Abstract
The integrated value model (IVM) empowers analysis of the interdependent aspects of policies, plans, performance measures, priorities, and programs (P5). As organizations are holistic systems of processes and performance, knowing how P5 adds value becomes critical to success and achievement of internal goals and responses to external demands. Modeling these artifacts and mapping them to policies and practices allows analysts to measure the alignment to initiatives. The IVM supports efforts in strategic communications, change management, strategic planning, and decision support. Elements of P5 have explicit hierarchical and relational connections, but modeling the connections and developing logical inferences is an uncommon strategic business practice. This chapter describes how to use those goals to create a logical model for a public sector organization and how to use this model to identify, describe, and align business value. Further, this chapter demonstrates the model's capabilities and suggests future applications.
TopIntroduction
In February 2007, The Washington Post reported on patient overcrowding and poor treatment at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a healthcare facility for military service veterans in Washington, DC (Priest & Hull, 2007). In the United States, military and civilian government agencies divide the responsibility for veterans care, and such an effort requires thoughtful coordination. The coverage in the press had shown this to be severely lacking. To resolve these problems, the United States Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs formed an interagency oversight committee called the Wounded, Ill, and Injured Senior Oversight Committee (SOC).
The committee drafted a plan to bolster collaboration, and tasked an analyst to review it for conflicts and overlaps with other strategic plans. The analyst (White) reviewed the committee’s plan in the context of all the organizations’ related source documents, including the related civilian and military strategic plans and policies. The analyst’s report, or “crosswalk”, revealed that with one adjustment, all of the SOC’s objectives could be subsumed by another, longer-established joint committee, the VA-DoD Joint Executive Committee. Thus, the prototype of the Integrated Value Model (IVM) was born; the authors will explain in more detail how the model is populated and supports complex modern organizations. Based on this analysis, the VA and DoD agreed to close the SOC and migrate its work to the JEC. This new, expanded JEC was able to perform its existing mission of collaborating and sharing resources as well as direct the care and benefits coordination efforts of the SOC.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Dependent Component: A single goal, objective, directive, or measure that moves closer to its end state if its Enabling Component is delivered.
Enabling Source: A source document with at least one component (sub-unit) that helps a Dependent Source document progress to its end state by virtue of the enabling document’s reaching its end state.
Neural Network: A group of nodes where each represents the relationship of component sources (in a row) in a crosswalk which have been depicted as a three-dimensional visualization. Each source has component constellations showing added value to components of other sources . See also value network .
Enabling Component: A single goal, objective, directive, or measure in an Enabling Source.
Component: The analysis focuses on answering: How do the individual objectives in these source documents support the achievement of individual objectives in other source documents? Each individual objective is a component.
Source (Enabling, Dependent): A policy, plan, report, etc. that comprises objectives, goals, initiatives, measures, and other elemental parts (components) that, together, represent value to the enterprise.
Crosswalk: The analyst who reviewed the oversight committee’s plan studied that plan, or source document , in context with the other strategic plans (source documents). This overarching analysis is a crosswalk; the act of crosswalking source documents and their components can also be called mapping .
Value Flow: How value from one P5 element flows into another P5 element as input, either by directly moving the receiving element closer to its end state, or indirectly through a path of value through multiple P5 elements.
Mapping: The action to identify value pairs, or chains of relationships, between an Enabling and a Dependent source component.
Value: The technical, economic, service, and social benefits an organization receives.
Value Network: Where sources in a neural network (derived from a crosswalk ) have component constellations of neurons that add value to components of other sources .
P5: Policies, plans, programs, priorities, and performance measures.
Dependent Source: A document with at least one component (sub-unit) that progresses closer to its end state if a component of an Enabling Source document reaches its own end state.