How can we unleash the power of digital transformation in government?
This blog is a follow up of the event Digital Leadership in the Entrepreneurial State, the first event of IIPP’s Festival: The Entrepreneurial State 2.0. — Rethinking the State in the 21st Century. The recording of the event can be watched above.
As a user dealing with exhausting government red tape, you have probably thought: “there has to be an easier way to fix this”. But if you work in the public sector, you know that improving public service delivery is anything but easy.
Policy cycles are long. It can take years for a government to sanction a bill, years to implement the policy, and years to get it evaluated. On the other hand, public digital transformation requires shorter feedback cycles. Public servants need to embrace an iterative mindset, continuously refining and improving public services based on user feedback and data. Innovative public policies are about building, measuring, learning… and starting all over again.
These are some of the issues that were discussed in the event ‘Digital Leadership in the Entrepreneurial State’, chaired by David Eaves, Co-Deputy Director and Associate Professor in Digital Government at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). If you believe digital transformation in governments is important but have seen initiatives fail in the implementation phase, this blog might offer some insight.
How can governments transform public services?
The panel highlighted two specific scenarios that have accelerated digital transformation processes: crises (such as COVID-19) and mission-oriented policies. The first one is no surprise: when everything is burning, leaders find, or create, windows of opportunities to hack the government machinery and innovate.
However, during ordinary times, innovation tends to hit a wall. As Prof Mariana Mazzucato, Founding Director of UCL IIPP, pointed out, there’s a basic issue with the current ‘market fixing’ mindset about governments: they’re only set up to react, not proactively innovate.
“By design, you’re out of breath. By design, you’re in reactive mode,” she said.
On the other hand, she argued for ambitious mission-oriented governments committed to tackling wicked problems such as climate change, health inequality or the digital divide, creating the conditions to lead innovation.
Bold and proactive states have the strengths and motivation to lead transformational change. They create a mission mystique that attracts the best talent to the civil service and virtuous relationships with the private sector.
But innovation is hard and requires experimentation. And if you take those risks, “you’re probably going to screw up along the way,” Mariana said. Therefore, creating a risk-embracing culture might not be enough. Something governments can do is create safe spaces for experimentation, such as policy labs. However, these labs should promote transversal innovation, breaking down silos and promoting collaboration across departments to achieve cohesive digital transformation in an all-of-government approach.
Buy vs build (or copy)
When designing new services, governments often develop software from scratch. But innovating doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel.
Mike Bracken, a world leader in digital government and Visiting Professor of Practice at UCL IIPP, put it this way: “We like making stuff. We make driving licences, passports, and all these other things. And then, when we’re done, we go, ‘Oh, other people could use that.’”
But what if governments explored what’s already been done by other countries in the first place?
The digital era presents countless opportunities for governments to leverage existing resources, knowledge, and technologies, borrowing and replicating solutions that are ready to roll out. Governments need to learn how to produce but also learn how to consume.
“What this new era does is allowing countries that are not at the head of the global race to move very, very quickly,” Mike said.
In the long term, he advocates for a culture of collaboration between governments, opening up solutions for other governments to use.
It’s not about the technology, it’s about the people
Public servants need to step out of their offices and connect with users.
Jennifer Pahlka, Founder of Code for America and former US Deputy Chief Technology Officer, said: “A core practice and principle of digital transformation is listening to people, actively going out there and finding the people who have not been heard.”
Although policy designers often don’t engage with end-users, re-establishing these connections can yield powerful results. To persuade policymakers to implement changes in service delivery, introducing a real user during a meeting or sharing a video of someone struggling to use a service can be far more compelling than a 200-page UX research report.
Policymakers are sometimes obsessed with the tools and the technology, but this might lead to the wrong outcomes. Digitalising a public service without looking into the underlying processes leads to the same mediocre service but with a digital interface. Similarly, governments often focus too much on their internal machinery and overlook citizens’ needs. To improve digital public services, policymakers should start by addressing users’ needs and pain points in their interactions with governments. Next, optimise processes, and finally, apply technology to enhance service delivery. Governments often approach this in reverse order.
As Mike said: “Government removes feedback loops. The real heart of the policy dilemma is that the people making policy are abstracted from the policies and the services that they’re using.”
Governments need to prioritise people over processes and processes over technology.
Innovation for who and by whom?
Throughout the conversation, Nai Lee Kalema, an IIPP PhD candidate, repeatedly raised the issue of “examining the historical harms embedded in digital systems due to uncritical approaches and the emerging harms arising from them”. Nai draws inspiration from thinkers like Joy Buolamwini (MIT Media Lab) for her work on algorithmic bias and how discrimination gets encoded into algorithmic systems, as well as Adrienne Brown and her contributions to emergent strategy in social justice, among others.
When it comes to crafting inclusive and diverse policies, it’s not just about the policy design. It’s also crucial to consider who’s sitting at the decision-making table. In other words, to truly promote inclusivity and diversity in our policies, we need a civil service that reflects that same diversity.
However, Nai pointed out that public servants don’t always have the necessary tools or resources to advocate for change from within the government. In such situations, forging broader alliances with social movements can be an effective strategy, resulting in external institutional pressure to force political leaders to take action.
Echoing Nai, Mariana argued that the innovation and human rights agendas need to converge.
“Users are not just clients or customers, they’re citizens with human rights,” she said.
Innovation is political
David couldn’t help rolling his eyes at the phrase ‘digital government’ even though that’s his area of expertise. But whenever he mentions that term, people think he is talking about a distant future. But the truth is, when we talk about digital government, we’re actually diving into what has been going on for the last (at least) two decades.
For those in leadership positions, the challenge is two-fold. While it’s essential to concentrate on delivering results, they need to learn how to showcase transformational change to produce a cascade effect. Civil service leaders have the task of improving their sector while simultaneously demonstrating this change and how they’ve done their homework. They need to open up, communicate transparently, and make resources available for others to follow.
The path to improved public services and digital transformation in government won’t just happen on its own. It demands the determination of leaders both inside and outside government to drive transformational change. Ultimately, innovation is political.
