An evening with three Chief Officers…
How do you steer large bureaucracies towards modern, user-focused digital approaches?
At a recent Lougheed Leadership College Lecture cohosted by the Digital Innovation Office (DIO) and University of Alberta — Peter Lougheed Leadership College, Alex Benay (former Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada), Dominique Bohn (Chief Officer of the DIO), and Roger Oldham (former Chief Digital Officer of the UK Ministry of Justice), gathered to share their insights on leading that work in different jurisdictions.
To share some highlights from the conversation:
1. Never let a good crisis go to waste.
Out of great urgency comes real opportunities to innovate and do things differently.
The Government Digital Service, which was created to lead digital transformation for the UK government, was borne out of crisis, during a time of austerity, where users and their needs were not prioritized, and failure demand was great.
As outlined in the MacKinnon Report on Alberta’s Finances, the Government of Alberta faces financial challenges and there is a need to explore new approaches for delivering public services that produce long-term results for Albertans at a reasonable cost to taxpayers. As previously shared by Dominique in this blog post, the DIO is working with partner Ministries across the Government of Alberta to deliver service innovation exemplars.
2. It’s not that complicated, but it’s hard.
The practices of going digital — e.g. service design, agile development — are well established and have been implemented in the private sector and government jurisdictions around the world.
However, leading digital transformation is hard, because it is cultural. It is a function of people and relationships. To begin shifting culture, start by changing the way you deliver. Rather than traditional projects, invest in teams that are empowered to speak to real users, break down problems, test solutions, and deliver iteratively.
3. Celebrate the small wins.
The day to day work of digital transformation is not necessarily glamourous. There can be seemingly endless tasks associated with funding, procurement, hiring, governance, and more. Progress can feel slow and incremental as you create the enablers to operate in a different way. That is why it is so critical to celebrate milestones and wins, whether they are big (e.g. the launch of the Alberta Child Care Subsidy Application) or small (e.g. getting real users to test a prototype). And if a celebration takes the form of a cake, well, how bad can that be, in the words of Ina Garten?
All three speakers shared that the work of digital leadership (really just “leadership”) is not easy. You may find yourself faced with “Ministries of No” or other naysayers. In those cases, know to trust your gut and to keep asking why (not). And perhaps most importantly, be bold.
Update: A video recording of the Lougheed Lecture is now available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiiNtV580pM&feature=youtu.be.
