Public Sector

Our team of consultants helps national, regional, and local government institutions improve their efficiency and effectiveness, enabling them to better fulfill their mission to the public

Our expertise

Defense & Security

We help defense ministries, intelligence agencies, and other national-security organizations address their most difficult challenges and important opportunities.

Defense and security institutions worldwide—including defense ministries, military commands, regional and national security organizations, and intelligence agencies—are under intense pressure to maintain a high level of security for citizens while substantially reducing expenditures.

We help defense and security institutions meet this challenge. We combine deep international experience in national security with global expertise that spans industries and the public, private, and social sectors.

Our work in defense and security covers a wide range of topics. For instance, we help clients develop and execute strategic plans, analyze organizational behavior, explore new methods to improve operational efficiency, and redesign and implement IT infrastructure and systems.

Examples of our work include the following:

supporting a major defense agency in developing a performance-management system to improve the implementation of its new strategic plan
assisting a military command in creating a human-capital strategy
advising a defense ministry on how to redesign its security-clearance processing system to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness
helping a regional-security organization develop an industrial strategy to improve competitiveness
advising defense agencies in several countries on how to streamline their procurement processes
supporting a client in developing an approach to prioritize contracting spending in support of stabilization operations
helping a major security agency design an integrated system for decision making and governance
driving end-to-end IT efficiencies across a defense organization by consolidating redundant assets, rationalizing overlapping applications, and optimizing large IT systems

Economic Development

We work with governments and public-sector institutions to design and deliver strategies that unleash growth and capture economic opportunity.

Advanced and emerging nations alike face major, albeit different, obstacles to stable and inclusive economic growth. Advanced economies strive for human-capital development, sustainable growth, and productivity improvement in the public sector. Developing economies must balance the benefits of economic progress against societal and individual costs.

Much progress has been made in the past century in raising individuals and societies out of poverty. Continuing this progress will require a significant and sustained global focus on economic development. And unlocking economic growth will require smart strategies for overcoming growth obstacles such as natural disasters and the effects of climate change.

We help governments and public-sector organizations design and implement large-scale strategies that promote economic development and inclusive growth. While more than 80 percent of our work is in emerging economies, we also help public-sector institutions in advanced economies solve complex development challenges. Examples of our work include the following:

helping define sector-specific growth strategies for resource-rich nations failing to meet their growth potential
architecting new employment-management systems, including strategies for worker training and placement
transforming labor agencies at the intersection of organizational design, operations, and IT
designing rural-development programs that aim to improve agricultural productivity, increase access to markets, build better infrastructure, and improve the standard of living for small farmers
creating sustainable pathways to low-carbon economies, including risk-mitigation measures that guard against the effects of climate change
expanding financial-services options and financial inclusion for lower-income households and businesses through new business models and partnerships
improving the efficiency and efficacy of aid flows for international development agencies
deploying rapid-response resources strategically in the aftermath of complex emergencies

Healthcare

We focus on improving the efficiency of government institutions and aligning system incentives to prioritize the delivery of high-quality, high-value healthcare.

As the world population grows and ages, governments are under increasing pressure to ensure that citizens have access to high-quality healthcare at a reasonable cost. We have helped numerous public-sector healthcare organizations meet the challenges of an increasingly complex and fiscally constrained healthcare landscape.

Recent examples of our work include the following:

working with a developing nation to design a national health system
helping a G-7 country design and implement large-scale innovative value-based payment models
developing a 5-year department transformation strategy for a health-focused government department in a G-7 nation
improving the operational effectiveness of government-owned healthcare providers, payors, and regulators in several countries
helping a number of countries develop strategies for global and national health issues, such as combating epidemics
supporting a government’s efforts to explore the implications of national healthcare reform on private insurers and providers

Public Finance

We help public-finance institutions improve their efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, and fiscal positions–allowing them to make better use of public funds.

With governments worldwide facing profound fiscal imbalances and systemic financial failures, public-finance institutions – including finance ministries, government lenders, public pension funds, tax authorities, central banks, and financial regulators – are under intense pressure to increase transparency and improve their performance.

We help public-finance institutions meet these challenges. Our work in public finance covers a wide range of topics, from examining macroeconomic trends and performing expenditure analysis to assessing and quantifying risk, redesigning IT infrastructure, and exploring new methods of revenue generation.

Recent examples of our work include:

developing a compliance and collections improvement strategy for a national tax authority
helping a government lender streamline the loan-approval process, yielding a decrease in backlogs as well as an increase in employee morale and customer satisfaction
supporting a taxpayer-service organization in efforts to improve its online functionality and call-center operations, yielding a boost in productivity and greater taxpayer satisfaction
strengthening the risk-management capabilities of several financial regulators around the world after the financial crisis
working with an emerging-market tax administration to segment taxpayers, train tax inspectors, and implement operational monitoring tools

Information Technology

We help national, state, and local public institutions better serve their constituents by leveraging IT to improve existing services and deliver new ones.

At a time when public finances are under strain, governments must deliver new services and improve existing ones, while operating more efficiently and with greater transparency. Technology is at the core of addressing these challenges. From big data to mobile and social media, the 21st century has ushered in a variety of innovative technologies that can help governments better serve their constituents.

These new technologies present public institutions with a number of important questions: how can we serve a population that is increasingly mobile and more dependent on technology? How do we use social and digital channels to interact with our constituents? How can we leverage the vast amount of data generated daily to better serve the public? How can we use technology to deliver new services? How can we do all of these things while keeping costs down?

We help governments around the world address these challenges head-on. We draw upon deep client work and best practices from the global public and private sectors to help governments effectively utilize technology. Our strength lies in our unique ability to marry a client’s strategic vision with the operational and technological initiatives necessary to actualize that vision, including IT infrastructure consolidation, application rationalization, IT megaproject value assurance, and lean IT.

Examples of our work include the following:

working with a federal agency to give healthcare providers greater and easier access to healthcare data and, ultimately, improve the quality of patient care
helping a national government develop a broad policy on technology best practices and usage guidelines
supporting a regional government’s efforts to improve operations and collaboration across agencies by consolidating support functions into centralized shared services and centers of excellence
working with a government agency to create a best-practice IT organization focused on improving existing services and launching new services
advising a government on cybersecurity risks and helping to develop a strategy for safeguarding IT operations

Operations

We help federal, state, and local public institutions run their day-to-day operations more effectively, so they can do more with fewer resources.

Government agencies around the world are under pressure to maintain or improve the level of service they provide to constituents, but with smaller budgets and workforces. The problem is not a new one — government agencies always seem to be fighting against funding shortages — but the recent financial crisis has significantly reduced tax revenue in many jurisdictions, making the need for efficiency all the more urgent. And while governments are seeking to maintain or even reduce spending to bring their public finances back into balance, they must also provide services that minimize the impact of the downturn on individuals, families, and businesses.

Operational improvements can help organizations create sustainable and substantial improvements in productivity. We bring proven techniques for eliminating waste, variability, and inflexibility in operations to our work with government departments and agencies. Although many of these techniques were pioneered in the manufacturing industry, they have found ready application in public-sector agencies — from those with processes that resemble manufacturing (such as defense-related logistics units) to others where such techniques might seem less obviously relevant (such as policymaking bodies).

We have helped government institutions achieve results of similar magnitude to those achieved by private-sector institutions — productivity improvements of 30 to 100 percent. In so doing, our public-sector clients have simultaneously improved customer and employee satisfaction, and used the resources they saved to better fulfill their mission to the public.

Examples of our work include the following:

We helped a defense ministry transform all aspects of its logistical operations by eliminating support activities that were irrelevant to the ministry’s end goals and improving the performance of supply chains and medical care.
We supported a large postal operator in its efforts to reduce costs while maintaining high service levels and avoiding disruptions. We helped conduct a redesign of the sorting process and developed a performance-management system to support the new processes.
We helped improve the business processes of a large regulatory agency that was facing a globalizing supply chain, increasing product complexity, public pressure for stronger risk management, and industry pressure for greater speed and transparency.

We have access to a wide range of proprietary research, tools, data, and approaches that have evolved from our extensive work in both the public and private sectors. We also have a global network of highly experienced practitioners who understand not only how to achieve world-class operations performance, but also how to achieve such performance in a public-sector context.

Organization

We help governments address their most fundamental organizational challenges — from human-capital development to transformational change.

Government agencies are among the most complex organizations in the world. In the current fiscal environment, they face increasing demands to deliver more services at lower costs. We bring a range of proprietary tools and a wealth of experience to help public-sector clients address this challenge, in particular in the areas of organizational design, human capital, organizational diagnostics, and transformational change.

Examples of our work include the following:

supporting a large organizational redesign at a law-enforcement agency
helping a public-finance organization improve its talent-management system; specific outcomes included reducing time to hire by more than 50 percent and achieving the number-three ranking among large agencies in the Partnership for Public Service’s “Best Places to Work” survey
assisting the three grant-making units of a law-enforcement agency in developing a workforce-planning model and talent strategies to enable fact-based resource planning and to inform long-term human-capital strategies
helping a defense agency conduct an organizational-health diagnostic; the team helped the client identify five core areas for improvement, which the leadership team will tackle over the next 2 to 3 years
supporting an enforcement organization in designing and successfully rolling out a new organization model, thereby reenergizing a demoralized staff

Strategy

We help public institutions build and execute strategies to achieve their policy and organizational goals.

Public-sector organizations around the world face important questions about how to fulfill their core mission, respond to political and environmental changes, and deliver services to citizens despite reduced budgets. To answer these questions, organizations must undertake rigorous strategic planning — a process that can be difficult, especially in the context of a diverse stakeholder environment with numerous and often divergent interests and priorities.

Working in collaboration with senior leaders, we help public-sector organizations set a vision for strategic outcomes, build a robust fact base, rigorously assess options under uncertainty, design an actionable plan, win support from key stakeholders, and evaluate progress from design through execution to ensure that strategies have lasting impact.

Drawing on insights from the private sector and decades of public-sector work, we support clients on a range of strategic topics, including identifying social, economic, and technology trends; synchronizing budgeting and strategic-planning processes; designing stakeholder-engagement plans; and creating innovation programs at scale. We advise public-sector agencies varying in size, scope, and geography.