PD Newsletter #92: Looking back over 2024

👋🏽👋🏻👋🏾 Hello, welcome.

2024 was an eventful year for Public Digital and for our friends and colleagues in the global digital space. We couldn’t imagine a better way to end the year than seeing test-and-learn being placed at the heart of the government’s plans for reform.

In this special edition we look back over the year that was, as well as the pieces we read which inspired us.

We’d like to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to our wonderful readers for being with us in 2024.

Rosemary and Gurpreet

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Introducing our guest editor

Gurpreet joined PD this year from a background of leading user-centred design in government, defence and security teams. She also helped grow a digital consultancy over several years, building digital capabilities with MOD and the Royal Navy.

🌈 My happy place? Helping leaders and teams find their way through the tribulations of transformation through creative problem-solving. 🌈

Events

We are proud to be co-hosting the Future of Government Awards, together with UNDP and AWS, championing digital practitioners, teams and leaders who are leveraging technology to transform the public sector.
🗳️ Nominations close: 20 January 2025
🥇 Online ceremony: 20 March 2025
Learn more about how to nominate or to attend the awards.

Get your tickets for Data Bites #52, our events series highlighting the brilliant work done by government and public sector institutions in harnessing data for public good
📅 When: Wednesday 6 Feburary, 6pm GMT
📍 Where: Broadway House or online (YouTube live stream)
Watch our last session from Wednesday 4 December

🌍 Public Digital in 2024 🌏

2024 was a big year: Elections in more than 80 countries, a new missions-driven government in the UK, a global cyber outage, and lots of high-impact work in the digital space. We look back at what defined each month of 2024 for us, as well as what we were reading.

January

✉️ A national spotlight on the Post Office Horizon scandal

Our January newsletter was a special edition looking at the story of human tragedy caused by faulty computer systems and staggering bureaucratic failure. The inquiry is still ongoing, with perhaps disappointing outcomes, but the lessons for government leaders are stark: As Andrew wrote in the New European, the factors behind Horizon are not unique. Despite the presence of bad actors, Mike wrote in January, this was a story of systemic and organisational failure, caused in part by a “yawning gap in knowledge and curiosity around technology.”

What we read:
💻 How to make your organisation’s IT user-centred, Dave Rogers
🧩 Why it’s ok to start with a stakeholder solution, Andrew Duckworth
🏷️ Bookmarks: free resources to help you write good content, Iain Broome

February

✍️ We published the Radical How

We argued we should radically change how we do change, advocating for a test-and-learn approach to policy in government. Jen Pahlka called it “the most consequential thinking in government today”. The same approach also formed a lot of commentary in 2024, including articles like bridging the strategy/execution gap and Itamar Gilad on escaping the vicious cycle of plan and execute. Public Digital has since written a Radical How for Canada, viewing the country’s ArriveCan scandal and its Covid Alert success through the lens of these ways of working.

What we read:
🛠️ A practical framework for org design by either/org
🔍 The process of an organisation diagnostic study, Rachel Muston, ESDC
📌 Developing product principles at the FT, Lindsey Jayne

March

🇺🇦 We celebrated our work with the city of Kyiv

With support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, we’ve been working with the Government of Kyiv in Ukraine this year to advance their digital transformation and strengthen government delivery to help meet the needs of citizens at a time of adversity. It’s work we are immensely proud to do. Read about our work transforming how services are presented on the Kyiv government’s website.

What we read:
📝 Doing weeknotes, Giles Turnbull
📐 Adopting a prototype mindset, Alistair Ruff,
💸 A complete guide to web performance budgets, Tammy Everts

April

🗂️ We hosted PD sessions: The person-centred healthcare record, exploring how a fully interoperable ‘patient passport’ might be delivered. Watch the recording.

In the autumn the new government committed to this kind of major digital technology reform in the NHS, but Chris and our network member Matt wrote about why that’s hard: The reasons are myriad, but the headlines include low standards of interoperability, the complexity of medical data, and a ‘let the software market decide’ assumption in NHSE. It’s encouraging to hear voices in government recently advocating for prioritising interoperability, advising against buying software which doesn’t integrate with the NHS App.

What we read:
🧭 Wardley maps made simple, Marcus Guest
🌱 Using guiding principles, Vicki Riley
❤️ Tools for empathy and inclusion in UX design, Letitia Rohaise

May

🇳🇬 We celebrated the work of Edo State’s Digital Unit

We started working with Edo State in 2023 to help them establish a government digital agency, with support from the Gates Foundation. The agency aims to improve digital service delivery and data-driven decision-making across the Nigerian state. This year its team has been working on the prototype of oneEdo - a single digital front door to all Edo State Government services.

What we read:
🏋️‍♂️ How to prioritise your services and your effort, Katherine Wastell
🧠 Five habits of innovative local councils, Eddie Copeland
🧾 Using AI to generate web forms from PDFs, Tim Paul

June

🚀 UK general election: mission mania

2024 was a year of elections. The build up to this year’s UK election featured much talk around missions-driven government, a concept articulated by economist Mariana Mazzucato. Recently, the new government has written about its six missions and why it should be judged against these milestones: “We will not get everything right... But accountability is vital”. Not everyone is convinced: As Carnegie UK comments: “simply saying you have changed your approach to government doesn’t make it so.” Earlier this year, Public Digital worked with the Future Governance Forum to explore how mission-driven government might work in practice at a local government level, and in July we hosted Town Hall 2030 exploring that idea.

What we read:
📚 Josie Cluer’s mission-driven government reading list.
💭 “The power of asking: “What have we already tried?”, Pavel Samsonov
🕊️ How to create anti-oppressive content, Ettie Bailey

July

🙌 The expansion of DSIT

Following the election, the new UK government announced the Department for Science, Technology, and Innovation as the new home for digital transformation in government, representing a bold move to make digital a priority and perhaps a new, positive direction for GDS. We were very proud to see our former partner Emily appointed to lead the design of the new digital centre. Read about how we work with governments.

⚠️ The CrowdStrike outage

Also in July: A faulty software update from US cyber security provider CrowdStrike affected 8.5 million devices and triggered global chaos. In our special edition newsletter, Dai wrote about how outages like this are a ‘when’ not an ‘if’ problem, and Dave reflected on the likelihood of accidental technology failure. In December, Dai was quoted in the Standard warning against a monopoly of IT supply chains controlling essential infrastructure: “In all industries, Government should see the value of more competition in their supply chains”. CrowdStrike and other cyber incidents this year have helped inform PD's own approach to cyber.

What we read:
🌟 Learnings from conducting user research for an AI service, Truly Capell
🚗 10 tips for creating an agile product roadmap, Roman Pichler
💬 Using persuasion to spur lasting organisational change, HBR

August

🤖 A whole lot of AI hype

AI was inevitably the hottest of topics in 2024, and the UK’s new administration sparked a conversation over the summer about AI use in the public sector, inviting excellent takes from Jeni Tennison (let’s think about outcomes for users, not just outputs), the Ada Lovelace Institute (AI is no quick win), and Rachel Coldicutt (let’s be wary of techno-optimism). The news late last year that Whitehall departments are failing to record uses of AI on a designated register highlights the need for better ways of ensuring AI transparency in government.

What we read about AI in 2024:
ℹ️ Informative: Things we learnt about LLMs in 2024, Simon Willison. AI’s environmental impacts, Hugging Face. How governance of high-tech sectors can inform regulation of AI, Ada Lovelace Institute.
🤔 Healthy scepticism: Why do more than 80% of AI projects fail?, RAND. AI and the cost of failure, Tom Loosemore. FOMO is not a strategy, Rachel Coldicutt

September

🎓 We began work with the University of Exeter

We have been helping them to understand how CRM tech and data can support a service model and play a part in a better experience for students. Read our year note to find out more about our work in 2024.

What we read:
🕵️‍♂️ Introducing Bellingcat’s online investigations toolkit
💯 A scoping and shaping for success playbook, John Cutler
🌻 What are the possibilities of a good digital society? The British Academy

October

🌐 We went to the Global DPI Summit

At the summit in Cairo we talked about why metrics matter in DPI and how Africa’s economy can help to enable DPI adoption. DPI and its relationship with digital markets also featured heavily at the Global Technology Summit Innovation Dialogue we attended in Bangalore. Also in the DPI space, this year our friend David Eaves launched the DPI map, designed to provide a clear, data-informed picture of developments in DPI across the globe. Its findings have been promising, revealing a greater number of use cases than predicted.

What we read:
💼 Making the business case for service design, Lou Downe
🔥 What we mean when we say ‘be bold’, Tom Loosemore
💕 Embracing the emotions of digital transformation, Gurpreet Sehmi

November

🍪 We re-homed Data Bites

This monthly meet-up showcases interesting data projects in and around the public sector, Originating at the Institute for Government, Data Bites found a new home at Public Digital this year, where we’ve been growing our approach to data. Among the four brilliant speakers at our first event in November was Craig Suckling of CDDO, who argued that data is one of the government’s most under-utilised assets. Join us for the first Data Bites session of 2025 on Thursday 6 Feb at 6pm GMT.

What we read:
🌷Strategy is not war, it’s gardening, Elegant Hack
⚖️ Transactional vs relational service design, Joseph Badman
👥 Why the NHS needs more participative, architect-style leaders (rather than heroic, problem-solving leaders), Matthew Mezey

December

🌟 We looked forward to new kind of governance for 2025

We were delighted to see the announcement last month from UK Cabinet minister Pat MacFadden that a test-and-learn approach will be adopted by the UK Government, essentially committing to incorporating ideas from the Radical How into government reform. Check out the Institute for Government’s analysis on their podcast. The government has also been taking steps towards a new approach to the civil service. Martha Lane Fox addresses the challenges of civil service appointments in an era where “digital skills are no longer optional extras”. Meanwhile, the incoming administration in the US faces a profound set of challenges in 2025. This report by Jen Pahlka and PD's Andrew Greenway looks at the country's state capacity challenges, and maps a path to transforming government for the modern era.

What we read:
👁️ Ethical Web Principles, W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG)
🤜🤛 Turning your team into a tribe, Bruce Daisley
💡 Inclusive digital transformation, Abisola Fatokun