Business process reengineering in the public sector: The case of the housing development board in Singapore

Our existing knowledge of business process reengineering (BPR) is mainly de rived from the experiences of private sector organizations, which have fund amentally different characteristics from public organizations. This paper r epresents a first step in understanding how BPR may be different in public organizations. Drawing on the public administration literature, it examines the differences between public and private organizations and their implica tions for BPR. Following that, it examines the BPR experience of a large pu blic organization through an intensive case study. The case analysis shows that while there are similarities in the BPR experiences of public and priv ate organizations, there are also notable differences. In this specific cas e, there were social and political pressures to reengineer, press publicity to promote BPR, a reengineering team comprised mainly of neutral staff, pe rformance benchmarks adapted from the private sector, high-level approval f or redesigned processes, and a pilot site implementation to secure further funding. It concludes with lessons learned for implementing BPR in public o rganizations.