Public sector organizations are under pressure to deliver more for their citizens, from seamless digital services to policies and programs that address major societal challenges and crises. BCG helps governments reinvent how they work so they can meet—and surpass—these expectations.
At a time when providing better outcomes for citizens means being responsive, agile, and able to devise creative solutions to complex problems, many public sector organizations remain hierarchical and bureaucratic. They’re built for another era. To perform on all fronts—from providing basic services to citizens to solving the most pressing societal challenges and responding to crises—governments need to transform how they’re organized and how they operate.
BCG’s public sector consultants support governments around the world by bringing together our insights and capabilities from the private sector and decades of experience supporting public sector clients. We’ve completed more than 1,000 projects in the public sector over the past five years.
Transforming complex public sector organizations to respond to today’s challenges starts with defining a bold vision for large-scale change along with a set of projects and initiatives—carried out over a sustained period—to achieve that outcome. This transformation often involves becoming more digital, agile, and responsive to the public while attracting and retaining the right talent and managing budgets.
Large-Scale Transformation
Building on BCG's transformation framework, our public sector transformations place special emphasis on ensuring organizations have the right delivery models to achieve their vision, along with the buy-in of stakeholders and the mechanisms and communication strategies necessary to maintain support throughout the transformation journey.
Supporting Expertise and Offerings
Mastering Transformation in the Public Sector. Transformations are a challenge for any organization to pull off. Several factors combine to make them even more daunting in the public sector. BCG's Three Peaks framework guides public sector organizations through every phase of an end-to-end transformation.
Digital
We approach public sector digital strategy and implementation with a wide lens. Embracing new technologies, such as AI and blockchain, is only part of the story. Real digital transformation also requires changes to organizational structures, capabilities, governance, work processes, and culture. BCG's Center for Digital Government helps make digital transformation in the public sector—and better experiences and outcomes for citizens—a reality.
Supporting Expertise and Offerings
Digital Acceleration Index for Governments and Public Sector. The Digital Acceleration Index (DAI), BCG’s comprehensive benchmarking tool, assesses a government’s or a country’s digital maturity and identifies opportunities to accelerate the digital transformation journey.
People and Organization
A government’s existing talent base is one of its greatest assets. Equally important is the need to attract and retain talent that has skills for the digital age. BCG works with public sector clients to develop world-class people and organizational capabilities by building agile organizations, supporting leadership development, managing change, and undertaking HR transformations.
Supporting Expertise and Offerings
Smart Simplicity in the Public Sector. BCG’s Smart Simplicity approach helps simplify organizations, taking a systematic view of the challenges that go along with complicatedness and creating norms that promote the behaviors that will help an organization achieve its mission.
Cost, Operations, and Procurement
We help public sector institutions at all levels—federal, state, and local—do more with less by designing cost and productivity optimization plans, streamlining or creating new processes to manage costs, delivering higher productivity and quality through lean approaches, and professionalizing the procurement function.
Supporting Expertise and Offerings
Achieving Cost Transparency. Heightened expectations around fiscal responsibility are dialing up the pressure on governments to make more-informed decisions when it comes to costs. BCG has developed a four-step approach that facilitates better budgetary decisions by rapidly uncovering cost insights.
Optimizing Government Procurement. When used in conjunction with conventional procurement approaches, market-informed design and sourcing (MIDAS) can help improve public sector procurement, generating greater financial and nonfinancial value.
We are invested in understanding how our work, and the work of our government clients, delivers positive impact to citizens. It’s one of the reasons why we founded, and continue to support, the independent Center for Public Impact. We’re also focused, of course, on the impact we’ve helped generate with our clients. Examples include:
Becoming a Public Sector Powerhouse
BCG partnered with a government agency to increase the efficiency of its business processes.
Learn how enabled leaders can drive change
Adapting a Public Sector Agency to New Challenges
Continued economic growth and the need to be adaptive and agile in a 21st-century environment led a government treasury agency in Asia to transform its organization and operations for the future. A change framework helped ensure long-term success.
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By applying a commercial lens to a government challenge, BCG has developed a four-step approach to making more informed budgetary decisions by rapidly uncovering cost insights. And all with lower upfront investment, not disrupting the services and processes that employees and citizens depend on.
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