♫ You see I go by the code of the doctor of the mix ♫
♫ and these reason's I'll tell you why ♫ (we need a remixable digital state)
One of the major challenges of the modern state is to refocus, to switch from one way of working to another, fix a problem and move on.
Today’s Working Paper 4 - The remixable state looks at how we structure the state to enable it to refocus.
It goes to the heart of the difference between government services and market ones. The 80/20 rule of thumb doesn’t apply to government. If you are serving a commercial market, may 20% of your potential customers are hard to contact, expensive to service or otherwise unprofitable. And you can take steps to eliminate them - don’t market where poor quality customers are to be found - in the words of Accenture - fire your unprofitable customers.
Government’s can’t do this, indeed their mission is not to do this. A major chunk of government expenses is in dealing with the 20%.
Consider social security - for 80% of the population dealing with the social is once and done - you have a kid, you apply for child benefit, you go online and it just works. But for 20% of people its not like that. A small proportion of families are high-risk and chaotic, might be involved with several agencies as well as social security - social work, probation, drug dependency teams. A goodly chunk of citizens have complex problems using online services because of disability, ill health or simple old age.
This paper looks at mechanisms that might enable us to divide state operations into once-and-done for the 80%, simple, easy touch, and complex workflows - and addressing the 80/20 split systemically as a matter of state function design.
January is the month I take my recommendations out on tour - with a series of in-person Chatham House events in Scotland on Thursday 18th and a pop-up at UKGovCamp on Saturday 20th. Come along I would love to speak with you.