With a reformer’s zeal

Every time something happens with digital government, blood and ink are spilled. Then comes the counter hot takes complaining that the concerns are a long way from reality, that we need to get our facts straight and that the aim is true.

In a sense, none of this matters. I was struck by Andrew Greenway’s absolutely vital piece in the last few weeks that there is an aspect of “t’was ere thus” with the reforms that digital government asks of people in government. Reformers have always wanted better, more responsive, more efficient government, but it gets pushed back each time it is suggested. It’s at the root of the language in peripheral groups like the tea party in the US — less government could be seen as a shibboleth for “better government” at least in the frustrations of interaction that create that anger (of course, there are other things at play in that political movement).

I want to lay out an argument for what needs to change and why.

Since 2010, digital government as a concept has come of age. There are books, conferences, commercial bunfights, thought leaders, snake oil salesmen and factional allegiances. But most of it has been to make an internet of paper. To provide a glossary to Whitehall (or Washington/Wellington/Canberra) rather than using service designers and the possibility of the internet to define what is possible for the public good with government. Driving licenses still exist, taxes are paid in a way that suits the HMRC cadences of 1970 and the House of Commons has a faster way of seeing votes in the commons that happen in the same way as before, but now the tellers have iPads.

The report that set up the modern civil service was quite explicit about the problems that would face this new meritocratic institution as it took on the roles of colonialism (a dismal thing and an organisational nightmare) that had previously sat between the proto-civil service, military and the private sector. It recommended a centralisation of skills in the civil service, that someone appointed to one department shouldn’t spend their life there. That a fragmentary civil service was to be avoided.

We should probably avoid textual literalism. We don’t need (or want) to prove what Northcote and Trevelyan wanted or that original intent trumps other things — just that it is interesting to note that centralism vs pluralism has been a massive fight in public service for generations. Before digital. Before typewriters, radios, phones and women's suffrage.

In 1991 John Major ran a large government campaign — the Citizen’s Charter. To create a customer service mindset in government. From Wikipedia:
- Making administration accountable and citizen friendly.
- Ensuring transparency and the right to information.
- Taking measures to cleanse and motivate civil service.
- Adopting a stakeholder approach.
- Saving time of both executant and the clientele.
- Easily under stability and quantified works.

Sounds familiar. It failed, or at least, it sank into obscurity along with countless other attempts to reform the civil service away from internecine feuding and empire building among seniors into something that could make the UK more dynamic, adaptable and competitive.

A fragmentary civil service serves the interests of those who are already at the top. Those who manage change. It is not designed around the needs of the citizenry.

The Palace of Westminster (aside from Westminster Hall) is younger than the Parliament of Canada. It was less than 70 years old at the outbreak of the second world war. A large number of traditions that are presented as infallible, unchanging and unchangeable are modern inventions. Most of the changes that have happened in terms of reforming government are results of drastic changes in the UK’s circumstances internationally. The Northcote-Trevelyan report above is a function of the Crimean War. The Civil Service Department a reaction to the second world war.

This isn’t a plea for reform from within. That’s been tried and the results are so anaemic that they can’t begin to touch on the works needed. This is a plea for the spending of political capital. In the next parliament, a government will need to deal with the changing circumstances in front of the UK. It may have to build competencies in areas it hasn’t held since the 1970s. A civil service only partially reformed for the 1990s, that squashes attempts to improve its relationship with citizenry, is not ready for that.

This is a case for cross-functional teams. For specialists and generalists to work together on projects and programmes, not departments and agencies. To meet, exceed and improve statutory obligations. To not just turn up for a nine to five. To be less suspicious of other departments, other policy areas, other teams. To foster co-operation by removing the possibility of silos.

Reform requires zeal, ideas, ideals and beliefs. It requires spending political capital and limiting compromises. The Northcote Trevelyan report was hugely unpopular. It was never passed as statute. It was fudged — the Civil Service Commission created by an order in council. Even 15 years after its institution, there continued to be political resistance. The first casualty was the idea of a unified, non-fragmentary service.

Traditions are all invented. The civil service has to change. It always has done. It gets so far down the line with a change and it springs back. The point is that reform is a process, not an event. And reformers need to articulate better ideas than “the internet”. We have to articulate a vision of government, of how the polity of this country could look, and we have to communicate that to people outside of the civil service, outside of government, outside of civic tech. Answer the citizen’s ongoing need for a better, more efficient, more amenable administration with policies and ideas that answer those user needs.

Civil servants themselves need to be convinced. At all levels. It has been noted by important movers and shakers (and me) that the civil service broadly reflects the society in which it operates. That means plenty of people who turn up for work in the morning and give precisely zero hoots about the capacity for cross-functional delivery teams. It isn’t relevant to their job and if anything, they perceive it might make life more complicated. Convincing people of things is superior to imposing from above.

The UK has, arguably, led the way on building an alpha of a government that reaches out to its citizens/users/customers with research, testing and humility. Let’s work on what the beta might look like.