PD Newsletter #31: Running tech like its 1999

Welcome to the early August edition of the Public Digital newsletter. ☀️ We've been doing a lot of travel over the last month, both for work and summer holidays. We've published a quick update on our recent work travels on the PD blog: including Harvard, Madagascar, Peru, the Netherlands, Germany and Canada.

Emma
@egawen

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Ways of working

😱
Arcane workarounds: An entertaining twitter thread on how a UK bank unsubscribes people from email. Quite the eye-opener.

🙌
How inclusive user research makes your products better (podcast and transcript): making the case that "what’s vital for some, is valuable for everyone".

🎉
Drafting some design principles? Here are more design principles than you ever could have hoped for, collated in one place. Jamie's sage advice: "the emotional attachment to and comprehension of 'your list' is nearly as important as the list. Gotta believe it, not just read it."

State of technology

☂️
Technology and protest: how protestors and police are tackling surveillance in Hong Kong. Including the hot tip that mashing the volume and power buttons on an iPhone disables facial recognition login.

💵
The difference between platforms and aggregators: how Shopify uses diversity and competition at different parts of the value chain to help it succeed. From Stratchery: I really like how Ben breaks down delivery models in a very understandable way.

💥
"The best way to manage risk - that is, deal with the unexpected - is to be agile, to be prepared for continuous change" - why IT leaders need to stop talking about failing fast. The author is from Amazon so this is framed around using AWS, but the principles of this are helpful regardless of vendor. HT to Dave Rogers for pointing me in this direction.

💰
Baltimore's ransomware attack in May provides a nice compare and contrast for how one might approach with the unexpected. The head of the IT department thinks that the opportunity cost of change is too high (he's talking specifically about flipping from Office to Google Docs). This time, some positive PR for Google, who claim that switching email and collaboration to gsuite would save Baltimore $16.2 million a year. (See also Public Digital #27).

🐇
If I can tempt you further down the rabbit hole, a look at why these kinds of ransomware attacks are inevitable when organisations are running IT operations "like it's 1999".

Identity

MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform) has been made available on Github. It's a platform designed to help governments and other user organisations implement good ID in a way that's scalable, flexible, and avoids vendor lock-in. MOSIP on GitHub.

Zara Rahman of the Engine Room reflects on what next for digital ID. As she puts it "There’s an immense amount of privilege in thinking that the ‘answer’ to digital ID would be 'no'". She poses some useful questions about ID and biometrics, and where the power lies.

Government news

🇬🇷 Βίβλο Ψηφιακού Μετασχηματισμού: The new Greek government, sworn in earlier this month, has made some swift moves on digital: including the appointment of a new Minister of Digital Governance Kyriakos Pierrakakis. He takes over a renamed Ministry of Administrative Reorganization (now Ministry of Digital Governance). Link.

Plans include:

Creating a register of government procedures accessible to citizens
A "central web portal", gov.gr, a central point of entry for citizens. Hard to assess through google translate, but there's a risk this will be a portal in the true sense of the word (i.e. lots of duplication) rather than a single site in the GOV.UK sense.
Create a "Digital Transformation Bible": a practical guide with measurable goals, to be updated annually.
Investments in 5G and ultrafast broadband, and several central information system projects including HR (projects which have been ongoing and struggling for some time).

The previous Greek govt did have a National Digital Strategy; as ever, the difference will be political will, the team, and the delivery.

👉 Follow Kyriakos Pierrakakis on twitter (mostly in Greek).

I had to include this directly because it's Too Perfect (and would apply to enterprise organisations). Via @pcrickard.

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