👋🏽👋🏻👋🏾 Hello, welcome.

Be more radical, to be less risky. In the Radical How, produced in collaboration with Nesta, we make the case for governments radically changing how they work. As our friend Jen Pahlka (political advisor and founder of Code America) writes in her response to the report, “the old ways of working don't work. The changes we need are bigger and deeper than those we've made, not incrementally, but radically.”

Elsewhere at PD, we’re extremely proud to be working with the city of Kyiv, Ukraine to design critical digital services for the city’s residents during a time of crisis, with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Hear from James Anderson about Bloomberg’s work to support Kyiv and their mission to help Mayors innovate.

And finally, a huge thank you to the wonderful Amy McNichol for all her work on the Public Digital newsletter. She’s collated and written 42 newsletters since March 2020 and is handing the baton to me, Rosemary, who’ll be writing our newsletters with Emma (our newsletter founder in 2018) as editor.

With the newsletter under new authorship, we’ll be looking for ways to find our own voice: keep your eyes peeled for our feedback survey.

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Latest from Public Digital

👋🏿 PD Sessions

The person-centred healthcare record - pipe dream or inevitability?
Thursday 18th April 6pm-7:30pm GMT / 1pm-2.30pm EDT in person or on Zoom.

Successive administrations have tried and failed to implement a person-centred healthcare record, but can it be done? Join us to hear four digital healthcare experts debate the question of how interoperable access to patient data could or should be delivered, looking at political, commercial, and technical considerations.

Sign up for updates on future PD Sessions

🌐 Past events

Ways of working

🔍 We’ve been writing a lot about service design and problem-solving on the PD blog, including this piece on how adopting a prototype mindset, even if you’re not a designer, can help you make less risky decisions faster. Also check out doing user research to inform strategy by Alistair Ruff and Katherine Wastell, and why leaders must inspire with truthful narratives by Dave Rogers.

📝 We love this from Giles Turnbull (edited by Amy) on writing weeknotes. “The goal isn’t so much writing a weeknote, but becoming the sort of team that habitually writes weeknotes.” Expanding on his seminal Agile Comms Handbook, this serves as a detailed guide for anyone who has never done weeknotes before, but wants to try.

🌱 Great stuff from Andrew Duckworth on why it’s ok to start with a stakeholder’s solution, as long as you don’t stop there. “Rather than avoid stakeholder ideas, lean into it and make it part of a process…. Use that process to challenge, highlight risks and approaches to test those ideas.” It helps to think of a stakeholder solution as a first hypothesis and go from there.

💡 This fab piece by GDS design lead Kuba Bartwicki explains why AI product teams should hire designers. It cuts through the hype and argues that for any AI to bring value to users, it needs to adopt design thinking and user-centredness. It’s got a lot in common with this Product Manager’s view of AI by Dilyana Evtimova about turning ideas into AI use cases. Both authors preach a message we stand by: “Start with solving a problem, not with building a model”.

📊 A very practical guide from Rachel Muston on the process and planning of an organisation diagnostic study from the IT strategy team at ESDC. This methodology is similar to our own when looking at an organisation’s operating model & culture.

State of technology

🚨 It’s becoming clear that AI-driven audio deepfakes, like this one which impersonated London Mayor Sadiq Kahn, will form a major threat in to elections in 2024 and will require newsrooms to be extra vigilant. While the UK media frenzy around Kate’s edited Mother’s Day photo isn’t a story about AI, it demonstrates how quickly public trust can be undermined when AI use is becoming prevalent.

👩‍🦰 While the biggest story in AI bias came from the news of Google’s Gemini overcorrecting its racial bias to produce some problematic results, an UNESCO study carried out in honour of International Women’s Day has also, unsurprisingly, revealed a gender bias in large language models, as well as evidence of racial and homophobic stereotyping. It’s a troubling testament to the fact that tech design is always political.

🕊️ Among all the doom and gloom, there is a promising trend of emerging regulatory work in the domain of AI, like the work of Fairly Trained, a non-profit that certifies generative AI companies for training data practices that respect creators’ rights, as well as talk of draft US legislation on measuring AI’s environmental impacts. We loved this TechCrunch interview with our network member, Fran, on how AI can be made more responsible.

⚠️ For those, like the UK’s deputy PM, arguing AI is a ‘silver bullet’ to reducing headcounts and funding tax cuts, the fate of AirCanada’s chatbot should serve as a cautionary tale. The AI “experiment” chatbot misled a customer into purchasing full-price flight tickets, resulting in an expensive court case.

🌈 New research on the digital divide and its impact on LGBTI communities and organisations, revealing the barriers they face in accessing digital spaces, as well as the value of these spaces as a forum for connecting and advocating. Recommendations include the need for more data collection on LGBTI experiences of the digital divide, with a greater focus on its gendered components.

UK election watch

🗳️ Like our own Radical How report, there’s lots being published right now in anticipation of the UK general election and the excitement of a likely new government with fresh ideas. Like this set of recommendations for a new Labour government to better, cheaper, more accessible public services, and these recommendations on digital inclusion by Promising Trouble. The latter chimes in with why Jakob Nielsen is wrong about the accessibility movement having failed.

📰 In a similar vein, PD network member and data campaigner Jeni Tennison wrote in the Guardian last month about how a new government will have to ignore self-serving tech companies and engage a sceptical public instead.

💰 This article makes the case for why giving the NHS more money for digital won’t get us anywhere; As Chris Fleming argues, the NHS needs sustained, predictable funding, not sporadic financial booms. Which is why Jeremy Hunt’s announcement of £3.4 billion of new investment in NHS digitisation in the Spring Budget might provoke mixed emotions.

Digital government

🇨🇦 In Canada, the ArriveCan controversy continues. An audit of work on the application (launched during the pandemic to collect contact and health information from travellers) cites a “glaring disregard for basic management and contracting practices”. But those familiar with federal government digital service delivery say the audit does not tackle the systemic reasons for that failure. While Paul Craig goes deep on his experience of procurement, Sarah Niedoba and Laura Chang of Code for Canada call for a radical change to the way the Federal Government hires and trains public servants. We couldn’t agree more.

📋 A successful story of digital service delivery in this case study from Nava and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on implementing a multilingual application process for securing paid family and medical leave. The secret to success? A content design first approach and cross-team collaboration.

🌍 As part of PD’s International Show the Thing series, we’ve heard from digital government teams around the world, including the Department of Cyber Security and Digital Solutions in Nova Scotia, whose work on improved digital onboarding services has helped address the province’s healthcare gap. We were also lucky enough to hear from a digital team in Madagascar about the government’s integrated multi-channel portal for public services, which includes in-person help desks to serve the 80% of the Malagasy population who don’t have access to the internet.

🩺 We’ve been working on a piece of research commissioned by a government team in Africa into the use of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems in African countries, and have written about the conditions for success in their implementation. Like most digital services in public health delivery, successful EMR systems require sustained investment, a clear intended outcome, and heavy involvement from clinical professionals.