The Changing Nature of Work: 30 signals to consider for a sustainable future

SIGNAL 12. Public sector and services

Traditional policymaking and public sector organizations are seldom innovative. While the private sector and small organizations accelerated the opportunities mentioned above, the public sector lags behind; governments are facing the need to become quicker, more diversified and agile, or to operate effectively in conditions of continuous disruptions. For many years, there have been discussions on the rising complexity and number of complicated tasks that need to be carried out by employees, and on the related skill sets required.

One of the major shifts that drives the need for new public sector skills is that the public sector is gradually becoming more open; instead of thinking of citizens’ interaction as a step in a business process, the public sector needs to put citizens at the centre of service design. As Marek Kowalkiewicz and Paula Dootson stated, “The Government 5.0 stage of the evolution goes well beyond citizen-centric services, or whole-of-government approaches to service delivery and gravitates towards whole-of life service delivery”. The next driver is the accelerated digital transformation that not only opens up many opportunities for the public sector to leapfrog, but also widens a digital gap in skills available in the sector. For instance, McKinsey has estimated that the European Union public sector needs 4.9 million people with technological and digital citizenship skills. Finally, in some countries, we see promising cases of citizen engagement beyond ‘public consultations’. For instance, in Ukraine, there are more than 400 cities where participatory budgets are already introduced, and there is a debate on a national participatory budget. Hence, with further technological advances, co-creation and co-design may become more widespread in public sector practice. While this development is positive, the public sector should craft processes that protect from potential hijacking by narrow interest groups that distorts the results of co-creation.

Although there are a few different approaches to defining skill areas of public sector employees, skill gaps essentially concern: policy development, where more attention should be given to foresight, evidence and data literacy; working with citizens, which requires engaging them to improve policy outcomes and facilitating co-creation; collaboration in networks, which requires being able to work beyond hierarchies and pool resources; and commissioning and contracting, which involves understanding business models and agile business practices.

To effectively address these skill gaps, public servants need to experience greater autonomy and to be able to work independently, which entails more delegation of authority to the front line of service delivery and ensuring that resources (including financial) are also available. For countries in Europe and Central Asia, in particular, this adds an additional strain on employees since public service in this region tends to be comparatively more hierarchical and are built for robustness rather than decentralized flexibility.

Strategies to close the 21st century skill gaps in the public sector should be based on recruiting fresh talent, reskilling for those whose professions will inevitably be replaced in the process of digital transformation, and upskilling by reviewing current practices of continuous learning for the public sector. In the coming years, we will see efforts to overcome the “boring and slow” image of public servants and governments through the search for new models of rapid reskilling staff.

Check out the next signal, #13: Value creation through the digital economy

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The Changing Nature of Work: 30 signals to consider for a sustainable future

Work helps sustain livelihoods and largely determines the quality of life. Its changing nature is at the frontier of development. This report is the result of a broad horizon scanning by six UNDP Accelerator Labs across Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.  They reveal 30 signals that shape the “where, who, how, and why” of the changing nature of work. From the impact of COVID-19 on the workforce to new work models and entrepreneurial ecosystems, the authors explore opportunities and threats, as well as solutions from local contexts that can be scaled up into positive answers to the challenges people around the world are facing.  Download the full report here.