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This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. Twice a year the leaders of international financial institutions and representatives of world governments are joined by a range of other attendees to set the priorities of two of the most important parts of the world economy: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Emily and I joined the Spring Meetings this year in Washington DC, taking the opportunity to meet with many of our friends, clients and collaborators. It was a pleasure to connect with those involved in our work on public finance reform, and others who are working on digital government initiatives that attract international finance. ...

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. One of our principles at Public Digital is starting small to go faster. This means delivering something quickly, even if this means on a smaller scale, so that you can identify its strengths and weaknesses at the earliest possible stage. It follows our approach that strategy is delivery, so implementation should begin early. Start with good enough, not perfect, and then get better before you scale up. ...

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. I was lucky to be able to attend the Code for America summit in Washington DC a couple of weeks ago. It was great to be able to gather with people in person after all this time, and reconnect with the community. The event felt diverse and exciting. That’s so important because after the past few years, everyone needs some fresh energy and to reconnect with a bigger vision. ...

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. It was co-written with Emily Middleton. This month James and Emily were at COP26 at Open UK’s Open Tech for Sustainability event. Here they write about five of their takeaways from the conference, and what’s next. Emily and James at COP26 We believe the climate crisis and inequality are the greatest challenges of our time. As a purpose-driven organisation, Public Digital needs to understand how our work – and the digital transformation agendas of our clients – can help and hinder addressing these challenges. ...

This article first appeared on the Public Digital blog. A lot has been written about applying a service management lens to running modern services. The importance of building skills and funding teams rather than projects is pretty well understood. It’s less common that we talk about the provision of corporate applications, particularly those which are off-the-shelf commodities – things like providing Office365 or Slack or Zoom to your organisation. It’s the things everyone’s been doing a lot more of during the pandemic. ...

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. ...