Publications

Our final title in the trilogy about ways of working following Test and Learn and Design, discusses how organisations can build their underlying strength - a “muscle” that determines its fitness to compete and survive. This muscle has two critical functions: the adaptability to navigate constant change, and the resilience to withstand inevitable shocks.

Leadership must grow this capability and not consider it just a a technical problem: technology is the organisation.

The book is available to download as a pdf or can be ordered as printed copies.

This the second collection of articles on a key theme relevant to our ways of working, following our earlier book on Test and Learn, and focuses on how approaches to design shape how modern businesses are run. It reminds us of the transformative potential for improvement that it brings. 

The book is available to download as a pdf or can be ordered as printed copies. 

This collection of articles by colleagues at Public Digital unpacks what we mean when we talk about test and learn. They offer guidance for how to adopt a test and learn mindset, they give language to the many practices that support this approach, and hopefully they convey some of its potential for creating momentum in transformation. 

The book is available to download as a pdf or can be ordered as printed copies. 

The Radical How is a policy think piece. We hope it helps the Canadian government by providing concrete ways of improving service delivery.

It advocates for a change in mindset which is characterized by organizing around multi-disciplinary teams, focusing on outcomes, and building incrementally by testing with those who use the service.

Importantly, these ways of working are not really radical and have been standard practice for many of the most successful companies and governments for years. We hope that this work can help spark digital transformation in Canada by describing how to deliver and by highlighting local success stories and cautionary tales.

You can download the full paper here.

It was originally written to give to inspire new leadership in a new government in the United Kingdom.

Our book - authored by the four founders of Public Digital - is a guide to building a digital institution. It explains how a growing band of reformers in businesses and governments around the world have helped their organisations pivot to a new way of working, and what lessons others can learn from their experience.

The updated second edition goes into more detail about which institutions had a more effective digital response to Covid-19, and why. It also talks about some of the topics that were emergent when the first edition was published in 2018, but now loom larger in a digital team’s thoughts, including digital sovereignty, inclusivity and growth, and how to structure the data underpinning the whole edifice.

We’ve also picked out what lessons newer digital teams in government can take from the UK, so they can plan for some of the known unknowns. What happens when ministers change, practitioners move on, and you’re seen as part of furniture rather than the next new thing?

It’s available to buy now direct from the publisher, from Amazon, or Book Depository.

A Japanese translation of the second edition of Public Digital's book, Digital Transformation at Scale can be bought here.

This book for leaders and teams to help them apply the lessons we learned from setting up the Government Digital Service in the UK government.

This guide has been written with NHS Providers for board members of all types of NHS trust to support them in the new era of digital leadership required by the pandemic. It outlines how digital issues impact on strategic and operational concerns for executives and non-executives. It explains the issues and trade-offs that leaders should be considering, provides examples of good practice - from the NHS and beyond - of how other organisations have addressed them, and sets out some of the difficult questions that boards will need to address.

A new era of digital leadership was published in July 2020 with NHS Providers.

Published with NHS Providers for board members, this guide explores what a good digital team looks like, how to build one, and where to start in order to support boards who want to build their digital capability.

We look at how boards can enable effective digital teams by establishing governance that supports exceptional performance, and explain how boards can set themselves up to operate at the speed of trust rather than the speed of process.

Building and enabling digital teams was published in November 2020 with NHS Providers.

The digital revolution that governments are experiencing is leading them to consider programs that improve the analysis and use of data to propose more effective and efficient public policies. Although numerous governments recognize the importance of having adequate data infrastructure, it is still not sufficiently reliable. 

Data analysis involves various challenges and implies technical and organizational changes to implement initiatives that facilitate its exploration to improve infrastructure, procedures, and public services. 

This report presents three case studies that show how data analysis teams can be formed within the public sector's organisational structure. It also details a guide to help governments in the region create sustainable, successful data analysis teams capable of delivering public value

Best practice in government data analytics teams (only available in Spanish) was published in August 2019 with the support of IDB.

Digital government is rapidly gathering momentum as an effective way for nations and regions to increase their administrative efficiency, develop resilience, and deliver simpler, clearer, and better services for their citizens and businesses. 

This report summarises the conditions and context needed for government digital teams to succeed and be sustained across different administrations. The report explores the conditions needed to establish a digital team, examines the ideal environment to make that team successful, and concludes with the conditions required to help that team sustain as an institution across different political administrations.

How to Achieve and Sustain Government Digital Transformation was published in July 2018 with the support of IDB.