{"id":16947,"date":"2016-09-15T15:34:31","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T14:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digileaders.com\/?p=16947"},"modified":"2019-01-17T09:46:58","modified_gmt":"2019-01-17T09:46:58","slug":"digital-government-isnt-user-needs-fundamental","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digileaders.com\/digital-government-isnt-user-needs-fundamental\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital government isn\u2019t about user needs \u2013 it\u2019s more fundamental than that"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The government digital movement needs to come out of startup phase and deliver on the real opportunities for public engagement.<\/p>\n<p>The UK has a choice. Early digital initiatives &#8211; the Gov.UK website, the &#8216;discovery&#8217; of agile, the mantra of &#8216;user needs&#8217; &#8211; were great and much-needed developments in the startup phase of government digital.<\/p>\n<p>That phase successfully disrupted a mutual complacency about technology at the top of public and private sectors alike. No one can take that achievement away.<\/p>\n<p>Like all startups however, the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/opinion\/Where-next-for-UK-government-as-a-platform\">government digital\u201d project can either stagnate or grow up<\/a>. For all our sakes, let\u2019s hope it chooses the latter \u2013 and quickly; there\u2019s simply too much at stake. Consider the following scenarios:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cI\u2019m a health worker, and I want to set up a \u2018pop-up\u2019 health outreach service, based in my local library, by stringing together some basic functions on my laptop \u2013 patient details and recent events, for example.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI\u2019m a council-tax payer, and I want to assure myself that my council\u2019s being run efficiently and providing residents with value for our money.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI\u2019m a mental health charity worker considering a new initiative, but before I get going I\u2019d like to see how I can piggy-back on some of the existing facilities \u2013 such as transport, events and venues \u2013 in the local area, otherwise I probably can\u2019t afford it.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI\u2019m a civil servant in a government department, and new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/news\/450300048\/Government-to-reform-rules-of-the-road-for-autonomous-cars\">legislation<\/a> means I need to quickly get some new processes in place.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI\u2019m a journalist, and I\u2019m doing a piece on public procurement. I\u2019d like to find out how some services are made up and if they\u2019re being delivered as cheaply as possible.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI\u2019m an entrepreneur, and think that I could deliver part of a public service much better \u2013 and more cost-effectively \u2013 than it\u2019s being done currently.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI\u2019m a citizen who\u2019s been waiting ages for a passport renewal. If the delay\u2019s unavoidable, I can live with it; however, I\u2019d like to reassure myself this is the case.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI\u2019m a Whitehall mandarin preparing a policy on integrating health and social care \u2013 so I need to start by understanding the existing service delivery landscape.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI\u2019m an open data fanatic, and I suspect there may be a huge opportunity to mash-up data feeds from police, transport, local authorities and drivers\u2019 satnavs to dramatically cut congestion \u2013 I\u2019ll even do it for free.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI run a select committee looking at use of technology in the public sector, and need to cut through the different, conflicting perspectives to some objective measures.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI work for an outsourcing services provider, and suspect my customer may be underestimating what it takes to make this service a success \u2013 so I need to prove this is the case.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Most of us could go on and think of further examples. So what unites these diverse scenarios, and what does this have to do with what \u201cdigital\u201d is about? Surely it\u2019s all about those \u201cuser needs\u201d? There are two answers to this question.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"section-title\">Murky and opaque<\/h3>\n<p>The first answer is that none of these people can do any of these things at the moment. This is because the \u201cblack box\u201d of public services is murky and opaque, and no one can look into it to see what is happening. Think about the consequences of that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The health worker can\u2019t set up the pop-up service, because the various details don\u2019t talk to one another and are probably unavailable anyway.<\/li>\n<li>The council-tax payer has no means of checking and holding their council to account.<\/li>\n<li>The mental health worker has no visibility of the possibilities for sharing, so decides not to bother.<\/li>\n<li>The civil servant can\u2019t react quickly to new legislation, so initiates yet another cumbersome, costly transformation programme.<\/li>\n<li>The entrepreneur can\u2019t put together their case for innovation, so doesn\u2019t innovate.<\/li>\n<li>The citizen feels powerless in the face of what they feel to be bureaucratic unanswerability.<\/li>\n<li>The Whitehall mandarin charges ahead with policy in the absence of hard evidence.<\/li>\n<li>The open data fanatic gives up on their big idea because the data they need remains buried in various organisational silos.<\/li>\n<li>The member of Parliament (MP) running the select committee is never able to get to the bottom of the issue of whether the public sector uses technology intelligently or not.<\/li>\n<li>The outsourcing services provider builds in huge contingency to offset against the customer\u2019s underestimation of risk, in an atmosphere of mutual distrust.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The second answer to the question of what these scenarios have in common is that they are all examples of bad social outcomes resulting from our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/opinion\/Time-to-get-mapping-how-a-blind-government-can-develop-sight\">inability to make our own decisions in dialogue with other<i> <\/i>people\u2019s decisions and commitments<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of public services founded on collective social intelligence, where myriad decisions are taken locally \u2013 based on what\u2019s suitable on the ground but with the benefit of evolving mutual understanding and the diligence that accompanies public scrutiny \u2013 there is little collective wisdom in any of what we do.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"section-title\">The live DNA of public services<\/h3>\n<p>Consider instead a future scenario where all of these people simply access a Gov.uk which, in addition to being just a static \u201cstore front\u201d for government \u2013 a collection of entry-points for public services and blogs by civil servants \u2013 allows you to view the live DNA of the services themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Just imagine:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The health worker could quickly pull together some patient records, workflow and calendar functions and mount a pop-up service in the library in minutes.<\/li>\n<li>The council-tax payer could compare the unit cost of the green-bin service with councils across the country \u2013 as could their council.<\/li>\n<li>The mental health worker could immediately see those parts of other local services that they can make use of and accordingly decide to launch their new initiative.<\/li>\n<li>The civil servant could avoid that costly transformation programme.<\/li>\n<li>The journalist could compare the costs of what government organisations are paying \u2013 as well as with what industry is paying \u2013 for essentially the same thing.<\/li>\n<li>The entrepreneur could pinpoint the commercial opportunity, and make the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/news\/450288417\/Government-aims-to-make-UK-best-place-to-innovate\">innovative proposal<\/a> to his local authority.<\/li>\n<li>The citizen would be consoled by a sense of inclusion in, and understanding of, a bureaucratic process that would now feel slightly less unanswerable.<\/li>\n<li>The Whitehall mandarin could identify those parts of health and social care that involve similar activities and data, and formulate a policy for their convergence.<\/li>\n<li>The open data fanatic might develop the mash-up, with incalculable benefits for motorists\u2019 time, the economy and the environment.<\/li>\n<li>The MP, armed with forensic, drill-down data on each component of each technology service, could move beyond the conflicting assurances of permanent secretaries and their major suppliers, and hold both to account.<\/li>\n<li>Both outsourcer and customer, in the knowledge of the going market rate for a standard service, might arrive more quickly at uncomplicated agreement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 class=\"section-title\">Exposing value chains<\/h3>\n<p>It\u2019s not hard to conjecture that exposing the value chains of government services to the public, so that we can all see and compare and improve on them on a daily basis \u2013 akin to tinkering with a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/opinion\/Government-as-a-platform-or-a-platform-for-government-Which-are-we-getting\">giant Meccano set made of lots of standard components<\/a> \u2013 would amount to nothing less than a democratic revolution.<\/p>\n<p>An early example of an exposed value chain is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/vehicle-tax\">DVLA\u2019s road tax renewal service<\/a>, where we watch government join up our registration, insurance and MOT databases, and take our money, in real-time.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of stale, self-legitimising talk by public administrators about how they are building stuff to \u201cmeet user needs\u201d, the function of public administrators becomes increasingly about providing us with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=02__3UTqXmU\">building blocks<\/a> to, for example, assemble, innovate, combine, question and contract for our public services.<\/p>\n<p>Gov.UK could be a teeming, transparent hub for social and economic exchange where the basic building blocks underlying public services would be there for all to consume, challenge and drive hard bargains against &#8211; digital democracy in reality, rather than in rhetoric. It would belong to the people, rather than the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n<p>Is it a fairy tale or achievable reality? The technology exists that could enable us to start to move convincingly in this direction \u2013 digital devices at the front end, common data at the back end and \u201cconnecting tissue\u201d of standardised, modular, democratically accessible building blocks of business logic in the middle.<\/p>\n<p>But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/opinion\/Government-must-be-a-platform-entrepreneur-to-deliver-digital-20\">we need the right leadership to get there<\/a>. For example, the medium \u2013 the \u201cnutrient jelly\u201d \u2013 for all this will increasingly be a common platform as a service (PaaS).<\/p>\n<p>So where\u2019s the PaaS strategy for government? Who is ensuring that if one public body or region invests in apps that work on, for example, Microsoft\u2019s Azure platform, that these will also be re-useable by another public body\/region that has invested in Force.com, or Amazon Web Services?<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"section-title\">Situational awareness<\/h3>\n<p>Here\u2019s another example: I spent the summer researching the latest academic literature on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/opinion\/Government-must-be-a-platform-entrepreneur-to-deliver-digital-20\">platform-ecosystem models<\/a>, and can report there is widespread international agreement on the pivotal importance for digital service models of establishing shared <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/opinion\/Time-to-get-mapping-how-a-blind-government-can-develop-sight\">\u201csituational awareness\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That means a recognition of the explosive, positive implications of providing everyone with <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/wardleymaps\/getting-started-yourself-e1a359b785a2#.8uw98cajq\">visibility of what everyone else is doing<\/a> \u2013 against the unfolding backdrop of the market.<\/p>\n<p>These are significant strategic issues requiring big decisions, but they are met with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chroniclelive.co.uk\/business\/business-news\/government-indecision-heathrow-putting-north-10824121\">chronic indecision<\/a> redolent of the decision over a new runway at Heathrow.<\/p>\n<p>Where is the commitment even to the baby steps of building such a consensus across our public services?<\/p>\n<p>Where is the digital equivalent to the civil service\u2019s Major Projects Leadership Academy, driving C-suite literacy and consensus on the impact of the internet on government, and yielding a vigorous digital alumni network committed to sharing and joint situational awareness?<\/p>\n<p>Look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/public-leaders-network\/2015\/feb\/12\/uk-voters-cut-public-services-amazon-spotify-uber\">\u00a335bn, year-on-year implications<\/a> of a digitised, democratic public business model delivering more face-to-face public servants for the public, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/public-leaders-network\/2016\/apr\/07\/exploitation-frontline-staff-administrators-public-private?CMP=share_btn_tw\">public servants and civil servants<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/public-leaders-network\/2012\/dec\/20\/government-it-systems-cabinet-office\">traditional suppliers<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/opinion\/Dont-politicise-digital-government-public-platforms-belong-to-no-one\">politicians<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/opinion\/Intelligent-public-services-digital-politics-and-the-paradox-of-Brexit\">even Brexit<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It stacks up for everyone involved except the mediators, and it will happen eventually anyway because it\u2019s happening to service models worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>This vision contrasts strongly with the spectacle of civil servants building technology in Whitehall in anticipation of user needs.<\/p>\n<p>Such command-economy stuff is not only anti-digital, but profoundly anti-democratic. It confuses the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/opinion\/Searching-for-the-signal-of-open-standards-amid-the-growing-noise-of-agile\">technology of open source with the digital dynamics of open standards<\/a>, and mistakes agile anticipation of user needs by public employees, for real, democratic empowerment of citizens.<\/p>\n<p>The very real issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/health-37331031\">whether we can maintain our public service levels<\/a> by continuing to be organised as we are only gets worse. When will we take the bull by the horns?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/opinion\/Digital-government-isnt-about-user-needs-its-more-fundamental-than-that?platform=hootsuite\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>This article first appeared on Computer Weekly&#8217;s blog here.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The government digital movement needs to come out of startup phase and deliver on the real opportunities for public engagement. The UK has a choice. Early digital initiatives &#8211; the Gov.UK website, the &#8216;discovery&#8217; of agile, the mantra of &#8216;user needs&#8217; &#8211; were great and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-16947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","region-london","topic-healthtech","topic-innovation","topic-charities","topic-government","topic-research","topic-transformation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Digital government isn\u2019t about user needs \u2013 it\u2019s more fundamental than that | Digital Leaders<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/digileaders.com\/digital-government-isnt-user-needs-fundamental\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Digital government isn\u2019t about user needs \u2013 it\u2019s more fundamental than that | Digital Leaders\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The government digital movement needs to come out of startup phase and deliver on the real opportunities for public engagement. 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