I’ve been reflecting recently on progress and by proxy, inertia. I’ve been thinking about what I’ve seen change in the 25 years I’ve been around digital and public services, and also about how the landscape has changed (or not) in the 13 years of LocalGov Digital. It’s questioning (without shame but with curiosity) whether we could, should, have done more, more consistently by now.
So, this thinking is about intention and about action. It is recognising that sometimes in local government we have too much of the former, and too little of the latter. Asking the hard question of whether that abundance of intention is the enemy of any action to deliver the most basic / standard digital experiences (TL;DR I think the answer is mostly yes).
What holds back delivering the digital basics in local government?
My personal reflection is that I am surprised, frustrated and a little disappointed that digital basics are still inconsistently delivered across local government. That there is a lot of lip service to user-centred design but the true nature of public sector organisations is to put their own needs first, often using budgets, complex services and lack of competition (so less obvious consequences to providing poor experience) as the justification.
This isn’t to say there aren’t loads of good people doing good things, or that there has been no progress and no success. There is, there are, there have been. But that progress and success in digital still seems to be the exception rather than so normal as to be boring.
Is this a #FixThePlumbing post? Maybe…but indulge me as my thoughts take shape.
Strategic transformation is different to tactical transformation
More work is needed to recognise, vocalise, and align on whether activity is strategic (wholesale change, sometimes beyond the bounds of a single organisation, seeking different outcomes) and tactical (optimisation, always within a single organisation, seeking improved outputs) transformation.
Too often we say we’re doing strategic transformation but our activity is tactical, we become trapped in feeling not good enough when we optimise outputs but don’t achieve a different outcome. We need both types of transformation, but they are on different timescales and need different mindsets and skills. We could (should) have delivered a lot more tactical transformation as a sector than we’ve managed.
Operations shouldn’t define experiences
A shared principle underpinning both strategic and tactical transformation should be that an operational solution doesn’t define the customer experience.
By which I mean technology should support not limit or lead our solutions, and we should make it the exception rather than the norm that we are upsold a portal by a supplier. Not only would this avoid us losing control of some of our customer experience (and divorcing it from the many other touchpoints) but also means the back office solution can be updated or changed with less disruption to that front-end journey.
Not every problem is a new problem
Which brings me neatly to how we shouldn’t be approaching every problem of public service as a new problem to be understood and solved. We could more often than not get to tactical transformation, to good enough, if we built experience libraries full of reusable pieces and spent our energy exploring how to best apply them to a particular thing.
Given the distance still to go I hardly dare dream of a shared library for the whole of local government – organisation, platform and place agnostic patterns. All for one, and one for all.
The strategy is delivery – but not at any cost
Sometimes it is not only about the big picture but the detail. The big picture being that the strategy is delivery, but also the detail that it doesn’t mean delivery at any cost.
Deliver minimum usable but make sure this is a step in delivery, with iterations resourced to follow, and not the final milestone from which everyone moves on to other work.
We don’t need band aids, we need basics
Leading nicely to how there needs to be some concerted effort on solid foundations before we start picking out paint colours and curtains. For an effective tooling layer of AI, device agnostic experiences and the like you need a structured, well maintained knowledge base. Before chatbots comes information architecture and taxonomy, before actionable insight comes data access (data belonging to the organisation not, the service or the journey only).
This is boring to many people – far cooler to be the innovator but at this point consistently delivering tactical transformation through commitment to the basics might well be the most innovative move around.
What do we do about it?
Honestly, I’m not sure I know.
On some level this seems like common sense, but on another it would mean such a cultural shift in each organisation and the sector as a whole that it feels like a fairy tale. Perhaps there is a role for LocalGov Digital to co-ordinate a shared approach, perhaps it is reliant on bold action from brave decision makers in each area.
Those who were once energised but powerless agitators are now the decision makers and yet we still seem stuck on intending to transform and digitise and modernise and deliver the experience we all as citizens and customers deserve. I don’t know exactly how we do it but I know we need to move on from intentions to action, even if those first actions are small.