NGI and the project goals

The NGI (National Geographic Institute) is a semi-governmental organisation (quango) within the federal government. The NGI is responsible for collecting, validating and making available geographic and cartographic information to government agencies and the general public. The NGI is bilingual and employs around 250 people.
The NGI has restructured its back-office processes in an extensive BPR project. The restructuring consisted, on the one hand, of the switch from product-driven collection of cartographic information to process-driven collection of update information and, on the other, the production of a central geographical reference databank (ITGI).
The front and mid office optimisation project is based on the earlier BPR and is oriented to mapping the processes that form a link between the customer request and the ITGI.

• How will the NGI develop commercial products based on the information collected in the ITGI?
• How will the NGI commercialise these products?
• How will the customer request be integrated in the product development?

NGI – project approach

The short survey showed that the success of this project depended not only on new operating processes being built correctly. Alongside the demand for content we identified two important requirements on the actual way of working:

• The various vertically oriented services had to work together more closely.
• The activities within the NGI had to be more closely geared to a shared, broadly supported ambition.

To fulfil these requirements we chose a participative, constructive approach, based on a broad group of 25 people. The total project structure is based on AI (Appreciative Inquiry).
In the first two-day workshop we worked on a new, more sharply focused ambition (Dream), built on a positive analysis of the critical success factors (Discovery).
To convert this ambition into an organisational structure (Design) we used DEMO (Design & Engineering Methodology for Organisations). DEMO compactly describes the activities and communication needed to realise the ambition. In concrete terms, in the NGI we worked with five work groups, each of which developed one of the following themes: business development partner market, product development customer market, sales cycle, project management and prioritisation.
In the second workshop the results of the various workgroups were brought together again. In this workshop we established ‘WHAT’ the NGI had to do to realise its ambition. That offers a compact overview (Design) of the responsibilities and how these responsibilities interconnect.
To achieve this design in the organisation (Delivery) we need directive policy principles (Architecture). The directive policy principles provide an answer to the question ‘HOW’? How should the NGI adapt its behaviour as an organisation to realise its ambitions. These principles help change the behaviour of the organisation in a consistent way.
Alongside the other workgroups the general management of the NGI established principles in a number of phases. This thought process demands a thorough discussion of the desired results and how the organisation wishes to achieve them. These discussions in turn have a positive impact on the cohesion of the general management.

NGI – Results

The results of our approach went much further than the NGI’s employees expected. The responses from participants showed that the focus on the goals, in combination with the positive approach, was seen as the most important success driver.
Selected concrete results:

• Immediately after the second workshop (September), the decision was taken to accelerate implementation so that the coming fiscal year could be better prepared. The future organisational structure was implemented sooner to manage the preparation of the projects in the right steering groups.
• Project-based work (concept phase, feasibility phase, implementation phase) was introduced for all projects in accordance with a fixed system. The requisite documents were created prior to the second workshop to guarantee consistency from day one of the implementation.
• The NGI’s market was split up better due to the more focused ambition and the processes were geared to the market. Product development was developed into business development for the partner market. Targets were set for 2011 and initiatives launched to achieve them.
• The DEMO construction models provide an organisation-independent description of the transactions and the responsibilities needed to realise the ambition. These construction models are supplemented by EDG (existence dependency graphs), which provide a high-level description of what information objects have to be managed and how they interconnect.

The results of this project in terms of change are at least as important. Change in how the NGI management looks at its own organisation, how the NGI will be directed in the near future and how result-orientated the NGI is. The installation of the steering groups for the various activity domains, the preparatory analysis of the projects, the NGI’s greater focus based on short-term targets and the translation of the targets into projects for 2011. These are all examples of the increasing preparedness for change among the employees over the past months.

This assignment was carried out by Jan De Winter of DWT Consulting bvba. The assignment began in May 2010, the second workshop was held in September 2010 and the project was completed in November 2010. Consultancy services were provided on sixty days in total.

Ingrid Vanden Berghe, Administrator-General of the NGI can be contacted about this assignment through the following channels:

Nationaal Geografisch Instituut
Abdij Ter Kameren 13
1000 Brussels
Tel: 02/629.82.11
Email: ivb@ngi.be
http://www.ngi.be