Digital by Default

Ideas for the new ‘Digital Centre Design Panel’

Yesterday DSIT announced a panel of 12 digital professionals and academics will help the government make better use of technology across the public sector as part of the ‘digital centre’ work to develop a 10 year vision.

It seems like a good group – Martha obviously has previous, I’ve followed David Eaves work for many years and anything that includes Jeni demonstrates a great deal of good sense from the off.

In fact Jeni asked for reckons/pointers over on BlueSky almost immediately and has already had all manner of smart and sensible responses.

Inevitably though I have a couple of thoughts 🙂

I’m going to keep it short though and a bit ‘inside baseball’ – smarter folks will bring the bigger ambitions (or copy and paste things from Richard’s book.)

  1. Provide encouragement and top cover for a return to wider working in the open.
    Not just more blogging (but yes more blogging) but more roadmaps, more open show and tells, more talks, more meetups, hackathons…whatever. I don’t think there has ever been a more important time to be open and transparent about the work being done in the internet of public service – there is a shift happening and we need to show our workings (and help each other by sharing our stumbles as well as successes.)
  2. Bring back and invest in cross-Government Communities of Practice for Digital, Data and Technology.
    The demise of these official communities – though many hang on via volunteers and side of desk activity – has been a real loss and weakens our ability to meet the great ambitions for this next era of digital government. The community is one of the great strengths and differentiators for public service digital. It helped attract talent, educate people and achieve great things across the whole sector – it seems like such a small investment for huge rewards in the big picture.
  3. Reboot the Digital Academy.
    The Academy was always overwhelmed and towards the end seemed to be more focused on intro level courses but it really did fill a need. The reality is for many of the Government Digital and Data professions the standard courses and qualifications are not a great fit. More tailored courses and materials aimed at internet-era public servants would be hugely effective and well worth the investment – the money is currently being spent after all on courses that do not properly prepare the participants with the opportunities and challenges of doing this work in the public sector.
  4. It is time for a next generation of the Performance Platform.
    The Performance Platform was an amazing idea that proved to perhaps be a bit ahead of its time and ended up perhaps struggling to live up to its potential due to the challenges of keeping it up to date and maintained. It doesn’t take away from what a brilliant idea it was though – a central place where the top services display some level of performance data (perhaps a little less one size fits all?) was a remarkable tool for transparency and expectation management. I feel like with the renewed appetite for data-informed decisions and the like now could be the time?
  5. Less talk about a Local GDS and more making GDS work for Local.
    If the xGov Communities return, invite Local Gov folks. If the Digital Academy returns, reserve a % of places for Local Gov folks. Invest in the Digital Platform teams (where Pay, Notify, Forms and more to come live) plus things like One Login to properly, fully support Local Government colleagues and users. 

Nowt very controversial or ground breaking there I think but it would really make a difference and are the sort of things that a Digital Centre for Government could take the lead on.

Anyway just some thoughts from this relic!

Matt Jukes

6 responses to “Ideas for the new ‘Digital Centre Design Panel’”

  1. This has touched a few nerves for me, having worked at GDS from 2011 to 2020 (crikey, 9 years!), re points 1-4.

    1. In the early days, blogging was relatively easy and it was possible to post about a range of discipline and product things. I think it became harder as comms became less relaxed and teams became busier. It takes some effort to write a post, get it approved by your team and by comms.

    2. I was Head of Performance and Data Analysis, leading and developing a community of practice for analysts in GDS and across government. I effectively defined and developed the discipline of performance analysis, establishing an active cross-government community. When I left that cross-government role was not filled and I hear that there is now little inter-departmental engagement amongst performance analysts. I’d certainly recommend CoPs being reinvigorated- they’re incredibly supportive of people who might be isolated as the only person of that discipline in a team or organisation

    3. I ‘ taught’ on a number of courses and found them fun to do, with eager audiences, but it was important to get the tone right. Again, in the early days, things were more relaxed; but became more controlled later.

    4. Over the years my team and I had a lot of involvement with the Performance Platform; including working up what metrics to mandate and publish. It never had enough buy-in from departments and I’m not convinced it fulfilled it purpose ‘to encourage the others’ or inform decision-making. However, I agree; it’s time has come again, provided the metrics are thoroughly rethought and the dat plumbing is improved.