Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery

At last Messrs Andrew Greenway, Ben Terrett, Mike Bracken and Tom Loosemore have delivered a book about digital transformation. Yours for £14.99, it's published tomorrow: "This book ... explains how a growing band of reformers in businesses and governments around the world have helped their organisations pivot to this new way of working, and what lessons others can learn from their experience".

The authors are described as "partners in Public Digital Ltd", which isn't a partnership, it's a company, and they're directors, not partners.

"Mike Bracken", it says in the blurb, "was appointed ... the Chief Data Officer in 2014". Actually his appointment was announced in a 24 March 2015 press release, Local authorities setting standards as Open Data Champions.

These little errors may make you wonder about the accuracy of other claims in the blurb, e.g. "the UK’s Government Digital Service ... snipped £4 billion off the government’s technology bill". You would do well to check with the National Audit Office before assuming that that figure is authoritative, there have been problems in the past.

Only last month Mr Bracken was bewailing the failure of digital transformation in the UK government.

That is just the latest in a series of bitter epitaphs. Mr Greenway, for example, has been at it since August 2016: "GDS is following the course charted by other successful [?] centralised reformers in government. Icarus-like soaring for a few years. The occasional flutter of feathers. Then a headlong dive into the timeless, inky depths of the bureaucratic abyss".

And in October 2015 Mr Loosemore advised the world that, far from GDS transforming government, it had merely put lipstick on pigs, a reminder of GDS's failure to deliver their on-line system for payments to farmers.

So who is this "growing band of reformers in businesses and governments around the world [who] have helped their organisations pivot to this new way of working"?

We know who it isn't ...

... we'll have to wait for our copies of the new book to arrive to find out who it is.

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Updated 1.5.18

"This title will be released on May 4, 2018". That's what Amazon say. Three long days to wait.

There are some tremendous endorsements of the book. For example Jen Pahlka, Executive Director of Code for America, says "their approach broke open decades of dysfunction and made the public believe in government". She's clearly not talking about the UK, where our dysfunction remains intact.

Lucky Emer Coleman has actually read the book and she's blogged about it:

Books that talk about tech or tech change tend to be (IMHO) a tad well 'technical' but this offering from the Public Digital team is droll and funny in parts like the observation that for good working spaces in digital you don’t need pool tables or martinis or mini fridges. Things on walls, decent computers and stickers will get you most of the way. Or in other words 'The digital revolution can be found in Rymans'.

Droll? Funny? That'll have you in stitches ...

... as long as you know that Rymans is a chain of stationers.

Ms Coleman goes on:

And there are lots more of these useful [?] observations like the fact [?] that 'good digital work is a million silent nods of approval, not one loud round of applause'.

Confucius?

Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery

At last Messrs Andrew Greenway, Ben Terrett, Mike Bracken and Tom Loosemore have delivered a book about digital transformation. Yours for £14.99, it's published tomorrow: "This book ... explains how a growing band of reformers in businesses and governments around the world have helped their organisations pivot to this new way of working, and what lessons others can learn from their experience".

GDS & the banshees 4 – in defence of silos

The system is not set up to do stuff.

It’s set up, frankly,

to have an intellectual pissing match

around how its things should be.

Mike Bracken on Whitehall

Easter 2018 will be remembered briefly for the epic querulous caterwauling of the banshees when data was taken away from GDS and given to DCMS.

The passionate tweet alongside was emitted in response to a 29 March 2018 announcement on the machinery of government by the Prime Minister: "This written statement confirms that the data policy and governance functions of the Government Digital Service (GDS) will transfer from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The transfer includes responsibility for data sharing (including coordination of Part 5 of the Digital Economy Act 2017), data ethics, open data and data governance".

No surprises there:

• The Department for Culture Media and Sport changed its name to "The Department for Digital Culture Media and Sport" back in July 2017.
• 18 months before that, in December 2015, DCMS issued a consultation document on the UK's digital economy making it clear that it was in their remit and not GDS's.

Nine months before that, in March 2015, there was a real surprise when GDS acquired responsibility for data in some unspecified way but they didn't do anything with this responsibility and their attempt in May 2016 to produce an ethical framework for data science confirmed that they had nothing to offer.

Nevertheless, in solidarity with Mr Bracken, Stephen Foreshew-Cain dutifully feigned indignation at the loss of power to DCMS, please see the tweet alongside.

You should know that Mr Foreshew-Cain took over as Executive Director of GDS in September 2015, replacing Mr Bracken. Also, that he only lasted 10 months, after which he was replaced by Kevin Cunnington, ...

... who has remained silent on the DCMS issue, no public wailing from him, no gnashing of teeth and not a single garment has been rended (rent?).

No such restraint from Mr Bracken. He was back on banshee duty on 4 April 2018 in the New Statesman magazine: "To elicit government-wide institutional reforms in a digital age, one needs three levers – digital, data and technology – to be in one place aligned to the financial levers of government ...To take data policy out of the centre and move it without mandate or clear explanation to a weak departments with no track record of delivery or cross-Whitehall power ... doesn’t make sense ... Last weekend, the UK seems to have made government a little bit slower, more siloed, harder to reform and more complex. Without a clear statement of motivation, you have to ask: what is the user need?".

It all sounds quite plausible at first but you have to ask how does Mr Bracken know that digital, data and technology have to be in one place, that's a rule he's just made up, suppose he's wrong. They were in one place in GDS and nothing was happening. After no time at all the argument starts to degenerate into what he himself refers to as "an intellectual pissing match". GDS has a poor track record of delivery and suffers from much-diminished cross-Whitehall power. And its claims to be driven only by user needs do not stand up.

Sometimes these banshees spoil it by wailing just a bit too much. Take a look at "last weekend, the UK seems to have made government a little bit slower, more siloed, harder to reform and more complex". Whitehall departments as currently established are "silos", in his language, and Mr Bracken doesn't like silos.

Nor does Mr Foreshew-Cain as we discovered two years ago, please see the tweet alongside.

The suggestion is that a collection of reactionary old permanent secretaries sit around Whitehall defending the entrenched entitlement of their departments against all-comers, standing in the way of internet era progress offered to them by the enlightened likes of Messrs Bracken and Foreshew-Cain.

Well that won't wash, will it – "one needs three levers – digital, data and technology – to be in one place" is exactly what you'd expect a selfish and benighted silo-defender to say, followed by the threat that change would make "government a little bit slower, ... harder to reform and more complex".

The comparison isn't exact. The long gone Messrs Bracken and Foreshew-Cain never were permanent secretaries and and they don't have the decades of public service behind them that normally go with the job. But the petulant cry from the sidelines that disruption is all very well for other departments but keep your hands off GDS sounds pretty authentically reactionary. Some silos are more equal than others?

Silos in Acatlán, Hidalgo, Mexico.

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Updated 12.6.18

Major government initiatives are announced on television, on the radio and in the national newspapers and periodicals. There are people who remember when they were even announced on the floor of the House of Commons.

Minor matters like medical reports on the latest ailments of the Government Digital Service (GDS) used to merit a press release. There was a time when GDS would write endless self-congratulatory blog posts and carpet bomb Twitter with their awesome news.

Long gone now. The GDS blog posts have all but stopped. Their Twitter timeline is like one of those ghost towns in cowboy films – tumbleweed, a hyena or two, and the odd crazed old gap-toothed prospector.

Last March saw the nadir of this PR curve, with news being whispered to a few selected journalists in the margins of a conference, please see above.

Except that now the nadir has sunk even lower, with the briefing involving apparently just one single journalist, Bryan Glick, the editor of Computer Weekly magazine. GDS loses digital identity policy to DCMS, he told us yesterday, 11 June 2018: "The Government Digital Service (GDS) has lost responsibility for digital identity policy, with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) taking over".

An 1861 painting of Mary Celeste
(named Amazon at the time),
by an unknown artist

Apparently "GDS will still be developing Gov.uk Verify [RIP], its in-house digital identity assurance system, but wider policy now rests with Matt Hancock, secretary of state at DCMS. The move took place last month, without any public announcement, but was revealed by Hancock during a press briefing last week".

Mr Glick is the only journalist known to have reported this move. Was he the only journalist at the press briefing? That's what it looks like.

All the hot air has escaped. The party's over ...

... and all that's left of GOV.UK Verify (RIP) is a wrinkly old dusty bit of a deflated balloon while GDS comes to resemble nothing more than the Mary Celeste.

GDS & the banshees 4 – in defence of silos

The system is not set up to do stuff.

It’s set up, frankly,

to have an intellectual pissing match

around how its things should be.

Mike Bracken on Whitehall

Easter 2018 will be remembered briefly for the epic querulous caterwauling of the banshees when data was taken away from GDS and given to DCMS.

The passionate tweet alongside was emitted in response to a 29 March 2018 announcement on the machinery of government by the Prime Minister: "This written statement confirms that the data policy and governance functions of the Government Digital Service (GDS) will transfer from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The transfer includes responsibility for data sharing (including coordination of Part 5 of the Digital Economy Act 2017), data ethics, open data and data governance".

No surprises there:

• The Department for Culture Media and Sport changed its name to "The Department for Digital Culture Media and Sport" back in July 2017.
• 18 months before that, in December 2015, DCMS issued a consultation document on the UK's digital economy making it clear that it was in their remit and not GDS's.

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Making a difference

We volunteer because we want to make a difference - HMRC digital
The difference maker
We’re delivering reform – and starting to make a difference
Design that Makes a Difference exhibition
Teachers dedicated to making a difference

That's the first five hits returned by a Google search just now for "making a difference". We could go on. For some time. There are about 1,775 more hits where those five came from.

That's if you restrict your search to just UK government blogs, blog.gov.uk. Extend the search to the whole gov.uk domain, and Google gets 6.72 million hits. The civil service is clearly fascinated by making a difference.

Take the brake off, search across all domains, and Google offers you 320 million articles to read.

Making a difference is a big subject.

Too big to tackle in its entirety.

Let's restrict our scope to just the UK Government Digital Service (GDS). They have spotted the making-a-difference fashion and adopted it for their endless and compulsive recruitment drive:

The examples could be multiplied. There's this – We're looking for an inspiring Service Manager: "We want someone who is as committed to transformation as we are, and in return we will offer a friendly, supportive working environment full of people who want to make a difference". And there's the Ross Ferguson tweet alongside. You will have no problem finding further examples.

Is it really such a good idea for GDS to market themselves on the basis that they make a difference?

Catching flu makes a difference to millions of people and presumably GDS don't want to suggest that they're a debilitating virus but that possibility is not excluded from their glib marketing.

Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Any event must have a cause. That's how we think. Rightly or wrongly. Every action of ours must have an effect. Trivially, it follows that it is impossible not to make a difference. What is the non-trivial point that GDS are trying to make?

Presumably GDS want you to understand that they know what they're doing, they know what difference it is that they are trying to bring about, they're not just a Brazilian butterfly unwittingly bringing destruction to Texas. But what is it that they know? How do they know it? And why don't they tell us?

When President Clinton demanded back in 1992 that mortgages be made available to everyone he caused the credit crunch of 2007/2008. What is there to protect GDS from the law of unintended consequences? Nothing.

The public sector ethos is an appealing idea. The suggestion is that public servants are uniquely altruistic and motivated only by increasing the public good. Piffle. Anyone working in the private sector, whether or not they are inspiring and talented and committed and passionate, could do more good and/or less harm than a GDSer. That's a hypothesis. What is GDS's counter-argument? How do GDS measure the public good? They don't say.

GDS hold themselves out as being bathed in the glow of making a difference. But making a difference is an empty claim without a lot of supporting definition and evidence and argument. Potential recruits are recommended to ask at interview what this difference is that GDS claim to have made in the past and promise to make in the future.

Making a difference

We volunteer because we want to make a difference - HMRC digital
The difference maker
We’re delivering reform – and starting to make a difference
Design that Makes a Difference exhibition
Teachers dedicated to making a difference

That's the first five hits returned by a Google search just now for "making a difference". We could go on. For some time. There are about 1,775 more hits where those five came from.

That's if you restrict your search to just UK government blogs, blog.gov.uk. Extend the search to the whole gov.uk domain, and Google gets 6.72 million hits. The civil service is clearly fascinated by making a difference.

Take the brake off, search across all domains, and Google offers you 320 million articles to read.

Making a difference is a big subject.

Too big to tackle in its entirety.

What does the BBC mean by "control"?

A charming email arrived from the BBC the other day. They want to make it easier for DMossEsq to sign in to his account. And they want him to be able to sign in orally – no more fuddy-duddy typing.

So the subject of the email is "Talk your way into the Beeb"? No. It's "Important changes to the BBC Privacy and Cookies Policy".

Bit boring. But let's take a look:

Hello, We’ve made some changes to the BBC’s Privacy and Cookies Policy. We’ve done this so that we can introduce new features, while protecting your data and putting you in control of what happens to it. You can view the updated Privacy and Cookies Policy by going to bbc.co.uk and searching for our Privacy and Cookies Policy or by clicking on the link below. View updated Privacy & Cookies policy ...

The BBC Privacy and Cookies Policy turns out to be 5,000 words long and to comprise 20 clauses.

Clause 4 lists 11 uses to which the BBC may put DMossEsq's personal information. Most of these are unimpeachable.

For example, the BBC may use DMossEsq's personal information for analysis and research to assist with marketing and strategic service development. DMossEsq has no objection to this use of his personal information. But it is odd to describe this as a case of him having "control of what happens to [his personal information]".

It would make sense for the BBC to say "thank you, DMossEsq, for providing us with the data to help us with our strategy". It makes no sense to say that DMossesq is "in control of that data".

On those rare occasions when the hermit DMossEsq leaves his mountaintop eyrie in Merton and goes abroad, the BBC warn him at clause 4 that he may be subjected to "online behavioural advertising". Which suggests that the BBC are forever monitoring his behaviour so that they are ready to offer him appropriate advertisements as soon as he is overseas. DMossEsq has no control over that monitoring. The BBC know that and it is silly of them to pretend that he has.

Clause 7 says that the BBC "may use information which we hold about you to show you relevant advertising on third party sites (e.g. Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter)". And clause 8 says "we may share [some data] with third party sites (e.g. Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter)".

DMossEsq can opt out of this sharing. Good. But hang on a minute. Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter don't display advertisements for free. They like to be paid. Presumably by the BBC. Are they being paid with money taken from DMossEsq's licence fee? Or with DMossEsq's personal information? Or both? And what else are Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter doing with his personal information?

Clause 13 assures DMossEsq that he can always find out what personal information of his is held by the BBC on the sole condition that he give them even more of it. Specifically his passport details, driving licence details, birth certificate, ..., and £10. It's hard to see any way round this. But again it seems peculiar to describe it as DMossEsq being in control.

Clause 15 tackles cookies. The BBC's own cookies. And third party cookies:

To support our journalism, we sometimes embed content from social media and other third party websites. These may include YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, SoundCloud, Vine, Instagram, Pinterest and Flickr. As a result, when you visit a page containing such content, you may be presented with cookies from these websites and these third party cookies may track your use of the BBC website. The BBC does not control the dissemination of these cookies and you should check the relevant third party's website for more information.

"The BBC does not control the dissemination of these cookies". Oh good. DMossEsq isn't in control and neither is the BBC.

DMossEsq could delete these cookies. If he remembered to. And had the time. But then the service wouldn't work, more than likely. Or it might work today but not in a year's time.

DMossEsq's "control" could rely on not having a BBC account at all. But then what does he do when the BBC say, as they inevitably will, that, in order to protect the children or stop tax evasion, DMossEsq can only avail himself of BBC services if he has an account?

Perhaps there's no alternative. But that's not the point. The point here is that DMossEsq is obviously not in control of his own personal information whereas the BBC say that he is.

"Aha", says the bright girl in the second row, "you can use the do-not-track (DNT) option in your web browser, that'll put you in control". Nice idea but no silver star – the BBC tell us at clause 16 that "this website does not currently respond to DNT requests".

Mind you, that could change. As we learn at clause 18. In fact the whole privacy and cookies policy could change at any time, "so you may wish to check it each time you submit personal information to the BBC". Very amusing. DMossEsq wants to search iPlayer for an hour or two of Lucy Worsley but before doing that he'll just quickly plough through 5,000 words looking for any changes since the previous version. Who is controlling whom?

Does anybody remember where we started? It seems hours ago but the BBC wanted to tell DMossEsq how to log in more conveniently.

----------

Updated later that same day, 11:37

As per the above, someone in the BBC sent all us accountholders an email saying "we’ve made some changes to the BBC’s Privacy and Cookies Policy. We’ve done this so that we can introduce new features, while protecting your data and putting you in control of what happens to it" whereas an examination of the BBC Privacy and Cookies Policy quickly establishes that we accountholders have no control over the personal information we give the BBC.

If that email had been written by BBC News DTrumpEsq would have been all over it. Control? Fake news.

"Control" is just the wrong word.

The BBC are not normally imprecise. What causes them to be imprecise in this case? Let's allow ourselves two guesses.

Firstly, the BBC want to sound nice. They're paying us the compliment of pretending to be controlled by us. Give it another day or two and, who knows, the BBC may go further and tell us that we have been "empowered" by handing over our personal information to them.

Second, almost everyone else pretends that their identity management scheme allows the user to be in control of their own personal information, so why shouldn't the BBC join in, follow the herd, take cover in the crowd and do the same?

Take Mydex, for example. It's been years since DMossEsq has bothered to look at Mydex. They never could answer the question how handing over your personal information to other people gave you control of it and they still can't but they still make that promise: "Complete control You decide what you store, see and share". Perhaps the BBC are copying Mydex.

Or take the Government Digital Service's GOV.UK Verify (RIP), for example. "Users are ... in control of when their information is passed to a government service" – no we're not. Nor are we in control of our own personal information when GOV.UK Verify (RIP)'s "identity providers" send our personal information all over the world to their subsidiaries and sub-contractors and agents. Perhaps the BBC are copying GDS.

GDS pretend that GOV.UK Verify (RIP) abides by the nine sets of privacy principles devised by the UK's Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group. In fact it flouts the lot of 'em. Including no.1, user control, "I can exercise control over identity assurance activities affecting me and these can only take place if I consent or approve them".

No-one can make good on that promise. Not Mydex. Not GDS. And not the BBC. So it's silly to make the promise in the first place. Control is not on the menu. Stop pretending that it is.

It's just as silly as GDS's other pretence that GOV.UK Verify (RIP) is, without qualification, "secure". It can't be and everyone knows that it can't. The pretence undermines confidence and trust ...

... like GDS's other other pretence, that "frictionless" means good. It doesn't. It means voluntary enslavement.

And then there's the other other other pretence that apps are good for you. They aren't. Not necessarily. A lot of the time, an app is just a virus by another name.

Our guesses as to the aetiology of the control promise may be wrong but the promise is anyway misleading and demeans the BBC. It's nearly Christmas. Can we look forward to a BBC retraction?

If the BBC want another example to follow, they could do worse than Barclays Bank, whose terms and conditions say:

If you, or someone with authority over your account, asks us to share your information with third parties, we're happy to do so, but it's important you know that we, as your bank, will have no control over how that information is used. You will need to agree the scope of use directly with the third party.

And the Barclays privacy policy, which says:

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

GDS and the BBC don't have much experience of managing personal information. Or of talking to their parishioners like grown-ups. They could learn a thing or two from Barclays, who do.

What does the BBC mean by "control"?

A charming email arrived from the BBC the other day. They want to make it easier for DMossEsq to sign in to his account. And they want him to be able to sign in orally – no more fuddy-duddy typing.

So the subject of the email is "Talk your way into the Beeb"? No. It's "Important changes to the BBC Privacy and Cookies Policy".

Bit boring. But let's take a look:

Hello, We’ve made some changes to the BBC’s Privacy and Cookies Policy. We’ve done this so that we can introduce new features, while protecting your data and putting you in control of what happens to it. You can view the updated Privacy and Cookies Policy by going to bbc.co.uk and searching for our Privacy and Cookies Policy or by clicking on the link below. View updated Privacy & Cookies policy ...

The BBC Privacy and Cookies Policy turns out to be 5,000 words long and to comprise 20 clauses.