Presentation by Sarah Prag on bringing her experience at the Government Digital Service (GDS) into local government. Presented at Local Digital Today on 14 November 2014.
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Our time together today
My personal observations
Respect for what has been achieved
Honesty about the scale of the challenges
Interested in your views and experiences
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A shared opportunity: culture change
From projects to services
- Focused on user needs
- Continuously improved
- Owned and managed
- “Change is the new BAU”
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A shared opportunity: approaches
The value of Discovery
Multidisciplinary teams
An iterative approach
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A local advantage
You are closer to your users!
And to each other (colleagues, partners)
Opportunities for
- First hand insights
- Guerrilla testing
- Holistic service design, looking at the whole
citizen
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A shared challenge: leadership
Bottom up is not enough
A “digital” team or strategy is not enough
Needs strong leadership
The central gov approach
The local gov approach?
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The delivery challenge: scale
So. Many. Services.
The central gov approach
The local gov approach?
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The delivery challenge: sites vs services
And then there’s the website(s)
Site first, services plugged in?
Services first, site later?
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The delivery challenge: legacy
Legacy technology
Legacy suppliers
Many services in each authority
Fragmentation – field day for suppliers
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The delivery challenge: specialist skills
Lost or down-played
Fishing in the same pond?
- Opportunity around local talent/market?
- Or do shared frameworks like Gcloud mean we
are all competing?
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The prognosis?
Do I think the GDS/central gov approach to service
transformation can and should be applied in local gov?
YES
In terms of:
- Attitude & culture change
- Discovery & user insight & citizen centred
- Whole-service design
- Whole-citizen thinking
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The prognosis?
Do I think the GDS/central gov approach to service
transformation can and should be applied in local gov?
NOT SO SURE
In terms of Delivery
- Number & variety of services in one org
- Every local authority doing its own (building or
commissioning)
- Funding time bomb
20. Taking GDS experience into local
government
@sarahprag
Sarah Prag
14th November 2014
Editor's Notes
I’m a delivery person, my background is in delivering innovative or transformative digital services (eBay, BBC podcasting, iPlayer, GOV.UK, Register to Vote)
GDS
Interest in capability building and scaling the approach
I’ve spent the last 9 months working with local gov, in Bristol, and meeting lots of people at events etc
I’m about delivery, more than policy or strategy
SHARED/SIMILAR OPPORUNITY
(Yes, cheaper, but because they are more efficient, so valuable staff time can be spent with the most vulnerable or most complex cases).
The need to move from projects to services.
From delivering change through project teams (& suppliers) to designing, delivering and continuously improving services.
Kit Collingwood
AND WHAT THIS MEANS IN TERMS OF CULTURE CHANGE
Holistic
The role of the Service Manager
Change as BAU, not the responsibility of a “business change” team or PMO
The value of doing Discovery – Bristol
Multidisciplinary teams, across silos. empowerment. insight.
Research/testing more immediate, affordable.
Access to front line staff. All in the same building/town.
Opportunity to look at their needs holistically, across services. (Challenging, but more possible than in central gov)
Need strong leadership from people who understand the opportunity and are realistic about the challenges and how best to meet them.
So many services - loads to manage at once… or a very long roadmap. (Bristol – 50 in 12 months?!)
GDS - 25 exemplars in 2 years (March 2015). Challenging. With hit squad & mandate etc etc
What might help?
clustering them?
Buying rather than building solutions? (Need a more sophisticated market first? And still need to integrate.)
Sharing the load?! Borrowing/buying from each other?!
Central gov depts got their website for “free” - GOV.UK.
Plus also the style guide, user authentication, other tools in the pipeline.
Local gov needing to update/transform their whole digital offer - both the end to end services and the information that sits around them.
do services first, with new front end, then weave it all together later (Bristol)
or overhaul the website, then plug redesigned services into it (West Berks? Manchester?)
Central also has this challenge
But usually a team is working on one or a few related services, with a small number of suppliers, for whom they are are significant customer
Local: multiplied across many services. More suppliers. Less buying power/clout (unless you club together?)
Same skills drain as central
But
Fishing in the same (still small) pond for skills/suppliers
Perhaps less so than central gov (local pool) but via shared frameworks (GCloud etc) so it is one big pond really
Yes - in terms of attitude, culture change, whole-service thinking, whole-citizen thinking, Discovery/understanding users & their needs and designing services around them.
Not sure - in terms of delivery.
Each council working, alone, to transform dozens or even hundreds of services, before the money runs out?
Building or even commissioning your own solutions?
Need a different model for local gov? Based on same principles as central - but a model that can deliver thousands of services in hundreds of locations in organisations that may not yet have the skills and confidence to do it?