Ideal Goverment - project

29 Feb 2008

Coming soon: the UK’s first-ever blogging Permanent Secretary

IdealGov is delighted to welcome, starting shortly, the first-ever blogging Permanent Secretary. We’ve had Ministers: Jim Murphy, and Hazel Blears’ PR department, but to have a Permanent Secretary reporting direct to the Prime Minister is a UK first, perhaps a world first.

Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom is Permanent Secretary at Large with especial responsibility for efficiency, globalisation and customer insight throughout Whitehall and beyond. He is acknowledged among the senior Civil Service as a moderniser and one of the most articulate proponents of technology in its various forms and ramifications. He has gained vast experience in a widely varied career across the Cabinet Office, including a secondment in the Ministry of Defence. He is generally credited with authorship of the seminal “Nodiss” memo. He’s also a keen gardener and occasional author.

Within the constraints of the Official Secrets Act Sir Bonar has promised to contribute frankly his thoughts about the potential of technology for modernising Whitehall and to share insights from his books and other interests. Sir Bonar: welcome. We’re delighted to add you to our list of authors. 

 

11 Jan 2008

[UPDATE} How to add to the Debatemapper ID Card debate

[Updated several times] To access the DebateMapper (see below) please click the “View live” button below. If it works fine for you - go for it. Any probs or if you’re impatient just post your updates as comment here on IdealGov, or just email me; David Price and I will sort it out.

 

09 Jan 2008

Ideal Gov Jan 08 mini-reflection

Since our Clustrmap is about to reset itself let’s record traffic. We seem to have had
42,131 visits in 2007
15932 visits in 2006
and 2894 in the last three months of 2005.

The waybackmachine has some early IdealGov pages, and even what the domain looked like before we took it over (which was AIR Aug 04).  Alexa reports we’re the 1.5millionth most popular web site in the world, which would be encouraging if the figures werent so unreliable given that, ahem, the appeal of this site is so selective, and also that they see as much traffic from Romania as from the UK. Bone Fide Romanian readers: please announce yourselves! We think you’re almost entirely spammers. Spammers of Romania: desist! Now we have comment moderation your weird utterances get junked.

I think this still feels like a vibrant small fringe meeting with some regulars and some people who drift in and out without announcing themselves. I’m happy with the mood and manners, and the exercise is certainly still proving good for my mental health. I hope it works for you too.

PS William’s personal non-ideal-gov stuff is starting to accumulate at http://williamheath.net

 

26 Nov 2007

Admin note: change of blogroll

High time we updated the IdealGov blogroll (now that Matt has reminded me how to do it in the redesigned version - cheers Matt) and apologies for not doing so way sooner. In time-honoured Web 2.x co-governing manner, please add in comments below any favourites, requests, and suggestions for inclusion or deletion. The old one is below.

Please remember, this isnt anyone’s blog in particular. It’s the blog for anyone interested in what we want from e-enabled government or who is prepared, when confronted with anything which is other than ideal, to ask “woudn’t it be better if.....?”

 

18 Oct 2007

Ideal Government: human civilisation is not a subset of criminal justice

Do we have the vision to fix this Transformational-Direct-Gov old-socialist “Age of Change” IT strategy, with its centralising plans for health, identity management and children? We’ve pushed since the first Ideal Gov presentation the ideas of quick wins, co-creation or co-governance and a foundation of trust. People respond well, especially when it’s presented with levity and inspiring examples, but don’t pay any attention. It’s a long journey, I get frustrated and make criticisms that probably offend people (but some of the things that happen are just beyond the pale).

We have to find a way to assert that our e-enabled human civilisation is not a subset of criminal justice. We will have to reclaim our on-line identities, reputations and biometrics. We need to manage our own health information and resources in a proper professional relationship with our GPs, and to look after our own children with the help of schools, medical and social services if necessary - even law enforcement - and help them grow up to look after their own information, identities and reputation in an e-enabled world.

We have to accept the starting position of this NewLabour/Accenture-controllist statement of what government intends to do to us. Connecting for Health, the ID System and ContactPoint are without doubt well-intentioned; they may or may not be feasible but they are in important respects profoundly undesirable in spirit. The “Ideal Government” response is to practice saying what we want from government for a just and peaceful e-enabled society. This is based on a devolved human vision, respect for people’s dignity, rights and desires, empathy for the needy and the best formal processes of service design.

Meanwhile, this week I found out more about a specific project that could deliver the technical architecture which could make an “Ideal Government” counterculture visible and practical. More anon.

 

18 Sep 2007

How do we measure who in the tribe is ready for change?

We want government and public services to treat people with respect, as if they were the servants not the masters, cost less money, sort out problems honestly and quickly and behave in a generally ideal manner. That means, I think we can agree, a pretty deep and broad culture change in the best part of 5m people and a huge number of institutions - many tens of thousands if you go count all the schools and smaller NHS organisations as well as the Number 10s and Treasuries.

So here’s a question. Is there a simple way of measuring how ready people are to change? Is there a quick and easy psychometric test or something which checks whether people “get it” and can cope with the workload of change? Presumably when a huge, deep, long-lasting change happens different people play different roles, advocating change, visionary leadership, adopting it early, pointing out all the potential drawbacks, adjusting new processes so they really work, or resisting it until death or retirement. There are 101 ways to be unresponsive to people’s needs, waste money, destroy people’s trust in the integrity of public services. There’s every imaginable way to block change. But how many ways are there to start to get it right?

Surely there’s a body of work and experience on this issue.

It seems to me, from the people I’ve encountered over 20-odd years in public services, that there are loads of ways we can describe the qualities needed to get us to our destination: public-service ethos, professionalism, skills in the various professions, empathy etc. The outputs can be considered in the three dimensions of service quality, cost and trust. But when you’re asking how ready people are to change does it just boil down to two dimensions: energy and wisdom? And would a quick & dirty measure of both help us work out who needs what? I’m thinking like a two-dimensional GCSE result based on the minimum questions that ask do you care/get it and have you the energy to do anything about this.

Then you have this plotted n a 2D matrix. Perhaps a small anonymised sample. Perhaps it’s not anonymised at all, but has names and job titles. Perhaps itsn ot a sample at all, but a census of anything up to 5m people.

Something like this is important to do because there’s no point preaching to the converted, or galvanising people who are misguided. You need to galvanise the converted and reason with or instruct people who are full of energy but just “don’t get it”.

The bombastic politician who pushes daft policies on war, drugs or ID cards oblivious to rational evidence is all energy and no wisdom. But the seasoned official who can tell you exactly what’s wrong with everything but won’t do anything about is is all wisdom and no energy. If you’re trying to create deep change both these types will be invaluable allies but only if you approach and draw on them in the right way.

Of course there will be plenty of people - perhaps millions - with neither energy nor wisdom. They get left till last. And, thank heavens, there are people with both energy and wisdom in abundance, and it is with them that the change starts. I’m sure you find many such people in front line services everywhere (though I cant begin to name them). And in the centre of government we’re fortunate to have Alexis Cleveland and Sir David Varney.

How are they to know who is with them? Somehow they have to find out Who “gets it” and who will block customer-oriented change while saying the right words. Is there some way of structuring a “club of the converted”, or will the civil service always progress as a series of informal networks lurking behind the organisations and job titles.

And do they need sticks, carrots or a torch? Probably all three, plus copious resort to the “JFDI"* instruction, but you need to know which to use when.

 

14 Sep 2007

Ideal Government comments: update

I now see (on return from leave in Nova Scotia) just how bad the comment spam situation has become.

1. Sorry about that.

2. Pending a better solution I’ve restricted comments to members (ie registered authors) only. If you’re not an author (or forgotten password whatever) please email me. If they’re about Ideal Gov I’ll paste them up. 

 

13 Sep 2007

Ideal Gov current spam management policy

Ideal Gov is our watering hole for ethnographers pf bureaucracy who like to

- describe e-enabled govermment as they encounter it
- ask what we really want and
- say “wouldnt it be better if...”

but it’s under siege from semi-literate vendors of dubious products. Cease and desist, you off-topic spammers!

The present policy is to “close” any comment that looks like spam, to delete any trackback that’s not recognisably bone-fide, and to close to further comment older posts which are attracting spam. It’s a bit of a pain but we’ll stick to it. So gradually the older archive is being closed to further comment. If you’ve got something new to say on an old topic it’s probably time for a new post anyway.

Sorry for the inconvenience if people’s inboxes are getting clogged with spam comment notifications. Authors and members can always update their mailing preferences in “MyAccount”.

 

29 Aug 2007

Where has IdealGov got to in the grand scheme?

Now that Kable (the Ideal Government mothership) has become part of Guardian News & Media its time to take stock of where Ideal Government has got to since September 2004. Shall we do more, or pack it in?

We’ve written a decent-sized book here. The stats say 1293 articles over 79 pages, 1846 comments, 171 trackbacks (not counting the growing amount of comment and trackback spam I’ve deleted in recent weeks), 13m hits and 394,000 home page views. Our visitors come from here, according to Clustrmaps (whose user of the month award we won during the UK EU Presidency. Alexa says that 0.000045% of Internet users visited the site which ranks it the 1.29millionth most visited web site (up 843,000 places on the previous quarter. Let’s face it, we’re part of the long tail, and that’s where we belong.

For me the core insight was that the Ideal Government conversation quickly questioned the assumptions behind the conventional and supposedly self-evident wisdom of government’s “transformation” strategy. That was, and still is, centralising, clunky, insecure and not respectful of people, their dignity and how they wish to be treated. Instead, the collected wisdom of contempory IT practitioners, service designers and consumer advocates that shared their ideas around the Ideal Government “wouldn’t it be better if...” theme quickly and repeatedly pointed to

- the quick wins available by doing things in the sort of smarter ways the contempory Internet makes possible
- the power of co-design, co-creation or what the Tampere EU public services conference dubbed co-governance, and
- the need for a foundation of trust based on honest science and respect for human dignity.

Ideal Government spawned real-life meetings: rehearsals at the October Gallery for key presentations and talks, presentations at the EU Manchester summit, for global government CIOs meeting in Guadalajara (who on the whole were a bit miserable, to be frank) and the splendid EU public services gathering in Tampere Finland, and Chatham House rule dinners of the same name which have started to break down the big tricky subjects we tackle with some of the people who matter most because they can actually do something about it (each of these written up on the blog). We’ve experimented with Ministerial blogging (and succeeded in the sort of way that experimental jazz does, ie not really), ran a maps mashups competition, tried to collect pertinent art (and there is so much more) and tracked much honest work and effort going on around that most malevolent and odious of government IT policies, the national ID register and card.

And above all, our proudest collective achievement to date, it triggered The Sensational Ideal Government Walk-Thru Experience now known by the more reasonable title ThePublicOffice

It seems to me, almost three years into rehearsing this question “what do we want from e-enabled public services” that the agenda is clear. There’s a small and willing community who “get it” and have a clear vision based on good science and compassion for their fellow human beings. But reality and present trends - CfH, ContactPoint, e-borders and the national ID programme - are far from ideal. The job of creating e-enabled public serivces formally designed to meet people’s real needs is barely started and the obstacles, inertia and resistance are daunting, colossal. Call it incompetence or “forces of darkness”, things are conspiring to make life worse - more intrusive, expensive, inconvenient and annoying - before it gets better.

It’s great to feel some key people know where we’re trying eventually to get to. But I do feel the need to think through what is the role if any of IdealGov in helping us get there. 

 

01 Jul 2007

IE users blogroll/categories problem

Dear IE users: the helpful stuff on the left seems to have disappeared way down the screen (scroll “way down”, as Elvis put it). Not sure how long has this been going on, as Sarah Vaughan put it. I never noticed because I use Firefox. We’ll try and fix it, but it wont be today. 

 

14 Jun 2007

ThePublicOffice: morning-after reflections on the Sensational Experience

It’s publicly official! We’ve had a sensational ideal government walk-thru experience. Ruth and I have been a bit preoccupied creating it and therefore perhaps a little quiet on this blog. Forgive us, but I hope you’ll agree the efforts were not in vain.

Inpsired by our dear friends at the NCC and with the support of Cable & Wireless, EDS and Nortel on behalf of the new Innovative Communications Alliance we engaged the LikePeopleDo team at Central St Martins College of Art & Design. They created ThePublicOffice, a space where we can all work together to redesign public services around the needs of users. It responds to the challenge earlier this year by Sir Gus O’Donnell that

ʻWe need more innovative ways of conveying to public service leaders that transformation is all about the customerʼ

Nick Leon at Naked Eye did some exemplary ethnography for us, just looking at public services through the eyes of people when they really need them. You can see the stories the five families shared on ThePublicOffice web site.

ThePublicOffice ran a series of workshops over 12 and 13th June amidst the vibrant din of GCExpo, Smart Healthcare and Procurement Solutions shows at Earls Court. And guess what? It works! Hurrah.

Click the image to see Shirley, Andrew, Victoria and Jeremy’s story

 

26 May 2007

Testing the Rateitall Sexywidget


Political Blogs on RateItAll

I’m testing out this widget by Laurence Coburn of Rateitall who was a fellow-speaker at last night’s OpenBusiness Minibar.

Just rate Ideal Gov, and type in your feedback. Rateitall sorts out the rest. Could it be easier? If it seems to work, let’s keep it on the sidebar.

Laurence’s work, and other similar work, seems to accelerate the idea we’ve been plugging for a couple of years that feedback is so easily available on the net that it will surely soon apply to all public services. Should we have this widget on every government web site (or indeed, on DirectGov if that is to be the only government web site)?

 

24 May 2007

Comment spam finally gest serious here too

We’ve had a really long run of little or no comment spam but now it’s well and truly over.

SORRY about all the mechanised rubbish being sent on. We’ll need a major fix. Bear with us. 

 

08 Mar 2007

RIP Chris Lightfoot

We’ve lost the opinionated and technically brilliant Chris Lightfoot. Just as MySoc went seriously national (with the 1.8m signature road pricing petition and a major Downing Street policy initiative drawing on their work) it seems that life became too much for Chris. I only hope he understood how much we appreciated and valued him. There’s a note on his blog, with comments building a book of remebrance, and Tom - who has been just sterling and wonderful through all this - has done a wonderful piece.

I’ll never forget the work he did with Tom to explain the new axes of politics. Chris occasionally graced Ideal Gov with some trenchant and grumpy interventions - see for example his ID architecture.

Chris’s family spoke bravely at a very moving funeral. I didn’t know his friends (other than the gang) and background but I do know we’ve lost a unique contributor and catalyst in a great and exciting change that we’re just starting to go through. Everyone’s unique, of course. But Chris made that universal truth delightfully obvious. It’s a difficult passing, too hard for him and almost unbearable for those close to him. But all of us in the wider community touched by his work can remember and appreciate the brilliant things he achieved. 

 

05 Feb 2007

Good heavens - is this us?

I feel like our salon has just had a drawing room makeover. Let’s behave as if nothing has happened! Thanks to Matt, Abbie and Richard at Score.

Ruth and I are off to see Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden on Thursday. We’ll be on the lookout as always for anything contructive for the critical friends to contribute. 

 
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Ideal Government

Let's say what we want from e-enabled government. Let's observe government first-hand. Let's say "Wouldn't It Be Better If" (WIBBI). Become an ethnographer of bureaucracy today! It beats getting frustrated with public services.

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