,
and public safety. Some of these are inter-jurisdictional and illustrate
the Toolkit's utility in forging consensus across multiple jurisdictions about
where to pursue high value integration for common clients.
Efforts are currently underway to look at establishing an Office of Strategic
Management and Alignment to oversee the utilization of the BTEP tools and act as
custodian of strategy formulation and planning. At the same time, efforts are
being undertaken to "promulgate" BTEP in three phases, as follows:
- Establish the basics – March
2005
- Go wide – March 2006
- Institutionalize – March 2007
TBS is also exploring whether to make some elements mandatory (to be phased
in over the next 1-2 years) for specific classes of initiatives. However,
regardless of the extent to which elements of BTEP may be made mandatory,
promoting and enabling utilization will require:
- Implementing a governance structure
- A cross-governments communication strategy
- A BTEP Central Office and BTEP Offices for key projects
- The integration of BTEP elements within existing CIOB groups (i.e. Service Transformation,
Enterprise Architecture, Stewardship) or other TBS groups
- Establishing two new disciplines in government (i.e., Enterprise Architects, Business Transformation
specialists), and
- Establishing a public and private sector advisory forum
10.0 How do the BTEP Tool kit and the GSRM fit
with the Government of Canada's Management Accountability Framework (MAF)?
Promulgating the Toolkit and embedding it as the foundation for business
design will also require clear direction for departments and agencies on how to
use it in tandem with the Government of Canada's Management Accountability
Framework (MAF). The Toolkit fully supports the MAF by providing managers
of transformation projects with tools to build designs for new or improved
programs and services that address the management expectations it describes.
While the MAF can be said to describe the end-state vision of how the government
would like to operate in the future, BTEP provides the methods, frameworks,
processes and tools to actually achieve that state.
11.0 How can departments and agencies participate?
As a first step, departments and agencies can establish a transformation
enablement capacity with a strategic focus on both business and technology.
Soon, CIOB will have facilitators available to work with these individuals to
familiarize them with the BTEP Toolkit and how to use it. In the meantime,
more information about BTEP can be accessed from CIOB's web site,
www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/btep-pto and information and advice is available by calling:
Neil Levette, Enterprise Architect, at (613) 946-6300 or via e-mail: levette.neil@tbs-sct.gc.ca
or BTEP@tbs-sct.gc.ca.
[1] Online Service Delivery:
Australia's Experience, from ICA Information: An International Journal
on Information Technology in Government, General Issue, June 2002, pg. 42
(available at www.ica-it.org)
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