Two cheers for Pat McFadden

So far, so promising, but lets see how it pans out

2 cheers for Pat McFadden

Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office Minister (or Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the bizarre antiquarian jargon of the UK constitution) made an important speech yesterday, which is generally on the right track IMHO.

Not to come all a bit Christine Keeler, but I would say that wouldn’t I?

He talks about structural problems (hurray!) and not kill-the-blob nonsense:

The people are good but the systems and structures they work in are too often outdated and make it hard for them to deliver.

Reading the bits about iterative and explorative development you would almost believe that whoever wrote the speech had read my report for Scottish Government, The Foundations of the Digital State:

In the digital age, you don’t have to work out precisely what you need to build at the start, and then start building it.

You can start with something small and try it out. Test it on people. Fix the problems. Change the design. Test it again. Throw it away and start again cheaply, if it doesn’t work. Tweak it again. And so on, and on, for as long as you provide the service.

Suddenly the most important question isn’t ‘How do we get this right the first time?’ It’s ‘How do we make this better by next Friday?’

And you wouldn’t be wrong of course. Where did my recommendations come from? From talking to the people who do the work in the civil service - including people in the Cabinet Office. I very much hope that the new political leadership are listening to their technical staff who are genuinely innovative, transformational and inspirational.

Here’s me in the Executive Summary talking about one of my 3 core thrusts, Better Iteration In Service Development:

Testing assumptions early and then changing course is the proven way forward. The quicker you test things with real people, the quicker you find errors and shortcomings and the quicker you fix them. It’s simply cheaper, much cheaper. But agile in government starts too late. This report recommends a set of immediate changes and a more strategic long term ones. The first pass of improving iteration is to bring design and testing activities from the end of the process to the beginning. For major projects prototype systems should be developed before legislation is drafted. These would have limited functionality, not be scalable, or perhaps just be paper prototypes. Policy and delivery teams need to be integrated.

So why only 2 cheers, compañero?

My report starts with a quote from Hilary Hartley, formerly the Deputy Digital Minister for Ontario (equivalent to Perm Sec, Digital):

We’ve had a decade of good work done and teams built. But the institutionalisation of it, I think, is the hard work for the next little bit.

We learnt a lot from the work of GDS and their role in rescuing UC (along with plenty others) - mentioned by the Ministers in the speech. That work was done under the Maude Umbrella - the Minister Francis Maude protected the young sapling from the viscitudes of political life and recalcitrant departments and the quotidien events. But Ministers are like butterflies, nice to look at, gone tomorrow.

The point is not to replay the glory years with a McFadden umbrella, but to build the damn bus shelter, put in place the enduring institutions that are required.

The Service Design practice in UK Gov is tremendous and has a maturity and richness of vision that its private sector equivalent, Product Management, can’t even grasp. (I tried to build a Service Design practice at Wayfair facing our suppliers, but got shitcanned instead, ain’t life great in SF companies, innit?).

In my Research Fellowship, I tried, imperfectly, to do an evidence-led Service Redesign of the process of decision making in government, from manifesto and thinktank, through programme for government and the legislative programme, bills and bills and bill packs, parliamentary process and then onto the ‘normal’ (aka abnormal) technical design, test, deliver, in-service model.

Now I have broken the taboo against putting the spotlight on the political and parliamentary side of the process, I hope somebody will unleash (Boris Johnson sex-word alert!) our excellent Service Designers onto the design and decision making process that Pat McFadden touches on in his speech. That would be immense, let it be! make it happen! please God!

The Foundations of the Digital State cost the Scottish Government 12 hunnerd quid - a fully funded project with more expert staff nor I on me loneo would be astonishing! transformative! exceptional! (really channelling old Ms Keeler the day, me).

Oh yeah, obligatory glance in the direction of the Treasury at this point - is autonomy also going to be autonomy about decisions involving money, or will the clubs-and-sticks beatings continue until morale improves?

But I need to get a quick <rant> uffuv my chest (grrr)

Once again the headlines and the content are at odds - especially when the Government wrote some of the headlines.

On first sight the speech yesterday got the bile rising:

Pat McFadden vows to make the state “more like a startup “ as he deploys reform teams across country.

I had really hoped that the sight of the leaders of the internet tech companies beshitting themselves over Trump would have killed start-up-envy in politics. Musk, Thiel, Andreeson, Horowitz, Sacks et al make me embarrased to be in the tech sector.

The legendary Mike Moritz of Sequoia was scathing in the FT:

I doubt whether any of them would want him as part of an investment syndicate that they organised. Why then do they dismiss his recent criminal conviction as nothing more than a politically inspired witch-hunt over a simple book-keeping error?

…

Would they employ a convicted felon in their own businesses? Would they tolerate abuse and predatory behaviour towards women in their offices or refuse to provide healthcare benefits that included abortions? Would they stay silent while Black, Asian-American and Muslim colleagues who they work alongside, are denigrated? Would they refuse to pay contractors who have fulfilled all their obligations? Would they happily stiff banks or use lawsuits as a way to intimidate and bully? Are they prepared to pick and choose which election results they believe? And would they turn mute if their competitors’ offices were ransacked and pillaged?

Government is government, lets be proud of it and stop glancing sidie-ways at other things and thinking they are better, more glamorous, more exiting and more important than, you know, running the fucking country.

There is no Google or AI fairy going to do your job for you [glares in the direction of the Tony Blair Institute].

Its basic politics isn’t it? Learn to count, always kick a man when he’s down, if at first ya don’t succeed, in wi the boot and in wi the heid and don’t touch the jobby. Just keep your damn fingers well away from the jobby lobby FFS. The lure of a Nick Clegg cash-o-rama I ‘spose.

</rant over>