PD Newsletter #84: a person-centred healthcare record - pipe dream or inevitability?

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Join us next Thursday 18 April for our PD Session on the person-centred healthcare record - pipe dream or inevitability? 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? PD’s Chris Fleming will be joined by four experts in digital healthcare to explore the commercial, policy, and architectural changes that would be needed to achieve this change at scale in the NHS.

It was announced this week that founder Mike Bracken will join the expert panel informing Labour’s plans for government around closing the tax gap by improving tax compliance and modernising HMRC’s offer.

Rosemary and Emma

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Latest from Public Digital

🤖 Events

To create a more responsive government we have to reinvent procurement. Our friends at Curshaw Commercial are hosting the inaugural AI Commercial Lifecycle and Procurement Summit 2024 on 26 June in London. Register to attend.

👋 Past events

Our last PD Session on transformation in federalised governments is available to watch on our channel. Sign up for updates on future PD Sessions.

Last month our International Team (pictured below) attended the ITC4D conference in Accra, Ghana. We were thrilled to host a discussion on reimagining digital transformation through digital public goods as well as facilitate a session on Scaling Design Thinking in Africa’s Public Sector.

Ways of working

🛳️ A compelling case from Matt Knight for why user research is always worth it, as demonstrated by the story of GDS transforming the Electronic Vehicle License back in 2014. It captures why skipping the user research process can feel deceptively risk-free: “Cutting user research is like cutting the number of lifeboats you include in a ship design: you’ll save some time and money in the immediate short-term, but the chance of a disaster after that increases significantly.”

🏆 We love this post from Lindsey at the FT on developing product principles. It’s hard to make principles this succinct and bold: for instance, the principle of “provably brilliant” combines both ambition and measurement. The details on how to embed them culturally are helpful too.

🛠️ Tremendous stuff from Cap Watkins on the value of a ‘boring designer’, a shorthand for a designer who cares more about the product and the user than about showing off their talents. “The boring designer realizes that the glory isn't in putting their personal stamp on everything they touch. Most of the time, it's about leaving no trace of themselves."

🕵️‍♂️ A practical summary by Exponential-e on the lessons all companies can learn from last year’s British Library cyber attack. They point to the reality that where the risk of cyber crime is ever-present, being prepared for an attack means having the ability to mitigate the worst effects and restore systems as quickly as possible if - and when - the worst happens.

🚀 Performance is access: a nerdy deepdive by Tammy Everts into setting performance budgets for websites, setting out exactly how to interrogate what is making your website slow, why it matters, and what you can do about it.

State of technology

🤖 More AI chatbot misadventures, providing hard truths for politicians who might like to believe that tech will save them from doing the hard work of fixing services. This time it was a New York City business chatbot which advised citizens to break the law. At Services Week 2024 GDS’ Josh Davey shared how gov.uk have been experimenting with a similar chatbot and what they’ve learned about accuracy and user trust. It’s a thoughtful approach and well worth a listen. Their testing revealed that “71% of users trusted the answers that were given even if the answers that we gave were incorrect”. It chimes with a warning that scientists are showing too much trust in AI, with troubling implications for their research.

💣 Will the AI bubble pop? This unforgiving takedown of the AI boom by Ed Zitron makes a compelling case in the affirmative. “If you stop saying things like "AI could do" or "AI will do," you have to start asking what AI can do, and the answer is...not that much, and not much more in the future.” It attacks both the fanciful sales pitches of AI’s proponents, and the media who so often fail to properly interrogate them. Adds credence to Rachel Coldicutt’s succinct argument for why we must resist the AI hype.

👁️‍🗨️ A long read by Rest of World about the spread of facial recognition software and its implications for public dissent. It takes a deep dive into the rise in facial recognition technology by law enforcement across Russia, India and Iran, and the new danger it brings to participation in mass demonstrations, a form of protest which used to offer dissenters anonymity.

🌐 Insightful stuff to be found in this webinar on digital public infrastructure (DPI) as a tool for gender equality, organised as part of the 68th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women. As outlined in this report by UCL’s IIPP, infrastructure is never politically neutral: Its success relies on conscious efforts at maximising value for everyone.

🛒 On the topic of tech hype, Amazon announced that it is ditching ‘Just Walk Out’ technology in Amazon Fresh stores. This technology which allowed shoppers to skip check-out appeared futuristically seamless but actually relied on remote Amazon employees using live data from cameras and sensors to ensure accurate checkouts - a system which presumably cost more than the hype was worth.

UK election watch

🏛️ Nesta’s James Plunkett imagines the work and scope of a Local Government Digital Service. The founding of the Government Digital Service in 2011 brought new energy and excitement to the table. Are there new public digital institutions that could do the same in 2024? Useful reading for going beyond the imaginary might be found in the Institutional Architecture Lab’s guide to designing new institutions.

📚 Lots of buzz lately around the missions-driven government, a concept articulated in Mariana Mazzucato’s book and currently being trialled by the London Borough of Camden in collaboration with UCL’s IIPP. “At its core, a mission-oriented approach is about turning big challenges into concrete goals that catalyse engagement, innovation and investment from across ministries and across sectors.” It’s promising to see the Labour Party’s inclusion of ‘Missions’ within their manifesto and a call for the end of ‘sticking plaster politics’.

Digital government

♀️ This report by Pollicy on unlocking the power in gender data looks at Afro-feminist approaches to centering gender data in data governance, drawing on research across four African countries. It proposes “the intersection of gender data and data governance as one of the direct routes to creating data ecosystems that are free from gender bias.”

💧Start with service for citizens: “Plumbing is absolutely necessary, but you don’t start talking about plumbing. You start talking about water as the service.” A2i’s Anir Chowdhury outlines how Bangladesh are using digital public infrastructure to transform the lives of citizens.

👏 Setting up audacious projects for success in Edo State: Osahon Okoh reflects on four years of service in the Edo State Government.

🎙️ And finally, listen to PD’s Tom Loosemore talking design systems and digital government institution building on British Columbia’s The Exchange Podcast.