Principles

This guideline will help practitioners and participants in planning activities define principles related to the design and use of digital and ICT capability that underpins the strategic direction of service delivery for the agency.

A principle is a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system, for a chain of reasoning or a rule that governs one’s behaviour. Principles are a broad philosophy that encompass personal beliefs and values and guide an organisation irrespective of changes to the type of work or services offered.

Principles can inspire people to be a part of a shared vision. They create a culture where internal and external stakeholders and employees understand what's important to the organisation.

Audience

A practitioner in the context of this guideline can include one or more of the following roles:

• Digital and ICT strategic planners
• Agency and service strategic planners
• Workforce planners
• Business analysts
• Information managers.

Articulating the principles required to drive the direction of the agency is an important part of the visioning and strategic planning process. Once developed, these principles may guide behaviour with respect to:

• the use of digital technology
• decision making with respect to investing in digital technology
• the design of digital systems.

Gather information

Before defining the digital or ICT principles it may be necessary to revisit the agency’s strategic business plans and identify any existing principles that could be carried forward to digital and ICT planning activities.

The first step to identifying principles is to articulate the values. You can use the Queensland Government public service values for information to help frame the development of principles.

Facilitate workshops

Principles should be developed in consultation with stakeholders as part of a workshop.

Practitioners should facilitate a discussion with stakeholders to identify the policies, rules and procedures in in the current environment that:

• have a negative impact or constrain the achievement of the vision
• are unnecessary obstacles to delivering a product or service to customers in the preferred way articulated in the vision
• are irrational and don't support the business to achieve its future objectives or vision.

During the workshop, attempt to challenge and reframe these past rules to help generate principles that reflect the overall values of the agency. Principles should:

• arise from personal beliefs and values of the organisation as a whole
• be developed in collaboration with stakeholders
• be relevant to and consistent with the overall vision for service delivery
• reflect the experience the agency wants to deliver to its customers
• should not outline the exact ‘how to do’, but instead emphasise what is important to the business and its customers.

The methods outlined in this guideline are iterative. It might take several workshops with diverse groups of stakeholders to articulate final digital or ICT strategies.

It is important to ‘play back’ the outputs of workshops to participants within a short timeframe after the workshop. This will maintain interest and ensure the participants feel like their time and contribution was worthwhile.

Once the digital or ICT strategies have been defined, consider any strategic risks and what strategies would be required to mitigate those risks.

Refer to the Strategies guideline as your next step in the planning process.