Design: Co-creation

The basic lesson is let’s transform government services for the benefit of users. But the Web 2.0 way is to invite users to help co-create the e-enabled public services they want, in the style they like, and share it.

04 Apr 2008

The individual as a business; the citizen as Ministry

Check this out from Alan Mitchell’s “right side up” buyer-centric commerce forum:

The individual as a business

There is a simple question at the heart of person-centric commerce: whose profitability are we trying to improve? In our current organisation-centric world, there is only one answer to this question: the organisation. But now there is another answer: the individual.

Today, big businesses employ armies of advisors, consultants and agents to help them achieve their goals and act on their behalf. They reward these advisors, consultants and agents to the extent and degree that they help the business achieve what it wants to achieve: improved performance, increased profitability etc.

Right Side Up businesses and services bring the same approach to individuals. Individuals pay them to help them achieve their goals more efficiently and more effectively and to act on their behalf – to help them improve their performance and increase their profitability *.

This talk about ‘personal profitability’ is not just metaphorical, it’s literal too. The Right Side Up service addresses each individual as a legitimate business in its own right, because it recognises that individuals do all the things businesses do.

* Of course, one of the big differences between big organisations and individuals is that individuals define ‘performance’ and ‘profitability’ in many different ways. ‘Profit’ may be emotional rather than financial, for example.

Like any business, the individual:

* sets strategies to achieve goal, sources inputs, processes them into outputs or desired outcomes etc.

* has to manage many different departments or functions: my home, my health, my money, my transport, my communications etc. Naturally, the individual wants to run these departments better.

* manages many processes to do this: set goals, make plans, set priorities, make decisions, conduct exchanges and transactions, do work, coordinate activities, oversee logistics, administer things, keep records, and so on.

* invests assets such as time, money, energy and attention in managing these departments and processes – and naturally seeks the best possible return on these investments.

Right Side Up services bring professional expertise and specially designed infrastructure to help individuals improve their performance and profitability on all these fronts. Organisations that view and treat individuals as customers of their particular organisation, buying particular products and services, simply cannot ‘see’ this potential.

That’s a fantastic statement of the sort of “corrective” thinking we need to apply to Transformational Government to make it work and to make public services that are respectful of human dignity.

 

03 Apr 2008

Patient Opinion: you can’t fool a good SRO

Picked up by the IdealGov concealed microphones at a recent CIO meeting, spoken (it would seem) by the senior responsible officer for spending £25m a year of taxpayers’ money on NHS Choices

“You should see this other site...”

Quite right. NHS Choices’ “voice” function promises to be more expensive and less well moderated than the existing and simple-to-use Patient Opinion. But most serious of all, it won’t be independent at all. The idea is we voluntarily voice our feedback via NHS Choices into a crown copyright publi-private partnership, so future secretaries of state can use our data to make politicised editorials and some outfit like Dr Fosters can mine it as intellectual property. Je pense pas; non, noooooon, non! Geklauten Daten? Nein Danke!

Wibbi: we applied all three core IdealGov principles in one go here. We score a quick win, we use a process of co-creation, and dig deep to build gov 2.0 on a foundation of trust. All we have to do is use the money we’re going to waste on some arm-manufacturing contractor writing a £multi-million Transport-Direct/DirectGov/BusinessLink type EU-rules procured NHS Choices/Voices clunketerium web site. Instead we could use a fifth the money to promote and roll out the creative-commons and not-for-profit Patient Opinion faster. At the very least we could remove the “planning blight” NHS Chioices/Voices casts on Patient Opinion, which works nationally already with simple clean design, exemplary tagging, moderation and flexible feedback options.

JFDDI! Desist! The senior officials know it makes sense. I think the Minister in charge is Dawn Primarolo (not Ben Bradshaw. Or Alan Johnson is top dog at health.) Gordon - have a word would you? [Thought: perhaps we could install an IdealGov-branded Middlesboro’-style talking CCTV camera in #10, so we can keep an eye on the PM and also offer him some top tips at convenient moments 24/7]

 

04 Mar 2008

David Cameron “mash-up” speech to Tory councillors in Warwickshire

Look what Her Majesty’s loyal opposition came up with last week

The second announcement I want to make today is about information. For decades, information, power and control have been monopolised by well meaning public officials.

Now, because of the internet and dynamic change in our broader culture, we can consign this top-down model to history. We’re entering a post-bureaucratic age, where true freedom of information is making possible a new world of people power, responsibility, citizenship, choice and local control.

One of the best examples is crime mapping. In cities all over America, police forces regularly publish information about crimes in their area. What type of crime, when it happened, and where. Anyone can take this information and overlay it on an online map. This gives the public unprecedented information about crimes in their local area. And it gives social entrepreneurs, drugs charities, and a whole host of organisations to pick out hotspots, see what needs doing and transform neighbourhoods.

But look at our Government at home. It’s still bureaucratic, still top-down and still old-world. It still thinks it knows best and that it should keep all the information.

If you don’t believe me, try getting a supposed freedom of information request on important issues like exactly how taxpayers’ money is being spent. It’s next to impossible.; this is bad for democratic accountability....

Now, if the actual government (die Regierung an sich) were to pinch these ideas (which are already in its fredom of Information report) we’d be starting to get back on the right track. Hey; it would almost be Ideal grin

 

28 Feb 2008

Bradshaw avoids the NHS data question

Ollie Letwin asked a good question about how the NHS processes people opting out of the centralised health record. Here’s what the Minister might have said

“We quite appreciate, in the light of our recent data cock-ups, that many people will have reservations about signing up to national centralised health records run by the government. That’s fine; they’re entitled to their views. We shall simply make sure that the centralised NHS service we deliver is so safe, so worthwhile and so eminently worthy of trust that in due course they decide they want to sign up.

“In the meantime we’ll respect their wishes and continue to offer them the best service we can. Oh, and if they choose to sign up with a personal health information provider (such as Google or Microsoft) we’ll make sure our interfaces can interoperate with these systems as standards emerge. After all, by looking after their own records, they’re saving us money and effort, aren’t they, and getting exactly what they want. In fact, it’s really quite a good idea.”

You can see what Ben Bradshaw did say here. For some reason he just waffled, perhaps hoping the question will go away. But it wont, because the alternatives to centralised NHS records are going to be getting better so fast.

Because they’re politicians, they seem to assume that anything that opposes them is “politically motivated”. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that there are people who don’t give a damn about the politics of it all. We just want to be responsible for our own data, and to be treated with respect, as if our wishes mattered. Not to spend life going through some bureaucratic mincing machine with the sand of don’tcareist incompetence scattered liberally through its delicate workings. 

 

23 Feb 2008

Arise Sir Francis: MySociety FoI service

Oh wow. Oh wow. Every bit as exciting - and this is saying something - as the Viva Obama Mariachi is the long-awaited first public sighting of the MySociety FoI service. So what does it do?

It makes it easy to make FoI requests.

It lists central and local government FoI officers, and you can update the list.

It shares the meandering correspondence and the results obtained under FoI (such as a full listing of all the one-man protests outside Parliament). I hope this avoids the absurd ”yes I gave it to you but it’s still crown copyright so if you put it on your website we’ll sue you” insulting waste of taxpayers’ money.

If we all use it, gradually we’ll accumulate an open resource of government data using unfussy contempory web design, managed by people we trust because they perform and don’t have a control-phreak or commercial agenda.

My suggestion is we ask if Cabinet Office wouldn’t mind pointing the now unused domain name “open.gov.uk” at the new MySociety site. Because that says exactly what it does - beautifully designed, no editorial, no nonsense, no absurd Ts&Cs and at no cost to the taxpayer. The site is dedicated to the late Chris Lightfoot, who died almost exactly a year ago.

It’s ethnography in action, it’s open, it’s legal and respectful. It’s efficient (because it’s free and becase each request needs only be made once). It’s transparent, democratic and helps build the foundation of trust (on open source Rails, as it happens). So far there’s only one user - Julian Todd. Let us make it tens of thousands. The potential is immense.

Francis: you’re a legend. Go MySoc!

 

22 Feb 2008

NCC research into consumer of the future

While we’ve been frothing about DirectGov Ts&Cs and C21stconsulting-spam Public Strategist has come across and recommendssome key NCC research into consumers and the discipline of listening and engagement. People make six simple requests, he summarises:

Listen to us: “…something more like you’re doing here [deliberative forum], and people actually listened and did something, things would be better.”

Talk to us face-to-face: “…because if it’s not face-to-face people won’t believe they’ll do anything.”

Come and see how we live: “…they should send people to live in the community to find out for themselves – it’s ok listening to us, someone needs to be there to see what it’s really like.”

Help us make our voices heard: “It’s difficult for us to get anywhere, to say what we want.”

Give us feedback - no more ‘fake listening’: “They make a big deal about collaborating and listening to everyone, which they do but in the final [council] decision the weighting given to local people is 20%.We’re the ones who have to put up with it, why isn’t it 80% for us and 20% for them? It’s an indication of the fundamental problem. They’re communicating with us in the sense that they’re getting our views, but they’re not listening and responding appropriately.”

Be honest with us: “…if you can’t do anything for people, tell them you can’t.”

Bookmark; read at leisure. If people listen to Ed Mayo’s outfit we might yet work out how to understand our customers, which is the start point to sorting the rest of it out. 

 

05 Feb 2008

Blackberries squashed by the great clunking fist of nitwittery

Civil servants were strip searched and passed through metal detectors on the way on to work his morning, and 3500 tons of iPods, memory sticks, mobile phones, Palm handhelds and camera memory cards were crushed and sent to landfill. That’s a fib, obviousy. It would be ludicrous. But so too is this story from ZDNet:

Government BlackBerry devices and PDAs have been grounded by the Whitehall-wide ban on the movement of unencrypted personal data. The devices have fallen foul of the department-wide ban imposed by cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell in the wake of the revelations about the Ministry of Defence data loss last month that resulted from a stolen laptop. The Cabinet Office confirmed that any government electronic device, even down to a mobile phone, would have to have any personal data encrypted before it could leave Whitehall premises.

How pointlessly frustrating must this be for officials who like to use contempory communictions tools to work effectively? Won’t it just drive them over the edge to become grasping Ernst-Accentouche-Deloitroids, devoting their ingenuity to hoovering cash out of the public purse?

Wibbi we applied across the board common-sense and professional policies based on deep respect for each and every individual, that the buggers of prisons, MPs, lawyers and everyone else would realise in a Damascene flash that they are the servants and not the masters and that we movd towards public services that were professionally and formally designed, with the participation from the outset of those whom they are intended to help, to be fit for purpose. 

 

31 Jan 2008

User feedback on HMRC’s online tax return

So, it’s 31 Jan. In our heady customer-oriented 24/7 world how is the service of paying tax online treating customers?

Not too well, suggests the author of last year’s Downing Street Power of Information review:

Today is the 31st January 2008. That means all around the UK millions of people will be trying to pay their tax - it’s the last day before you start having to pay the government interest.

Where do you go if you want to pay your tax then? How about the HM Revenue and Customs Website?

Brilliant, there it is. Right…. now, erm…. hang on. How do I actually pay my tax? There’s no obvious button! In fact, the link to help you pay is below the fold on my browser, is in about 3 point text, being link number 8 in one of no fewer than 5 lists of links on the homepage. Once you click through the experience becomes even more unforgivably awful. In fact, I can’t actually bring myself to write it up.

Hilariously, there IS a great big homepage link to apply for online tax returns “In time to do it”, even though it’s now too late to apply. Genius - why not warn your users with menaces only to show your own ineptitude in the process: that way they’ll love you more!

This sort of incompetence isn’t as high profile as the loss of those two famous CDs, but it drives people away from the more efficient online services towards more costly phone and paper based transactions, and inconveniences millions of people at the same time.

I can’t add anything first hand. I hate the complexity of the process, and disagree with what is done with my money in my name so much I have to pay an accountant to have all direct dealings with the tribe.

PS: How do you locate the power of Information review? Need you ask?

 

30 Jan 2008

“Various forms of coercion…”: Wikileaks meets the ID System

Did you like the sound of Wikileaks? And do you enjoy the regular attempts to open up discussion around HMG’s proposed ID System? If so, you’ll just love this marriage made in heaven: Wikileaks on the ID System

I have to say, what the leaked IPS document - heavily annotated by No2ID - describes is far from ideal. It is not about a participative, user-driven design process. It does not dig deeper to help build that essential foundation of trust. It’s not a quick win. It doesn’t use language or perceptions from the customer’s point of view. It proves they’re making this up as they go along, and happy to lie about their real aims. Dress it up how they will, this project is about immigration and increasingly big government which “does things” to “them” ie us. It’s an authoritarian document, mostly in the passive voice and thoroughly unpleasant in tone.

Gongs away for the author, I reckon, and Wibbi we didn’t have to cough up for their state pension. 

 

27 Jan 2008

Welcome e-Government: servant not master! (in the Netherlands, that is)

I get an email from Matt Poelmans, Director of the Citizenlink - an initiative of the Dutch Government to improve the performance of the public sector by involving citizens. Over in the Netherlands, ‘modernising government’ is to be achieved by giving more responsibility and choice to citizens. As far as the Dutch cabinet is concerned, the required empowerment is being supported by ICTs and the award-winning e-Citizen Charter has been drawn up to help citizens in their new role.

This charter is deliberately written from the citizens’ perspective and consists of 10 quality requirements for digital contacts. Each requirement is formulated as a right of a citizen and a corresponding duty of government. This is not to say that a citizen has no duties. A citizen is not only a customer of services, but also a user of provisions, a subject of law and a participant in policy-making.
The charter, meant for both citizen and government, is not mandatory, but - brilliantly -:

is based on the principle: Comply or Explain.

 

20 Jan 2008

Case against ContactPoint and eCaf on YouTube

Hurrah! The awkward squad has found its voice on YouTube. See NGO luminaries plus top academics talking here about ContactPoint and here about eCAF, also this one called “Lost in the system” with Shami Chakrabarti. Terri Dowty says spending money on these systems while children’s services are so stretched is like saying

I’m sorry you haven’t got new shoes but I need this new laptop

Brought to us by Archrights.

So; let’s hear the case _for_ these developments please. Do we need another DebateMap?

 

30 Nov 2007

Information: the new public sector battleground?

A different distinguished group met somewhere to consider whether information – its use, management, ownership – is set to be the new battleground for public service transformation. Despite the recent loss of 25m people’s details by HMRC, we agreed that ‘battleground’ might be too provocative a term. But the resignation of a distinguished permanent secretary shows the full implications of responsibility for stewardship of personal information is dawning on Accounting Officers, who are now urgently checking risks and procedures. This information is stored in systems and based on architectural decisions the non-CIO Board members (and their political masters) do not, as a rule, understand.

One argument says that the HMRC episode is not just a deep shock: it’s a predictable and long-overdue wake-up call. Does that leave Transformational Government – a strategy underpinned by the use of large centralized databases – fine, fatally flawed or fixable?

 

Innovation in public services

A noisy and energetic group met somewhere for an Ideal Gov dinner on the theme of innovation. There’s much talk about innovation in public services, but it’s hard to move beyond the platitudes into understanding how innovation is supported, enabled and scaled. Sir David Varney called for ‘creative deviants’. Does innovation always have to be bottom up, or is there a central innovation agenda as well?

 

And the Rumsfeld award for plain English goes to…

Gordon Brown says on the donations issue

“If the inquiry names names, then names will be named.”

But Jack straw says

“For a long time this was an unknown unknown. The moment it became a known known, we got on to it.”

Meanwhile we just visited the local nursery school. Everything is child-centred, registration and snacks are self-service, they want to involve parents as much as possible. It’s bright and colourful, quiet, busy and delightfully messy with playdough, paints, glitter and outside ponds, molehills, mud, and puddles. And they speak straightforward plain English. 
 

03 Nov 2007

Whitehall: meet design of the times

I couldn’t make it to Dott07 but Ian Brown could:

Last week I spent a happy 30 minutes browsing around the Designs of the Times 2007 festival in Newcastle. Lots of fascinating projects including a climate change “weather forecast”, OurNewSchool, Urban Farming and accessible sexual health services.

What all of these projects had in common was the involvement from start to finish of the users of their services. You might think this is the obvious way to design new systems, but if so you clearly haven’t spent much time in the IT world — particularly in the design of large public sector information systems. The more usual approach is that a system is hacked together to a constantly-changing specification from consultants and officials who may have never used the service in question (e.g. collecting child benefit or jobseekers’ allowance), and fine-tuned by programmers who are similarly disconnected from their users.

Interaction design is a key new field between design and computer science. John Thackara and his Dott team have done a sterling job of putting it into practice, both here and in the Juice workshop I attended earlier this year in Delhi. I hope that visitors from the North East and local and central government were enthused and will build co-design into their future projects — as we are doing in Fair Tracing, e-Curator, and hopefully a forthcoming ID management project.

I do think John Thackara is spot on in bringing together the service design community and focussing on theme of co-creation which in idealgovworld we call co-governance. First he did it in Delhi with Doors of Perception, and here, thanks to some NE enterprise body funding, in Newcastle (which might as well be Delhi as far as Whitehall is concerned).

Come on John: we’ve got to get this stuff into the corridors of Whitehall. Come on Whitehall: don’t be scared! Use the service design community to help you invite your customers to say what they need, what the problem is, and help you design, monitor and evaluate the solution! Once you’ve got over the initial discomfort of confronting reality and that inevitable stage of thinking “How could we have been so inept and ineffective for so long”, you’ll find It’s easy and fun. It’s not too late. It’s high time.

 
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