Ministry of Science and Innovation

A Case Study

Background

In March 2010 the Government announced its intention to form a new Ministry from a merger of the existing Ministry of Research Science and Technology and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology. This Ministry was later announced as the Ministry of Science and Innovation.

A Governance Group was formed to oversee the programme for the merger. The Governance Group was formed under an independent chair, made up of the Chief Executives of the two existing organisations and the State Services Commission. The Governance Group formed an Establishment Secretariat

The programme was established with eight workstreams:

• Accountability;
• Accommodation;
• Business Policies Processes and System;
• Human Resource Management;
• Finance;
• Communications;
• Organisational Design; and
• Information and Communication Technology.

Probity’s Role in the Merger

Probity was involved in the merger through the involvement of three of our consultants.

• Tom Robinson provided programme management for the overall merger programme. Tom worked with the Establishment Secretariat and the Governance Group.

We also provided project managers for two significant workstream of the merger.

• Liz Kelleher was project manager for the workstream bringing together the Information and Communication Technology environments of the two organisations. This workstream was made up of 26 separate projects ranging from user security, infrastructure, applications rationalisation, such as the merging of the two organisations Electronic Document Management Systems.
• Thomas Peries led the workstream to merge the financial operations of the two entities. This involved migration onto a single FMIS, harmonisation of policies and procedures and the integration of the two finance teams. Whilst undertaking this role Probity also facilitated the acquisition of a Business Intelligence Application for the new Ministry.

Probity’s involvement was from July 2010 until after the go live on 1 February 2011.

The Challenges of Merging

The merger of two entities, rather than the acquisition of one by another, presents different challenges and requirements. These differences exist at a number of levels including:

• Programme leadership
• Systems
• Policy and procedure
• People and culture

Programme leadership

The programme required that programme and project staff maintained a presence at the sites of both organisations to ensure that the requirements of both organisations were incorporated into the planning and execution of the programme plan. This required planning to ensure that staff were visible at, and able to work from, multiple locations.

The programme also needed to devise a clear and concise methodology of reporting on eight workstreams and on progress of the overall programme to the Governance Group, Chief Executives and the Minister. As a result a concise programme report was developed and produced weekly on an A3 sheet.

Programme Report Example

Systems

From an information technology perspective a significant advantage of a merger, rather than a takeover, is that each component of technology that is owned by the merging organisations can be assessed to identify which combinations best support the new organisation.

In a takeover the acquiring organisation’s technology is often imposed upon the acquired without assessment of the merits of the technology acquired.

The merger provided the opportunity for the new Ministry to assess and reutilise the best of the assets and systems owned by each organisation. There was a significant amount of commonality in systems between the two entities. However, this also resulted in some challenges as many of these systems were configured differently. This necessitated considerable analysis to construct a configuration on a single platform that met the needs of the combined entities.

The ICT merger encountered many of the usual project issues, but the greatest challenge for the combined ICT teams was the necessity to deliver business as usual as well as apply resources to the many projects associated with the merger. Clearly defining priorities for staff is essential for success on significant change projects of this scale as is having sufficient resource to meet demand.

Other learnings:

• Organisations using electronic data records management systems should be prepared to invest a considerable amount of effort in planning the transition and how records of the old organisation will be handled after the merger date.
• Depending on the level of commonality of the systems, user training might be easier than thought
• The go-live date for the merger was 1 February 2011, which was a Tuesday. Undertaking the migration of the old organisations to the new was not possible in the window from close of business Monday to the start of business on Tuesday. It was therefore necessary to migrate over the weekend prior. This required staff, including non-IT staff that needed to undertake testing to work longer hours including evenings and weekends.

Policies

A merger is an ideal opportunity to redevelop all your corporate policies. This task should not be underestimated as you may end up with over 80 policy documents requiring approval in a short space of time. Whereas most organisations will have a similar set of policies, for example each organisation will have a Travel Policy, there will be a myriad of small differences across the policy set.

The production of policies is one task we would recommend that clients plan to finish early. As the merger date approaches subject matter experts are likely to be increasingly engaged in the doing of the merger and will have less time to contribute to the policy project. Secondly a number of key policies have an impact on the desired culture of the new organisation and will need to form part of the pre-launch communications roll-out. Decisions also need to be made about what level of paperwork employees of the new organisation need to complete and the timing of that paperwork. For example, will the new organisation require a Code of Conduct to be signed by employees when they are transitioned?

People and Culture

Obviously a merger of this nature creates a considerable amount of uncertainty and even anxiety amongst employees of the existing organisations. Our experience at MSI was that a full time communications resource was required in order to maintain the flow of communications to staff as well as coordinate the timing of messages and the content between the 8 streams of work.

Budgeting

There will be a number of sizeable cost areas to budget for. These include:

• project and programme management;
• change management (including the very likely possibility of recruitment and redundancy);
• relocation costs including the de-commissioning of old sites (do you have a make-good clause in your lease that needs to be budgeted for?);
• merging of ICT systems, even where there is considerable commonality this will be a significant expense item;
• communications, including possibly rebranding. As the merger will bring a new organisation into being it is unlikely that old brands will be recycled. Where either organisation has branded programmes as well as the overall organisational brand these need to be considered and potentially included in the programme of change.