How to assure the implementation success of new legislation

Anthony Honeyman, National Consulting Lead at Proximity, outlines how government leaders tasked with the nation-wide delivery of new legislation can work towards implementation success.

Although often taken for granted, legislation is the cornerstone of society. Shaped by policy, legislation guides how we participate in communities, regulates how we do business, strives for equity for our citizens and protects our safety.

Responding to community, industry, economic and a range of other needs, the transformation of government programs is often driven by the introduction of new or amended legislation. This presents a significant challenge for organisations as it’s imperative they successfully translate legislative intent into real-world practice.

The context

The introduction of the following federal legislation in Australia over the past 15 years presents just a few examples of significant, transformative implementation challenges:

• Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011 – Enables the ongoing delivery of emissions reduction initiatives.
• The Biosecurity Act 2015 – Regulates how potential risks to human and environmental health from imported materials are managed.
• New Aged Care Act – Recently released for consultation, this future change to legislation is a key part of the response to recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality & Safety.

The challenge
While some legislative changes are more significant than others, generally, the same common steps can be expected when a change is introduced, including:

1) Setting intent
A new measure is announced, including the planned legislative changes and the timeframe within which it will take effect.

2) Program identification
The program(s) that operate under the legislation need to be established or adjusted, meaning the need for new business practices to be explored and, often, new technology solutions.

3) Project establishment
Across the organisation(s) involved, projects are initiated to manage and deliver the transformation.

Setting up for success

Imagine that you have been made responsible for transforming a legislation-driven program that delivers a range of services to all Australians. An approach for successful implementation might include the following:

Policy and legislative intent
Understanding the legislative framework, the outcomes it has been developed to deliver and the policies that shaped it.

Defining the target state
Start by describing the key outcomes that need to be delivered. Addressing the needs of people, process, information and technology, this vision for the future can be developed into a mature, fully featured description of how the new world will operate and become an effective way to keep design aligned to the intent.

Design and delivery
Explore and describe the process and system changes needed for implementation, ensuring the team involves key stakeholders to inform design – they include citizens and other participants in the program (like system users), the staff that need to administer the program, delivery partners who will support the program and may also include parties that will regulate the program.

Assurance
Build ongoing assurance activities into the design and delivery process. This key project role needs to ensure that everything in the design traces back to the policy and legislative intent, is cohesively integrated and successfully managed for on-time delivery. This includes planning and establishing appropriate governance to guide the transformation.

Validating readiness
Test everything – it’s not just system changes that need testing, a full rehearsal of processes end-to-end, including off-system steps, is critical to validate whether the organisation is ready to smoothly transition to the target state.

Proactive change management
A structured, highly detailed, comprehensive transition plan is needed to support all of the parties that are impacted by the change, whether they are citizens or staff that assist them. This includes clear communication, training, user-friendly tools and other mechanisms that may be needed to support those affected in adopting changes.

Approaching design

When embarking on a complex policy and/ or legislative implementation, first define the ideal outcomes and work backwards. Once the legislative framework and the policies that shaped it are understood, define the implementation program’s objectives by describing what success looks like.

Drawing on a frame of reference that considers needs in the context of people, process, information and technology, a slightly more data focused variation on the framework popularised by Bruce Schneier and originally based on Leavitt’s ‘Diamond Model’ , provides a useful lens to explore requirements and describe a design that will successfully enable the change.

Defining an initial set of success criteria might look like:

People: Through a well-managed change and transition program, everyone knows what’s changing, when the change will happen and what they need to do when using new processes and systems.

Process: New ways of working are in place that adapt service delivery activities and maintain excellent channels for citizens to access services. These new processes take advantage of and comply with the new legislation.

Information: Any data that is captured, created or used by the program aligns to the requirements of the legislation and is secure, used efficiently and used in a compliant manner.

Technology: Modified systems are in place to support citizens participating in the program, providing efficient, intuitive ways to provide information, raise requests and receive services.

Now with a set of outcomes described, the design process and ongoing assurance steps to check that it remains aligned with the policy and legislation intent can be formally planned and commenced. By embedding assurance early and assessing both progress and alignment at regular points throughout the implementation, valuable insights about where design is heading and early warning of any gaps that need to be managed can be achieved.

About the author: Anthony Honeyman has extensive experience in management consulting, having previously been Chair and a founding Partner of a large government consulting firm as well as a Managing Director for one of the world’s largest consulting firms with responsibility for the delivery of consulting services across the Australian Federal Government.