One on One with BCG's Scott Hefter

"Effective" and "government" are rarely words uttered in the same breath, especially these days. So needless to say, making government work better is a big business. It's why BCG has hired operations expert Scott Hefter as a Partner. Hefter will draw upon his extensive government insider knowledge to help the firm beef up its U.S. public sector practice. Hefter joins BCG from PWC, where he led both its U.S. management-consulting practice and its global-analytics business. Prior to that, he was CEO of PRTM, a global management consulting firm specializing in operational and IT strategy that PwC acquired in 2011. Hefter sat down with Consulting to discuss his new role and his plans for growing the practice. Consulting: New role, new company, what's been keeping you busiest so far?

Hefter: My role here is to help build our public sector practice, both in the U.S. but also be part of the global team. On one level many things are the same, but on another, there's a lot of things that are different. So there was a little bit of immersion into BCG and really understanding the breadth of the experience and the talent and then working to tune all of that to be appropriate for a public sector marketplace. It's not starting from ground zero or from nothing, we actually have a fairly significant practice around the globe and in the U.S., but particularly in the U.S. not nearly as pervasive as I think we can be. I think of it as we're sort of a well-funded startup; a lot of great past performances and experiences but there's also a lot to do to make it a much more enduring practice for federal.

Consulting: Sounds like growth is big on the agenda. What are some of the biggest potential growth areas for the practice?