Blog posts

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. We recently launched a prototype Covid19 sites tracker. Thank you to everyone who’s sent feedback following our blog post. It’s been great to see the mix of positive feedback and constructive criticism. In particular, it’s been encouraging to hear anecdotes about the conversations it’s triggered, and to hear from teams who are already doing work to improve on these metrics. We thought it would be helpful to follow up with some notes on what we’ve changed since launch, why we started where we did, and how the underlying system works. ...

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. Since the start of the crisis, and through our work with teams around the world, we’ve kept a close eye on government response websites. We’ve paid particular attention to: How fast they are. Fast sites avoid frustration and reassure users – particularly important when they’re searching for information in a stressful situation. They work well on low-cost devices and don’t cost citizens a fortune in data to access. The reading age of the content. Clearly-written, concise and actionable content opens information up to more people – particularly important when concentration is low and emotions are high. [we’ve removed this while we do a bit more thinking about whether we can make an automated reading score a helpful and fair metric.] How accessible they are. Sites that work well for people with accessibility needs work better for everyone, across devices, quality of connections, etc. These metrics represent a baseline and sites that don’t get these things right are failing their users. However, you need to get into the details, analyse decision-making and look for feedback loops to find out whether you’re really meeting user needs. ...

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. Not every solution to every problem requires building software; but some of them do. We meet a lot of organisations who are enthusiastic about embracing internet-era ways of working, providing digital services, and finding an internet-era CTO. Yet they don’t expect that new leader to build up their ability to make things. Their hope is that by getting smarter in user research, design, procurement, supplier management, and use of off-the-shelf tools, they will get all the benefits on offer. That’s perpetuated by a lot of voices implying (or outright saying) that digital transformation is a thing you buy, not a thing you do. ...

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. In any large public or private sector organisation, it’s common to see “IT spending” given special status on financial balance sheets. There are clear historical reasons for that being common practice, and if that’s what’s necessary to make things work smoothly in the organisation, there’s nothing wrong with it as an approach. It’s certainly better to know how much you spend on technology than not to. ...

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. Often when we talk to clients about the situation they’re in, we find a tangle of technology. We’ve come to refer to it as “spaghetti”. “Technology spaghetti” is what you get when your technology, data, commercial arrangements and operating processes get tangled up. It’s not just a problem of having too many pieces in the puzzle, it’s also that the interconnections between them are hard to understand and manage. ...

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. Every organisation needs to be good at technology. That’s why we always tell our clients they need an internet-era CTO. But what does that really mean? What does it look like? An internet-era CTO is able to understand what should be hard and what should be easy, and stay up to date with how that’s changing. Doing experimental data analysis (even on lots of data) is pretty easy, fixing how you manage data responsibly is hard. Taking credit card payments is now easy, scaling to handle a serious Black Friday surge is hard. ...

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. A lot of our work at Public Digital is about helping our clients understand what an internet-era CTO is, what skills and experience they should have, and how to hire one. Why hire an internet-era CTO Internet-era organisations need to be in control of their own technology destinies. Everyone in a leadership position needs to have a sense of what should be easy and what should be hard. No-one should automatically switch off when technology becomes part of the conversation. But you also need strong technology leaders who can make sure the whole organisation is good at technology. ...

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. While guest editing last week’s issue of our newsletter, I posted a summer reading list for Internet-era CTOs. It seemed to go down well with newsletter readers, so we thought it might be nice to re-post it on the blog today. Things were a little quieter in the PD office this week, now that the school summer holidays have started. On the assumption that you’ll have some time to sit somewhere comfortable and read a book this summer, here’s the reading list. ...

The UK Government has made strides toward a digital evolution. Thanks to the spending controls and service re-design introduced by the Government Digital Service as part of its digital transformation effort, £3.56bn were saved between 2012-2015. Still, Government must look to remove structural, operational, and cultural barriers to technology adoption to experience the numerous benefits of a digital transformation. As Yvonne Gallagher, Director of Digital Value for Money, at the UK National Audit Office put it: “We need to get to the bottom of what transformation is to manage it well. Sometimes it’s called transformation but it actually means cost-cutting.” ...

In addition to my keynote at Agile India 2018 I led a more focused session on cloud security as a precursor to my full day cloud security workshop. I focused the first part of the talk on understanding the change that cloud migration represents for many large organisations. I talked about status quo bias where risks of what we have today are never considered as serious as the risks of what’s new, even if the new ways of doing things creates new opportunities. A shift in technology requires a commitment to changing culture. ...