I went along to a SOCITM South West event in Exeter last Friday where local authority IT managers were encouraged and challenged to think about the role of ICT in the new world of budget cuts and the big society; specifically, they were asked to try and come up with some possible ‘quick win’ project ideas.
It was really interesting to sit in and get a bit of a view from the ground, but also especially to hear from Jos Creese, SOCITM president, who very clearly and quickly articulated a compelling vision for the central role of ICT in the transformational/cultural change in local service delivery being demanded by the new government. It’s worth seeking out some of his chat if you can (I can’t immediately track down anything from Friday).
I think the final set of project suggestions put forward by the group are still being written but I thought I’d briefly share three of my ideas to encourage innovation – which, perhaps unsurprisingly, met with a mixed reception! These were more about trying to get people thinking in a different way, though, which I think is always a useful thing to do, even if it’s just so that you can dismiss the approach from a position of information rather than prejudice…
- Contribute to an open source project
There’s so much that could be gained by doing this that it seems probably the easiest of easy wins to me. Council staff would increase their understanding of open source software, and probably their trust of it; they would learn a lot about remote working, different development approaches, collaborative problem-solving, rapid iterations etc etc – and all this whilst building something that could be of tangible benefit to their organisation. Think a useful facility in a CMS would be the ability to identify files that need to be tagged for compliance with a government risk management scheme? Why not build it yourself?
(By the way, the biggest objection to this seemed to be ‘but people will be cross that we’re not in the council building doing our busywork’. If that’s the case, I couldn’t help but wonder, how are you able to happily take a day out for an event in Exeter?) - Develop a Spotify-style/apps approach and bundle up your service in easy, bitesize chunks (maybe sell it, too?)
This idea seemed to be seen as one or several leaps of logic too far, but at the same time I think it’s quite likely to actually come about, possibly even as policy. Have a look, for example, at some of the TSB funding streams, or the Big Society Network‘s talk of a ‘big society store’.Anyway, in short, I’d love to see what local government could come up with in terms of simple apps to enable their community to do things – taking common points of interaction with the council, or useful data that is available, and packaging it up in a simple, useful, accessible tool. I don’t know, it could be providing alerts on planning applications in a given postcode to landlords, or an organagram builder for community groups to self-organise and register their membership.I think there’s lots about this that is going to be seen as desirable in the near future: the ‘hyperlocal’ approach, putting speed and simplicity first, getting discrete things done rather than trying to build an uber-system. I also think it’d be a great exercise in training council staff about user-centric design. Also, a lot of this is just common sense with the web as it is now (for example, I did find myself cringing at one point when we saw a presentation of a workflow module for a £300k contact management system for reporting of local problems – you just think ‘this isn’t necessary or easy. Just use MySociety’s FixMyStreet already’).
- Invert your firewall
OK, so this one is a little flippant, but I’d certainly be interested to see what would happen if you shut down access to all the enormous internal management systems and opened up Facebook, Twitter and YouTube instead. Might we find that social media can be a more human and quicker way to run large parts of customer contact? Might spending a little more time in places where residents actually converse, rather than staring at workflows and system messages, have an influence on the way staff talk to people? I don’t know but, like I say, trying and finding out is better than assuming.
Hi Ben
it was good to meet you last Friday, and I’ve only just worked out which person you were.
Your ideas are all interesting. I think that your thinking is way ahead of most of the people in the room at that session, however, most of whom haven’t heard of Spotify. This might explain the lukewarm response to some of them
The audience at Socitm events is mainly people at CIO or just below level, and as such they are supposed to be thinking strategically, which is why Jos’s talk was the most important thing on that day. There’s some mismatch between content and audience which Socitm is attempting to rectify at the moment.
A more forward thinking bunch of people (who are generally at a lower level and more practically and tech-focused) can be found at any one of a series of LocalGovCamps around the country.
Martin
Ben,
Some really interesting suggestions. I think that there is a huge opportunity to rebalance the public sector’s use of open source desktop apps and operating systems to not only drive down price but also demonstrate that there is a lot of very useful stuff around.
Couple this with the smart use of both public and Government cloud services (once they start appearing) and things could dramatically change for the better.
A very thought provoking idea on reversing the firewall. Given the drive for transparency and the opportunities now afforded by mature social media services it would be interesting to see the effect of opening up use of these resources – even if only to improve productivity in the workplace.
I’m not sure if Jos’s talk has a transcript but would be interested to see/hear one if available.
Bill
Hi both,
Thanks for the comments – always appreciated.
@Martin I think most people would like being told that their thinking is ‘way ahead’, so thanks for that, but there’s always that nagging doubt that it’s just a generational thing (I start feeling on the other side of it when, for example, I’m naturally inclined to be grumpy and dismissive about the iPad)
I do think, though, that there’s something about the particular cocktail of ‘government’, ‘web’ and ‘strategy’, especially at the moment, that’s going to see some pretty big changes, and pretty quickly. Your point about more forward-thinking people being at a lower level is a really interesting one; there’s a definite trend (as in pattern, not fad), particularly in the world of public-facing web app builds, for things like agile development, open source projects, developers being more than just executors of other people’s system designs etc – basically, reducing the gap between ‘makers’ and ‘consumers’, with strategy being more like course-correction along the way rather than plotting the platonic route before setting out. I can’t see this *not* being increasingly the way of government web stuff – especially given the politics of the Big Society, which seem to be pushing to go even further in that direction. NESTA’s ‘Digital Disrupters’ event on Monday (http://www.nesta.org.uk/areas_of_work/networked_society/assets/events/reboot_britain_-_digital_disrupters_from_the_margins_to_the_mainstream) confirmed a lot of this in my mind – lots of talk of ‘asking for forgiveness, not permission’ and drawing on ‘doers’ sooner.
Somewhere down the line, someone might need to start joining dots again but in the medium-term I’d expect to see a lot more of people with front-line problems being given autonomy to get something done quickly and independently. No idea how that’ll reconcile with all this CoCo risk management stuff though :s – I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at that point.
@Bill thanks, nice to know it’s not just people on the ‘outside’ thinking about this stuff – not least because it puts a valuable sense-check on the tendency for suppliers to talk themselves into a line that suits them (a conversation exclusively between people who agree with each other is usually dangerous).
I’m very interested by how we define ‘better’ – I think that might end up being a key question, and one that actually becomes a completely integrated part of any initiative (‘we’ve done this. It’s saved us money and you time/it’s improved quality of service/it’s enabled more people to get involved/it’s increased our xyz rating – but is it better?’). Another trend that looks likely to continue is that towards the ‘hyperlocal’ (our systems are now big enough to be small again), which might start changing the way we evaluate things. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this…
Anyway, that’s enough from me! Bill, it sounds like Martin might be the man to ask about a transcript of Jos’s talk… anything doing on that front, Martin? (I hope so; I like it when conversation produces useful outcomes…)