A business capability is what an organisation needs to deliver its business strategy and achieve its outcomes. Business capabilities encompasses people, processes, information, and technology.

Government agencies often develop specific capability models for their organisations as part of their enterprise architecture. The Government Business Capability Model has pre-defined capabilities that are most common, allowing agencies to model their business capabilities specifically to their needs.

Purpose of the business capability model

The GEA-NZ Government Business Capabilities support agencies to improve capability planning, capability management, and capability maturity measurements at a system-wide level.

The model can be used as a baseline of the capabilities an agency requires. It shows an agency the areas of capability to focus on, and what other capabilities exist that may be relevant to their processes.

The purpose of this model is to:

• assist in developing an understanding of the collective capabilities of NZ government
• identify opportunities for system-level integration, collaboration and development of system or sector-level assets
• enable comparison of capabilities, and learning to improve government capability which can lead to enhanced outcomes for NZ
• improved investment with more system benefit.

Structure of the capability model

The model has 6 high-level capability domains.

• Government Customer Capabilities (GCC)
• Government Agency Capabilities (GAC)
• Government Sector Capabilities (GSC)
• Government Generic Capabilities (GGC)
• Government Enterprise Capabilities (GEC)
• Government Partner Capabilities (GPC)

Detailed description of the image

The business capabilities in the GEA-NZ Business Capability Model are divided into 6 high-level capability domains. These are Government Customer Capabilities (GCC), Government Agency Capabilities (GAC), Government Sector Capabilities (GSC), Government Generic Capabilities (GGC), Government Enterprise Capabilities (GEC), and Government Partner Capabilities (GPC).

Each of these 6 domains encompasses people, process, information and technology, shown in the verticle, white rectangles. The business capabilities all contribute towards achieving business outcomes. 

Government Customer Capabilities (GCC)

This capability domain is about understanding the customer. Government Customer Capabilities are what a customer needs in order to interact with government to receive their benefits and entitlements and meet their obligations, such as paying taxes.

Customer needs and capabilities should be considered in designing, developing and implementing government services to achieve a service that a customer requires.

Well-designed, customer-centric services that make it easier for the customer often include the following areas:

• service discovery
• service information discovery
• service orchestration
• information transfer
• records management
• digital access
• digital skills.

Customer capabilities can be added to the model to develop a common understanding of what they are and what initiatives are needed to enhance overall customer capability.

Government Agency Capabilities (GAC)

This capability domain is about an agency understanding its own capability needs. Government Agency Capabilities are considered primary capabilities — they are unique and only implemented once across government agencies. They often relate to the specific provision of a service to customers or as a function of government.

There is a limited opportunity for shared capability, however, agencies may make use of other capabilities. For instance, a unique capability can be supported by a shareable digital capability such as Business Process Management or Case Management.

The intention is that each agency defines agency capabilities as part of their capability planning and management. Over time, these specific capabilities can be added to the model to develop a unified, high-level view of capabilities across NZ government.

Government Sector Capabilities (GSC)

This capability domain is about specific sectors discovering and developing sector-level capability that support agencies across the same sector.

The intention is that the agencies belonging to various sectors define these as part of their sector-level capability planning and management. These specific capabilities can be added to the model and develop a unified view of capabilities across NZ government.

Government Generic Capabilities (GGC)

Government Generic Capabilities are key business capabilities needed and often implemented by many government organisations. Some of the capabilities are considered unique to government organisations. They are often needed by more than one sector of government.

Government Generic Capabilities are potential capability candidates for shared capabilities, shared services, and shared technology. A range of shared capabilities are needed to deliver strategic goals and outcomes when delivering customer-centric government services. These will affect life-event-based service delivery and the related federated service delivery.

The processes to support Government Generic Capabilities are often similar to those found in other industries, but may have specific legislation, goals or outcomes. The processes may therefore be more specialised, and special knowledge and skillsets may be required. For example, the Public Records Act 2005 places obligations on government organisations that are not placed on private organisations

The intention is to refine these and identify those capabilities with maximum system benefit to develop system capability.

Government Enterprise Capabilities (GEC)

Government Enterprise Capabilities are not unique to government. All organisations need them, whether government, non-government, a corporation or not-for-profit organisation. Government Enterprise Capabilities are also known as ‘corporate capabilities’, or even ‘back-office capabilities’. Most organisations, for example a food franchise or internet provider, implement the same enabling business capabilities such as human resources and finance.

The processes to support enterprise capabilities are well understood and largely standardised, and the people skills are readily available. As a result, when organisations merge, it is usually enterprise capabilities that are consolidated first.

The intention is to refine the Government Enterprise Capabilities and identify the capabilities where there is maximum system benefit to develop system capability. For example, there are common process models for several areas within this capability domain.

Government Partner Capabilities (GPC)

The Government Partner Capabilities are capabilities that partners with government organisations need in order to be an effective partner. These are still being developed.

Access or download the capability model

A dataset is available from the Open data catalogue on data.govt.nz. This contains a machine readable CSV file, an XLSX file and an XML model file in the XMI 2.5.1 format for Sparx System Architect.

GEA-NZ Government business capabilities — data.govt.nz