Public Digital #65: Collaboration, communications, recommendations

👋🏽👋🏻👋🏾 Hello, welcome.

This week, Emily Middleton, Philippa Elworthy and Mike Bracken are in Bellagio, Italy for the ‘Shaping Our Collective Digital Future’ event. Public Digital organised the week-long convening alongside Harvard Kennedy School and Co-Develop. The goal? To “outline a clearer democratic vision for digital government, align around some of the opportunities and risks, and raise the ambitions for domestic and international actions”. We'll talk more about it on our blog soon.

Amy
@amymcnichol

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Ways of working

👍🏽 Good to see this benchmark for leaders in the internet era: Digital, Data and Technology essentials for senior civil servants. Published by the UK’s Central Digital and Data Office, it’s relevant beyond the public sector. Pass it on.

🤯 I've been working with procurement experts Curshaw to design less verbose documents for the Centre for Digital Public Services in Wales to use when it buys goods or services. Here’s why this work can create a more thriving economy. This post on making digital services better by engaging a diverse range of suppliers is a nice reminder that reducing complexity is only part of the challenge.

👩🏽‍⚕️ Procurement reminded me of Matt Edgar saying: ‘People talk about ‘service redesign’ even when something was never consciously designed... Someone made changes that seemed like improvements in isolation, but often had unintended consequences elsewhere.” His post focuses on healthcare through the lens of the Gaps Model of Service Quality.

💭 Rachel Coldicutt looks at the way we talk about digital power in the industry. Thought-provoking and considered. And Abisọla Fátókun questions whether ‘transformation’ is the right word for us to use – it seems so 'final' and it's not reflective of the need for continuous improvement.

👏🏻 In ‘Improving customer experience with content design’, Joanne Schofield explains how Co-op joined up services in its Funeralcare and Legal businesses. Many organisations would do well to remember that: “the way [they]’re organised internally is irrelevant to customers – what matters to them is a cohesive journey and a frictionless experience.”

😍 Best looking weeknotes award goes to Kathryn Grace. Always appreciate her emotional intelligence in the ‘thinking’ section. Recently mentioned the Welsh Revenue Authority weeknotes as being an ace example – our network member Giles unpicks why they’re great.

🚗 Interesting thread on Uber trying to hire more diversely. Includes a reminder that: “Diverse loops matter not just for diverse candidates, but to see how candidates respond to people not like them.” Worth reading some good stories from engineering leaders who succeeded in building diverse teams, and a list of people who are well-qualified to give diversity and inclusion advice.

State of technology

✈️ Passengers flying out of Changi airport in Singapore won’t need to hand over paperwork or passports because iris patterns and facial feature verification will be rolled out this year. The initiative is being promoted as ‘enhancing the CX’ and ‘good health and safety in a post-pandemic world’. Enjoyed these less obvious biometric tech ideas in development in CodaStory’s listicle. For example: “Scientists are trying to use facial recognition to detect distressed farm animals subject to factory farming.” Activists say it’s a PR stunt.

🇯🇵 Japanese-American author Roland Kelts compares Japan’s ‘dismal’ digital performance to its ‘unrivalled engineering prowess’. He suggests the ordinary customer accepts the state of things. “Even when your digital prepaid travel card doesn’t work so you line up at the manned booths, you still glide down the escalator, where a bullet train speeds you to your destination, on time to the minute.” 🚅 When the product at the end functions infallibly, the ‘old ways’ are kind of quaint and comforting.

🤔 Superb thread from journalist Ros Atkins from his talk on why, in the internet era, the platform/delivery channel needs to be as good as the journalism itself. TL;DR: think of journalism as a digital service – the full package. Flexibility is essential because “what works now, won’t necessarily work next year” (examples of digital channels that had their moment). Ros advocates for multidisciplinary teams and quitting if necessary: something “not working isn’t a problem. Not stopping is. You damage your brand and waste resources.”

🗞️ Inversely related: here’s a piece about Belarusians receiving their news in the old-fashioned way: on paper. Telegram has become the go-to platform for Belarusians seeking out trustworthy news, but it’s not reaching everyone so “distributors take the materials from online publications, print out leaflets at home and hand them out to people who rarely use the internet.”

Digital government

🇲🇬 Here’s how our friends at the Economic Development Board of Madagascar and World Bank have reduced the complexity around registering a business. Very exciting to see; we really enjoyed working with the Madagascar team last year.

🇺🇸 US Digital Response has published a report into ‘Applying for child care benefits in the United States’. The recommendations are based on interviews with 27 families who have applied. High level thread here.

🇸🇬🇯🇵 GovTech Singapore and the Digital Agency of Japan have signed an agreement that aims to bolster the flow of entrepreneurs and enterprises between the countries, and share information about digital government frameworks and best practices. Cheow Hoe Chan is Government Chief Digital Tech Officer for Singapore hopes it will allow “collaboration on digital government transformation, smart city development, data free flow and trust, digital infrastructure master planning, digital identity as well as tech talent development.”

💪🏿 More collaboration here from Aaron Snow: “In both the US and Canada, there's pending legislation to enable federal teams to share their digital service platforms with state, provincial, local, indigenous, tribal, and territorial governments.” Sharing federal digital services with the other layers of government explains why that’s a big deal.

🌍 Here’s a series of blog posts covering topics that were discussed at last year’s Digital Services Convening co-hosted by Harvard and Public Digital. Particularly great: 5 lessons for getting things done based on a session with 3 senior leaders in Digital and From platforms to protocols: India’s story of leapfrogging financial inclusion. Executive summary here by Sechi Kailasa who interned with us last summer.

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