Blog posts

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. ...

Delivering a keynote for Agile India’s Digital Transformation day, I reprised my “Revolution NOT evolution: UK Government’s digital transformation journey” talk capturing my early reflections after leaving GDS. Starting with a potted history of the UK Government Digital Service, I drew out a set of reflections: Starting with a website let us get close to lots of users, really quickly Digital is a chance to reclaim values and history The problem is rarely tech / The solution is never (just) tech I particularly focused on the importance of groups of allies in driving transformation, calling out GDS’ predecessors and broad global network, but also stressing the importance of providing leadership to shape and direct what can otherwise be loose networks into powerful movements. ...

The more we live online, the more vulnerable we are to asymmetric attacks and bad actors. Where once physical limitations kept us safe, the digital nature of the Internet lets attackers scale, adapt, and hide. What’s needed is more than awareness or vigilance—it’s antifragility. Resilience is the best defense a country can deploy, as this talk will explain. I shared a few stories and thoughts at the first FWD50 conference in Ottawa on what resilience looks like in practice, the importance of focusing on users and simplicity, and the vital role and unique opportunity governments have to improve matters. ...