Blog posts

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. ...

For the inaugural FWD50 conference in Ottawa, Canada, I was part of an expert group laying out the big picture of digital government. My presentation focused on security and leadership, drawing out four lessons: Take responsibility Focus on outcomes Empower teams Change the environment Find more on the FWD50 website.

One of the factors many organisations (including governments) agonise over when deciding whether to use public cloud services is whether or not services and data can be stored “off shore”. It’s not a topic we tend to discuss very well. “Off shore” usually means stored in data centres in other countries but can sometimes mean in facilities within the originating country but operated by foreign-owned companies. For UK organisations looking at infrastructure as a service that conversation is dissipating now that the three biggest players all have UK data centres, but switching to UK data centres is really just dodging the issue rather than looking at how and why decisions are made.It was great to hear Ian McCormack from NCSC addressing offshoring in his spot in the keynote at the AWS Public Sector Summit in DC recently. ...

A couple of weeks back I made my first visit to Ukraine, to keynote the (outdoor!) ITEM conference in Dnipro. It was one of those trips where you don’t really feel like you see the place. Due to flight troubles (the culmination of many frustrations with Ukrainian Airlines) I arrived at my hotel in Dnipro at 3am, and departed at 5.30 the next morning. That, combined with delivering two talks, hosting two Q&A sessions, being interviewed for two different video shows, and being on a panel meant the whole day is a bit hazy in my memory, but a few things stand out. ...