Paul Pester out
👉🚪TSB’s banking meltdown featured in the first edition of this newsletter, with Chief Exec Paul Pester’s abdication of responsibility and lack of empathy for customers failing to cut it. Four short months, one parliamentary committee and several service wobbles later, his inevitable departure. Don’t feel too sorry for him: he gets to keep “at least” a £1.2 million bonus on his departure.- 12,500 customers have left TSB since April
- Over 93,700 complaints received
- £176 million compensation and repair bill (so far)
The FT has a good summary of how the IT failure has strained relationships between TSB, and Sabadell’s in-house IT provider Sabis. But technology in banks can’t stand still, and CEO’s like Pester have to own the change.
One more time for those at the back: you can't outsource risk.
Ways of working
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Last newsletter (#9) had feature rot, so now a real life example: Skype are cutting back features and refocusing on calls and messaging, in response to criticism of their truly terrible UI. Welcome, but may be too late as competitors have picked up the slack.
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Apolitical’s have published a digital government atlas, a list of the world’s best tools and resources. Curated by Chris Ferguson of GDS, it includes playbooks, github repositories, toolkits and datasets.
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Always worth a re-share: read GCHQ's #BoilingFrogs research paper on software development and organisational change in the face of disruption.
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Sarah Richards of Content Design London is running a community led alpha on creating some universal readability guidelines. It’s not too late to get involved.
#digitaltförst
Say a warm welcome to Sweden’s new Digital Management Authority, DIGG, established on September 1st. Check back to Public Digital 8 for more on digital government in Sweden.
GovInsider talks to Peru’s Sergio Pancorbo, the leader of GOB.PE, focusing on how the team and GOB.PE can help tackle corruption.
Automating justiceCalifornia are replacing cash bail with an algorithmic risk assessment, that will assess a suspect’s risk of flight or committing another crime during the trial process. As yet untested, and there’s an obvious risk that flaws and bias in the human system will simply be entrenched into an algorithm instead.
To bookmark: Tim Dutton, an AI policy researcher, is collating Artificial Intelligence strategies from around the world, alongside analysis of each and the differences between them.
For product managers: A guide to what a PM needs to know about Machine Learning, using google forms as a case study.
Everything is Fine🚒New Zealand’s Government CTO appointment is a hot mess. Reports on the identity of the front-runner sparked strong criticism from the tech industry, alongside other prospective candidates speaking out about their ideas for the role. (ex) digital minister Clare Curran is also under fire for using her personal gmail account for government business. All of which is distracting from actually making government digital services better.
🙌Meanwhile, Pia Andrews, who breathed some fire into New Zealand’s Service Innovation Lab, is moving to the New South Wales government. Her energy, knowledge and determination will be much missed. |
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