Governments Need More Creative Upskilling Solutions (1 of 4)

Part 1 of 4 of a series about increasing digital and technology fluency in government

(This series was originally published by Apolitical.)

The problem of recruiting much-needed tech talent into government gets a lot of attention in the field of public interest technology (“civic tech,” “govtech”). As challenging as it is, even more thorny — and arguably more important — is the need to upskill existing government employees

I’ve spent more than eight years, two of which have been in civic tech, in the Ontario government. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of what doesn’t work, some great work on new ideas, and talked to many other civic tech practitioners across the globe about their own experiences.

A lot of emphasis in civic tech is placed on the need for improved recruitment practices, to find and bring into government talented people with tech skills to lend their expertise to digital product and service design and delivery.

And with good reason: for all the inspiring advances that have been made in digital government in the last 15 years, governments large and small continue to be defined by a lack of resources (people, technology, time) and a lack of understanding of digital and tech among staff and leaders.

Together these constraints prevent government teams from increasing their digital maturity levels to be able to provide to their constituents user-centered policies and online programs and services that are easy-to-use, relevant, useful, reliable, and well-designed.

The Problem That Govtech Seeks to Address

There are many reasons why governments struggle with this, and they’re not the reasons most people think, especially those who haven’t worked in the bureaucracy (including politicians).

To outsiders, government is an opaque place. And at its least effective, government is equally unclear about the needs of the public(s) it is meant to serve.

This is exactly the problem that govtech seeks to address: applying a laser focus on public needs that can’t be addressed by any institution other than government.

What’s Being Done Right Now to Close the Skills Gap

A lot of programs and organizations have been founded to address the skills gap:

● Digital government teams, such as the Colorado Digital Service or the Ontario Digital Service.

● Organizations such as Code for America and the other “codes” it has spawned across the world, including Code for Canada, Code for Australia, and Code for All.

● Consultancies within government serving government teams.

● Fellowship programs to establish talent pipelines, often from the outside in.

The three most well-known of these fellowship programs are the Presidential Innovation Fellowship, Coding it Forward and the United States Digital Corps in America. These programs provide excellent examples of increasing digital and data talent and knowledge within government.

Outside consultancies–such as Bloom Works, US Digital Response, and Ad Hoc Teams–show different ways that tech experts can provide UX, product, content, and engineering skills to government on a project-by-project basis.

And in 2017, Tech Talent Project, a non-partisan, non-profit organization, was founded to focus exclusively on the challenge of recruiting technically skilled leaders into key government roles.

The above shortlist is a very simplified snapshot of a young and still evolving field, yet it’s clear to me after researching the issue, combined with my own experiences, that much attention is devoted to recruiting from the outside in. But what about cultivating talent already on the inside?

Change Doesn’t Happen Quickly in Government for Many Reasons

Ask anyone who’s come to government from the private or another sector, and they’ll tell you that you can’t just enter government and expect change to happen quickly. It’s not because the pace of work is slower. While some work is definitely slow, other government work moves at lightning speed.

Change doesn’t happen quickly in government because government is a complicated place: it serves a huge variety of constituents with whom it has a complicated set of relationships; it deals with wildly difficult internal and public problems; administrations and priorities are constantly shifting; teams and managers are sometimes overwhelmed by the complexity and volume of the work they are tasked to do with limited resources and limited autonomy; and it is characterized by a set of deeply rooted constraints, structures, and incentives unlike anything in the private sector.

All of this results in a complex knot that is not so easy to untangle.

New People Entering Government vs. Existing Staff

There’s a lot to be said for people coming into government from the outside with a fresh perspective. Yet it’s also true that some of the people who best understand how to make — or what needs to be done first to make — even the smallest change within government are the brightest people who already work there.

This includes staff who are rarely consulted about big issues like talent retention or work priorities — staff who work at low levels, on the frontlines, or in technical roles, who are witness to both the good and the bad, and who probably have a lot to say on these topics and more.

So despite government’s overall low digital maturity levels, and despite people’s frequent resistance to change, (which is the stuff of human nature everywhere), government staff’s intimate knowledge of how government works is unique and vital. And yet it’s vastly under-utilized.

The Advantages — and Disadvantages — with Fellowship Programs

The best fellowship programs understand that it takes time for new entrants to learn government, even if those people come from the most senior levels in the private sector. As a result, fellows serve for 12 months or 2 years.

Almost all participants find the experience life-changing, and many stay in government long after the program’s tenure. It’s proof that if you design a program effectively, participants will stay true to their original goal of working on public issues that matter.

But even if you account for the wide impact these fellows can have across agencies and teams in educating government employees about technology and data skills, most fellowship programs are highly selective, which results in a very small number of fellows compared to the sheer number of staff who already work in government.

It may take a long time before fellows’ efforts reach a critical mass in a large organization.

The Role of Vendors

External consultants, whether they come to government as political advisors or appointees, through a consultancy, or through a procurement process, are hired to provide government teams with project-based assistance.

Most external consultants that I’ve observed or work with have limited knowledge of how government works. On the rare occasions when they do, they are not hired to produce change at scale. They’re there to produce a set of deliverables and move on to their next client.

Why Upskilling Needs More Attention

What if you just focused on changing management and leadership rather than training staff?

What if you could hire key leaders and managers that understood digital, data and technology, and spread civic tech values and culture across the organization?

The latter is close to what the Tech Talent Project is aiming to achieve, and it’s a worthy goal, especially if you start with talent and HR executives. But these leaders would still need to get up to speed — that is, develop lived experience within government if they come from other sectors — to understand the rules well enough to either work within or around them. The number of people who know government and technology equally well is no doubt growing, but still rare indeed.

Which brings us back to staff, the majority of whom currently working in government do not work with technology or data, and have never met or worked with a “digital fellow.”

So doesn’t the question of how to upskill government staff deserve more attention?

In my next few posts, I’ll look at what efforts and initiatives exist right now, gaps, questions that remain, and ideas for a way forward.