BPR in the Public Sector: A Case of Successful Failure

Recent surveys show that business process re-engineering (BPR) has had widespread adoption in western countries. This has been motivated by case studies where drastic improvements in quality, productivity, cost reduction and competitiveness have been reported. The rate of failure in reengineering attempts, though, has been reported to be equally high. It is estimated that over 70 per cent of all re-engineering attempts fail to produce bottom-line improvements. This paper describes one such failed attempt in a large public organisation in Brazil. As a result of the re-engineering attempt, the organisation had its IT infrastructure significantly improved, and the access to IT was decentralised by the downsizing of computer applications from a mainframe to a local area network. On the other hand, no radical changes in the organisation's business processes had resulted, despite the US$ 8 million invested in the BPR attempt. Moreover, even though some processes had been automated, almost no staff reduction was effected. The lack of layoffs meant that even the increase in efficiency in those processes, which by no means was radical, was not realised.