An online notebook
The Government Digital Service has released a big list defining the skills needed for transformation.
It’s certainly comprehensive. It’s fair to say that it is more a list of skills that people need rather than the details of what goes into those skills, or how you start to equip a team with them.
However, for anyone putting together a team to tackle digital transformation, it’s a great guide for what people you’ll need on board.
There was a debate raging late last week about the needs of digital in local government (again). I wrote up some thoughts to share with everyone – I was feeling somewhat limited by the 140 character confines of Twitter – and I may as well post them here too.
The GDS has set out, in the service manual, a pretty good template for how an organisation should go about ‘transforming’ services to make the most of the internet.
It covers taking a user-centered approach; delivering using agile, iterative methods; the importance of good design; and the need for measurement and continuous improvement.
This could easily be taken and given a quick edit to make it work within the local government context. Local government would benefit from having a consistent, shared set of processes to use get this stuff done.
Different councils will use these processes and get different results depending on their context. However, the shared process means they can share experience, staff and other stuff with one another and all be talking the same language.
What local government really lacks across the board is the capability to deliver this change. The service manual talks of what is needed in the multi-disciplinary team. The vast majority of councils do not know what these roles even mean, let alone have people able to fill them.
This is not to be critical of councils or the people working in them. GDS had to go on a massive recruitment drive to bring this talent into central government. Local government needs to find a way to do the same.
However, many councils are too small to justify having full time permanent employees doing these roles. They cannot afford them. Also, even if they could, they would find it incredibly hard to recruit anyone of the required standard. There just aren’t enough to go around.
So, a shared capability pool is something that ought to be looked into. Something made a lot easier by having a shared process, mentioned above. Councils could pool together locally and create a shared digital service. Counties could provide a service to local districts. Private sector suppliers could have consultants available for hire that cover all the necessary roles as and when they are needed.
The other thing GDS has done is built technology platforms and services. The big one is the single domain project, with the publishing platform. This is not the place for local government to start.
With lots of councils using the same process at a similar time, with shared people delivering it, it will soon emerge that lots of councils will be working on transforming the same services at the same time. This should lead to conversations about collaborating on developing digital services – those building blocks that all public services rely on, like booking, paying, registering, emailing, web-hosting, data storing, consulting, etc etc.
So, by creating a shared set of processes, working out how to develop the needed capability to deliver, and then emerging collaborations on technology, a local ‘digital service’ starts to form. Only, it’s not one organisation, it’s not a central gov imposed thing, nor a big fat IT outsourcing contract.
I have always said that the first step to real collaboration, as opposed to just having a shared space to stick your unreadable documents, is having the self awareness, the humility, and the courage to admit that you need help.
Too right!
Back when I was a local government officer, I used to be involved in things like local strategic partnerships – only the first word was, I think, accurate.
Anyway, various ‘delivery partners’ would turn up to a meeting, pledge to do something collaborative – i.e. something they were going to do anyway – and then go off and do it on their own, as they always would have done. Three months later, this activity would be announced at the result of partnership working and collaboration.
Am sure everyone reading this will have seen this happening, and as Euan says, no file sharing platform is going to fix this.
Instead, a sensible collaboration conversation ought to look like this:
Thanks to the top people at Learning Pool, here’s a great video of Donald Clark talking about learning theory through the ages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7t4uDHQqWk
I’ve seen a few comments bouncing about Twitter and other places debating the meaning of the word digital, and why it hasn’t caught on in some places at all.
I’ve also seen some people saying that ‘digital’ is an unhelpful term, given the broad range of things it seems to describe.
I’d agree that it isn’t perfect, however, it’s what we’ve got. May as well make the most of it.
My definition of digital is:
The delivery of information, interactions and services over the internet.
However, that’s not all. It is also:
The approaches, skills and behaviour that have been popularised by digital projects.
Hence agility, responsiveness, user focus, and so on are all ‘digital’ even though they don’t specifically require the internet.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but this definition works for me, and hopefully for those I work with.