Governments Need More Creative Upskilling Solutions (4 of 4)

Part 4 of a 4-part series on upskilling in government

The best program design begins with lots of questions, and a clear understanding of the problem, based on gathering existing data

Ideas for Thoughtful Design

In my previous post, I noted that I believe the principle of immersion is a good way to start the design of an effective training program. But as Bill Hunt’s post on IT hiring showed, not all immersion programs are created equal. Curation and thoughtful design are necessary.

If you’ve been nerding out on civic tech like me, you can tell that I’d love to design and pilot an initiative like this. So I’ve often asked myself, how would I do it?

Apply a User-Centered Approach

As with any time government builds a new digital product or service, any upskilling program or solution should be centered around user needs. While leadership may wish to experiment with training programs once they’ve gathered data and learned more about their organization’s status quo, they should consider:

• What are the biggest pain points for leaders and staff?
• What pain points cross different seniority levels and functions, and what may be unique to each element?

Leaders can apply the four-step digital service design lifecycle below, with “users” and “public” being government staff, managers and executives at all levels:

1. Discovery — Conducting user research to understand people’s needs.

2. Alpha — Developing and testing our hypotheses with users.

3. Beta — Developing a minimum viable service and making it available to the public.

4. Live — Continuing to improve based on user feedback.

Lifecycle Parameters

There are three catches to this process:

1. The only political involvement in the above steps should be an executive sponsor who champions and supports the work from a distance, while the civil service tackles the problem as they see fit for as long as they need (within reason).
2. Some “users” may not always be fully aware of their needs — especially if leaders are seeking to create something entirely new. However, applying the digital service design lifecycle is still critical because testing will determine if a pilot is successful, even if there is resistance to an initial idea.
3. In some cases, a purely analog or a “digital first but not digital only” solution will be necessary. Neither of these options should be valued any less than a purely digital solution. Here’s an example from Hana Schank and Tara Dawson McGuinness, the authors of Power to the Public: The Promise of Public Interest Technology, on the damage and frustration that can occur when digitization is seen as the best, and only, option.

In my experience, the cross-cutting pain points I’ve heard from staff across ministries, programs, and functions are generally the same:

There are too many silos.

There is an overall lack of clarity (for example, about what the problem is or isn’t, what a term means to one team versus another, or who owns a piece of work or an entire project).

Some say that existing multi-functional teams don’t bring on the right functions into the work at the right time, and even that those teams do not work together enough and still end up working mostly in silos.

Meanwhile, government leaders consistently acknowledge that their toughest challenges are resourcing and priority setting. I’d argue that more and better training may help with this.

The Merits of Exchanges

I’ve long believed that government would benefit from mandated exchanges, where every employee, from executives to junior staff, would be required to rotate between different roles that did not require years-long specialized training like nursing or law.

So, for example, an executive who came up through the ranks in policy would be required to do six months or more in at least two other areas where the skillset was different, such as data, economics, administration, HR, product management, procurement, IT, or working in a press office.

This may be logistically challenging, and learning may be uneven, even slow in some cases, but a baseline of learning outcomes could be developed.

Such a program is likely to build more well-rounded leaders and staff, create greater understanding and empathy between functions, and give all employees the experience of asking a different set of questions that are ultimately a part of the decision-making and/or design process of every government program or service.

Even if the initial benefits may be unclear, I am confident it would result in more effective government decision-making and stronger cross-functional teams.

However, for this kind of idea to be successful, government officials would be wise to work with union and talent staff from the outset to find compromises or solutions such as time-limited exchanges that would ultimately make their members better at the job they currently hold or aspire to reach.

A Quick Side Note

For the purposes of this post, I’m referring to exchanges within government, although I also believe that leaving government for a set period would allow staff to gain new perspectives and learn new skills that could be brought back. This kind of exchange program could help incentivize staff and may even increase talent retention, as government employees are motivated by working on policy for the public good, perhaps almost as much as by salary. Governments could survey their staff to get hard data on this fact, if they don’t already know it.

Context is Everything

While different government bodies share similar challenges, structures, incentives and constraints, there are stark differences in values, cultures and approaches, not to mention differences in the makeup of government staff and leadership.

That’s why the design and success of any program depends entirely on the context, which is, in turn, why understanding that context through gathering of baseline data before implementing a new initiative is critical. It amazes me how often this is overlooked.

Data Points to Gather

Pre-participation and post-evaluation surveys are often done in pilots within government.

But less obviously, there is more data to gather. What that data is depends on the problem and goals, but whatever the focus, understanding a set of status quo data points is necessary before you can implement change. For example:

What are all the ways staff are trained by the government or self-trained?

How effective are these methods at changing behavior or seeing new skills in action in policymaking?

Gathering status quo data is time-consuming, so this step is often skipped. But developing success metrics for change doesn’t work if you don’t first have a sense of where you are at and if what you’re doing is even possible in your context. Only after that does it make sense to develop metrics that are measurable and specific.

Principles for Success

Below is a general list of principles that, I would argue, should be applied in any context, but especially in the development of any new program — and if the pilot is successful, applied in program rollout as well.

1. Different Functions in One Room

There should be a cross-functional leadership team from the very beginning, and throughout the pilot life cycle, with each function having input in every major decision, and with each function having a clear and unique role to play (simply observing and being included counts as a role!) Ideally, this means every function within government, including law, communications, policy, data, product, UX, engineering, IT, and even — especially — talent.

2. Leaders and Staff Working Together

Leaders of the upskilling initiative should be passionate about achieving success, willing to collaborate and communicate with all staff levels and functions, and willing to challenge the status quo if that’s what success requires, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.

3. Participation of HR and Union Leaders

In situations where things like job classifications are the pain point, full participation from talent / HR and union leaders is key to success.

4. Plan Before Iterating

Planning doesn’t need to be overwhelming. But certain things should be addressed before beginning a pilot program.

· Plan on what to do in case something or someone gets stuck

· Plan for how to handle resistance

· Choose incentives for participation (if salary increases are not possible, perhaps these examples offer a starting point: extra vacation days, an opportunity to participate in a highly sought-after program, awards or recognition, the opportunity to apply for a management role)

· Consider how to scale up if successful

5. Participation for All Government Employees, Including Leadership

Participation should be for all government employees, temporary and permanent, part and full time, leaders and staff regardless of seniority. If talent and union leaders have concerns regarding executive participation and temporary staff, it would be best to find solutions.

Executive participation should be limited to allow time and space for discovery, but at times they may need to directly observe any program or policy if they truly want to understand the full user experience and get at the core of the problem. If participation in a pilot itself must be limited, include leaders in a wide spectrum of participants.

6. Create A Two-Way Feedback Mechanism

Listen to participants and correct challenges quickly, or if correction isn’t immediately possible, address them as soon as possible.

Two Inspiring Examples

One of my favorite examples of a program that’s injecting the most promising change is 10x of the U.S. federal government, which is a crowdsourcing digital ideas program that I mentioned in my first post in this series.

Another is a Charlotte, North Carolina, program that Schank and Dawson McGuinness discussed on episode 408 of the GovLove podcast, in which municipal government leaders provided an opportunity to allow anyone to train others. The result was Op-Ex Academy, where many staff are training their peers in a short amount of time, and hundreds of courses are being offered on data and technology-related subjects to anyone in city government who wish to take them.

While 10x isn’t a training program, and Op-Ex Academy is primarily focused on courses, both of these are great examples of creative ideas in action.

A Final Note

Governments may be very old, traditional institutions, but I believe they can be revived with ideas like these, and others, which can come from anywhere. The civic tech community, and whomever wishes to join regardless of pedigree or seniority, should discuss and tackle upskilling (or re-skilling and training) in new and different ways.