Like Robert the Bruce and the spider
Lets try that last post again...
I posted last week about my last working paper - on experimental legislative processes - and then failed to add the damn paper, making it a slightly pointless exercise. Lets try again.
We know that iteration is the key to good software - and we know that major digital programmes (eg Universal Credit and the Scottish Social Security system) are not point in time legal processes, but actually tens and hundreds of legislative acts over 5, 7, 12 years.
The current approach to enabling iteration is to use framework bills and grant ministers secondary powers to iterate in law as they see fit, which is not entirely satisfactory to my mind - very technocratic.
I am a bit allergic to unconstrained use of secondary legislation because I saw how destructive it was to politics in Northern Ireland - the long 25 years when rule by decree was the order of the day.
A lot of my thinking is about how to enable iteration in a constitutionally appropriate way.
There is another reason why the current way we legislate for and deliver major IT programmes should be reviewed is because oftentimes is simply doesn’t work - and we end up with runaway programmes burning billions that nobody can quite stop.
This paper tries to cover both these topics, drawing on lessons learned, particularly from Universal Credit.
To really get the most out of this working paper you might need to bone up on some previous ones. It draws on my analysis of the entire Scottish Social Security programme (3 Acts and 76 Ministerial orders) and on my working paper on new parliamentary and governmental institutions.
Share and subscribe! And apologies if my last post left you hanging.