PD Newsletter #21: Digital driving licence in Argentina and banning the A word

This week when presenting about changing ways of working I used the A word. Agile. Big mistake 🤐.

I use agile as a shorthand for digital skills, multi-disciplinary teams, working in the open and many other good things. But for others, agile signals something more scary: out of control teams, spending wildly on things "the business" doesn't want.

So what works for you? How do we prove that more agility and empowered teams, are a good thing? I've included a few links below, I'd like your thoughts too.

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There's a great example of working at speed from Argentina this week, where a digital team have rolled out a digital driving licence in just 65 days. Mike wrote about it on the Public Digital blog.

Emma
@egawen

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Ways of working

The product-driven philosophy that sits behind WeChat, China's superapp with over a billion daily users. The section on efficiency is particularly good: rather than measuring success by length of user engagement, their aim is to "help users get the most useful information in the shortest possible time."

Reflections from a designer turned product manager. I like the honest reflection here about how hard it is to go from "yes, and" to "no, because".

This is a great way to build a team. Check out Barnardo’s new recruitment campaign for a 100 strong digital team.

In defence of agile

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How the US Air Force built in house capability, embraced agile and went from delivering software in weeks not years. One for those with a keen liking for Star Wars references.

📈 For a crunchier look, McKinsey quantify how companies with the best economic performance approach digital strategy. They:

increase agility
build and use digital platforms
use M&A to build new capabilities
make a greater effort that their competitors to invest in digital talent.

Government news

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Argentina have rolled out a new digital driving licence, replacing paper and plastic cards with a digital document. Mike wrote about it on the Public Digital blog.

🤐
The B words: Part of Brexit planning, the UK government has ruled out blockchain at the border as “significant work” would be needed. Who saw that coming?

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The OECD have published an alpha ICT procurement playbook. The work is being led by GDS in the UK, it's great, and while it's designed for public sector the core principles are universal (for example, it sets out how to learn to expect and embrace change).

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I enjoy a procurement story that includes the phrase "total dumpster fire" and I think you will too. A view from a small business in Canada demonstrating why procurement has to change.

We've posted out lots of copies of Signals. Thanks @charles_rt, @medha_basu, @ajax_63, @julianrod and lots more of you for the photos. 😍

News from Public Digital

We spent time roadmapping last week with La Victoria Lab from Lima.

Andrew and I spoke to the Bangladesh State Minister for ICT on what the government of the future looked like. Picture.

Tom spoke at Mind the Product. I enjoyed this write up of the talk, by Ian Roddis. Thanks Ian. 👋