A thank you and a return to service

After a short sabbatical from public service, I’m delighted to announce I’m returning to the Australian Public Service, where I intend to do my part in the extraordinary and once-in-a-generation reform agenda currently under way 😊

I have had wonderful opportunities over the past 23 years to work with and in the public sector, but it was 15 years ago that I really committed my professional life and career to public sector reform. I’ve since built up a broad and deep understanding of good public administration, while also acting as an enthusiastic pathfinder to shape modern, innovative and evidence-based approaches with adaptive operating models for more humane and participatory public policy, services and governance.

As part of this journey, and for those who want to understand my move to AWS, I decided to take a “public sector sabbatical” at the beginning of last year. I had three goals:

  1. to immerse myself in the challenges and opportunities of AI for government;
  2. to see whether it was possible to systemically help the tech sector be more mission-oriented and cognisant of the unique context of public service; and
  3. to explore ways to close the gap between policy design and delivery.

I was extremely lucky to be offered a role in a special team at Amazon Web Services (AWS) where I have not only been encouraged, but supported to explore these wicked problems, while also being able to share and learn along the way. It was great to work for a large tech company that is genuinely committed to helping their clients to grow and succeed, including the necessary internal capability and confidence in modern tech, mindsets and design/delivery methods. I also got to work with some extraordinary colleagues and a wonderfully visionary boss 😊 A huge thank you to Bruce Haefele, Amity Durham, Jithma Beneragama, Tim Bradley and Jodi Philips in the AWS Strategic Development team, along with all the other wonderful people I got to collaborate with. If you’re looking for AWS folk who really understand both gov and tech, Bruce and the team are great 😊 Thanks for the opportunity!

So I’m delighted to say I was able to do some great work on a whole range of projects while also making progress on all three of my professional goals:

  1. Trustworthy AI in government – I wrote a paper on building trustworthy AI systems in government, with a special focus on ADM (Automated Decision Making), with a wonderful range of reviewers and contributors with expertise on AI, public administration, privacy/law, ethical IT, social policy and more. It’s called the “A Trust Framework for Government Use of Artificial Intelligence and Automated Decision Making” and was followed by a range of talks, blogs and other thought leadership, which goes to the heart of ensuring any AI system isn’t just designed ethically, but it operated, continuously improved and monitored for real and unintended impacts. I also got to work with the wonderful AI expert, Natacha Fort, to create a comprehensive range of AI usage patterns, which really help to understand the different ways AI can be used, and their different risk and mitigation strategies for government.
  2. Mission/policy-oriented tech and delivery – After starting at AWS I learned about the Well-Architected Framework, which is the technical assurance mechanism adopted for all AWS systems globally. So we formed a diverse and international team to design an expansion pack, a “lens” with best practices and recommendations to ensure the special context and requirements of government – including the policy intention – are all included in the design, delivery and operating models for public sector systems/services. This provides a useful means for tech/IT teams to reach across the aisle to policy/business/regulatory teams and help close the gap between policy design and delivery. You can find the Gov Lens for the AWS Well-Architected and the Gov Lens is also available in the Well-Architected Tool for those wanting to use it for early definition/requirements gathering or to assure new systems.
  3. Adaptive policy management – My final goal was to explore and hopefully help establish a more adaptive, end-to-end and humane approach to policy design, decision making, delivery and continuous improvement. This journey led to an extraordinary collaboration with Prof Anna Zhu, an incredible researcher and lecturer at RMIT, which provided a platform for many areas of collaboration and progress. Anna and I brought together a diverse and wonderful group of research organisations, NGOs, government departments and companies that work with government, to submit an ARC Linkage Grant which was funded last month. The research project is called “The Intended and Unintended Impact of Policy for Adaptive Policy Management” and has two parts: 1) hypothesis-led research into how possible it is to monitor for and understand the patterns of human impact from policy changes using existing and cross sector data, with a reasonably high scientific and statistical confidence; and 2) to use the insights and learning from part one to inform a test-driven human impact measurement framework, a new adaptive policy cycle and operating model, and a range of policy infrastructure prototypes and demonstrators to enable end-to-end adaptive policy management. This collaboration has led to work through the year to explore the problems, opportunities and better/worse futures for policy management. I’ve written about some of our findings on the case for more adaptive policy management, and the case for shared and end-to-end policy infrastructure, and you can see sessions with Prof Catherine Althaus here and with Thea Snow here. Catherine, Thea, Suhit Anantula and I are trying to distill some of the work into a book over the coming year or so which will provide new policy frameworks and guidance for the whole sector 😊

My last reflection, is that I went to AWS because I wanted to continue working on public sector reform, even if from a position outside of service for a short spell, and I wanted to work specifically for an organisation that was aligned with my goal. AWS has, at its heart, a “customer obsession” which enables the company to systemically want to help clients to succeed and be highly capable, which is not always the case. So while some people were confused with my choice of sabbatical, hopefully the above helps to provide some context 😊

Now to the next chapter!

I’m very excited and humbled to announce I’ll soon be the Chief Data Officer in the Data and Economic Analysis Centre (DEAC) at the Department of Home Affairs. From all I can see, DEAC is one of the top data capabilities in the APS, and the portfolio does challenging and important work so I hope to bring my passions for great CCX service delivery (Client and Citizen/resident/refugee/migrant Experience), for humane and trustworthy end-to-end policy design and delivery, and of course, for data and evidence-driven decision making and continuous improvement, to the table. Perhaps we could also be a global exemplar for policy infrastructure 😉 I am delighted to be reporting to Deputy Secretary Sophie Sharpe, and to be in a position to contribute to the APS Reform in a department that is extremely committed to the agenda. I also look forward to rejoining the APS, especially with the benefits, lessons and experience from my time in the New Zealand, NSW and Canadian Governments.

Coming back to the APS feels like I’m coming home. It is all the more exciting for the once-in-a-generation changes happening at all levels to become a better public sector for everyone, and I intend to do my part to help.

The case for shared & end-to-end policy infrastructure

This post was written to follow The case for adaptive and end-to-end policy management, which explored the challenges and opportunities for reforming how we design, delivery, manage and continuously improve policies. This article explores the idea of “policy infrastructure” and why a rethink is needed to enable end-to-end policy management with impact monitoring and policy intent optimisation 🙂 I want to quickly acknowledge all the people who are contributing to this work, especially the folk involved in the Intended and Unintended Impact of Social Policy research project which is worth keeping an eye on 🙂

What is Policy Infrastructure? 

‘Policy infrastructure’ isn’t a term that’s often used in government, and yet we use and rely upon policy infrastructure every day. Policy infrastructure includes the data, tools and platforms that help us to analyse, design, model, implement, iterate, monitor and report on policies and policy interventions, throughout the entire policy lifecycle. Policy infrastructure necessarily includes an enormous range of software, data and platforms, because any one tool that tries to do it all never works 🙂 

Policy infrastructure is used to support both the design and development of new policies, as well as the delivery, ongoing management and evaluation of policy interventions. If we are to include all types of policies (constitution, legislation, regulation, Government objectives, operational requirements, department rules, whole of government requirements, etc), then there is a large and complex canvas of goals, success metrics, rules, requirements, eligibility criteria, formulae and requirements that need to be reflected in the policy infrastructure, relied upon by many. In the age of digitally-enabled governments, the scope of policy infrastructure also includes digital policy delivery and policy as code.

Unfortunately, there is currently no consistent or end-to-end approach to policy infrastructure – policy is created, implemented, measured, and amended by different actors, often working in isolation from each other. This inconsistency means there is no visibility of the whole policy journey by anyone involved, and a significant air gap between how policy is represented in modeling tools, and how policy is represented in the real world systems of service delivery government departments or regulated entities. This also creates a significant gap between the predicted impact policies are expected to have, and the broader impacts they have in reality. No modeling is perfect, and unexpected conflicts or variables will emerge as policy is implemented in the real world, in real time. For instance, social security and taxation legislation is extensively modeled in some policy agencies for the purpose of reform and budget analysis, but the same legislation is implemented separately (and sometimes differently) in delivery departments, where new variables exist such as system constraints, integration with other policy domains, operational rules and, of course, the intersection of cross-jurisdictional policies. Without access to the insights of the people tasked to deliver policy, policy makers and legislative/regulatory drafters may be unaware of the risks or conflicts, and unable to build in mitigations. In any case, when unintended conflicts or impacts inevitably emerge, there are limited ways to influence or iterate policy design.

Policy impact and outcomes are often not consistently measured or monitored across interventions. For instance, policy or evaluation teams might use administrative data to analyse policy impacts at a point in time, but delivery teams tend to monitor for system performance and customer experience. Imagine if all our services also enabled real time measurement of policy outcomes and broader quality of life or environmental impacts? It is possible to have a policy intervention like a public service or grant program might be considered successful in delivery (efficient, good user feedback, etc) that is simultaneously having an inverse policy impact, or creating unintended harms. So measuring and monitoring for both policy and human impact is a critical next step to build into policy infrastructure.

There is also no easy or accessible way to test your implementation against the authoritative policy or policies. No reference implementation of policy. No test suite (for example, a person/family with these characteristics should get these services, or a business with those characteristics has those obligations, etc).

The final challenge in this space is the lack of shared or common policy infrastructure, because it exacerbates interpretation confusion and mutual incomprehension between policy design and policy delivery. The diagram below presents a high level view of the current state challenge of fragmented policy infrastructure, and contrasts it with the idea of shared policy infrastructure.


CC-BY: Pia Andrews, 2023

All actors involved in a given policy domain (including all relevant policy interventions) would ideally have access to the same shared policy infrastructure, the same digital representation of policy (“policy twins”), the same modeling and monitoring tools, feedback loops and perhaps even a shared “policy backlog”. Perhaps policy infrastructure could be shared across policy domains, or even open to the public, to facilitate transparency, alternative modeling, and testing policy options or proposed reforms in a wide variety of contexts to help identify potential or unintended consequences, and to maximise intended policy outcomes.

Policy Twins

Although not all policies are legislation or regulation, almost all government services and programs draw upon some legislation/regulation combined with myriad operational policies. The many and varied interpretations of these building blocks of public administration can make it hard to understand which rules are authoritative and which are operational. If we had reference implementations of policy as code (imagine we had api.legislation.gov.au), then we could remove the interpretation gap and have a better chance at identifying and remediating unintended policy issues as they arise.

A Policy Twin is simply the policy equivalent of a “Digital Twin”. Digital Twins provide a digital representation of spatial information like buildings, roads, water and gas pipes, which is used to model town planning, environmental impacts or other spatially driven analyses. A Policy Twin could be as simple as a digital representation of a policy, but could include legislation as code, relevant data (admin data, policy measures, lead and tail indicators, etc), modeling tools, impact monitoring and more. All the things you have seen emerge in the “Digital Twin” space, are possible with Policy Twins, and in fact some Digital Twins have already started including policy as code, such as the inclusion of resource management regulations in the Wellington City Council digital twin to model and display the impacts of changes to the building code. Here is a great article about how to turn building regulations into a Policy Twin. Inspiring stuff! 

The “Rules as Code” movement to has been growing over the past decade, including the use of policy as code to enable test-driven legislative and regulatory reform. Please see more on “Rules as Code” and the “Better Rules” approach to drafting in this explainer deck

Recently in Australia there was a VERY exciting announcement from GovCMS where they are now offering a “Rules as Code” enterprise capability to all GovCMS customers, providing greater ease of creating policy twins 🙂

Engaging with community infrastructure

Many communities run their own data, analysis and modeling infrastructure. Whether a not for profit NGO, an Indigenous/First Nations community or a town, the insights and intelligence that could help shape and inform policy options and change are worth understanding and building into a policy infrastructure model that is capable of respectfully interacting with such systems. This makes it necessary to consider federated architectural design, and ways of sharing insights and patterns across systems without sharing raw data. The progress made in verifiable claims/credentials, as well as in confidentialised computing provide some excellent opportunities for communities and governments to co-create meaningful and empowering policy twins. It also makes sense for government policy infrastructure to be available to communities for them to model, explore and test policy reform options.

Reverse engineering a future state policy journey

Proposals for reforming how policy is done are often, understandably, met with concerns at whether change would “slow things down”, but if we had a more end to end approach with policies designed for easy implementation, then the total time to realise policy intent could be dramatically shorter, even if it means a little more time up front. So a useful tactic might be to consider the whole “policy journey map”, like we do with user journey mapping.

What if we were to design a better, faster and end to end “policy journey map” to identify the necessary ingredients for modern, shared policy infrastructure? Below is an attempt intended to stimulate discussion and collaboration, as this is an emerging area that needs collective exploration with cross-disciplinary participation. 

Imagine for instance, being able to rapidly develop new legislation/regulation with reference implementations circulated for consultation and testing prior to being enacted by parliament (with the usual democratic rigour) and then available as code that same moment for rapid & consistent implementation by all the relevant policy consumers. It is possible, but only through transforming the policy/service continuum. When we make the rules of government authoritatively consumable by software, we dramatically improve the speed & consistency of delivery, with better policy outcomes and compliance.

Below is a high level “policy user journey” contrasting the current state approach to a more streamlined, test-driven and multi-disciplinary approach, which would dramatically reduce the time to impact.

CC-BY: Pia Andrews, 2023

With the high level journey map above, we can then explore and propose the shared and common policy infrastructure we need to support the journey end to end, as per below.


CC-BY: Pia Andrews, 2023

The very early-thinking, draft model above includes the following elements, aligned to the broad temporal phases of policy delivery:

To support test-driven policy ideation (pink):

  • Public engagement tools to explore, co-design & test policy options, both initially (new policies) & ongoing (continuous improvement to policies and policy interventions).
  • Linked and integrated admin data for research, policy modelling & patterns monitoring, best hosted by an independent, highly trusted entity, like the ABS.
  • Case law and gazettes as a utility to use for analysis and to test new ideas.
  • Publicly available modeling tools for testing and exploring policy change.

To support test-driven policy options design, development & drafting (purple):

  • Consistently applied Human Impact Measurement Framework used across government, including for new policy proposals and for monitoring.
  • Public repository to share policy tools, government models, measurement frameworks, synthetic population data, etc.

To support the Parliamentary processes, publishing and visibility (aqua):

  • A linked data representation of the administrative orders to automate reporting, accountability, auditing, security, access & to streamline MOGs.
  • Publicly available Policy as code (intended outcomes, legislation, models, defined target group) available at api.legislation.gov.au
  • Policy catalogue where all operational and Government policies can be discovered, along with measures and transparent reporting of progress. 

To support policy intervention design & implementation (delivery) (green):

  • A “Citizen’s ledger” to record all decisions with traceable explanations, for auditing & citizen access
  • Policy test suite to validate legality of system outputs in gov services & regulated entities.

To support policy compliance, iteration & improvement over time (yellow):

  • Open Feedback loops for public and staff about policies & services, to drive continuous improvement and to identify and mitigate harm.
  • Continuous monitoring of policy & human impacts, including dark patterns & quality of life indicators, alongside usual systems monitoring, to ensure adverse impacts are identified early and often.
  • Escalation and policy iteration mechanisms to ensure issues detected are acted upon at portfolio and whole of gov levels.

A shift to “CI/CD Policy”?

It’s clear when you start trying to imagine a more collaborative, adaptive, humane, iterative and test driven approach to policy management, that a lot of the techniques and methods from product management, CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Development) pipelines, service design and agile become useful. So why not reuse some of the infrastructure, tools, methods and platforms that we have adopted in service reforms over the last decade to help modernise policy delivery?

We could have CI/CD policy pipelines, policy feedback loops, product management for policy, policy monitoring and measurement tools, policy escalation frameworks, policy test suites, policy twins, and public policy engagement/codesign platforms. Perhaps each policy would have a policy manager who owns the end to end outcome realisation (rather than the current baton passing from design to delivery teams), and perhaps each policy intervention could have its own “policy product owner” who owns the delivery of that intervention, but works in concert with other interventions to the policy manager to make sure interventions are effective, complementary and continuously adapting to change and impact? We don’t need to start from scratch here, but we do need to design a good policy journey, so that we can meaningfully leverage what is available, but also identify where there are gaps to fill. 

What do you think?

What do you see as the opportunities and challenges for policy infrastructure? What would your ideal policy journey map look like? Which portfolios would have the right mandate and systemic motivations to run which parts of the concept model above (note, not which department is best functionally/capabilities placed, but which department is best aligned/motivated 🙂)? What other tools, data and platforms would you include? Do you have any examples to share? 

Please share your thoughts and any examples and let’s all take a strategic and proactive approach to modernising our policy infrastructure, so we can be more adaptive and effective in delivering policy and public outcomes.

The case for adaptive and end-to-end policy management

TL;DR: Better policy design and evaluation won’t save us 🙂

The APS Reform agenda provides a rare window of opportunity to address structural and systemic issues in the APS, so why not explore how might we transform the way policy is designed, delivered and managed end to end?

Why should we reform how we do policy? Simple. Because the gap between policy design and delivery has become the biggest barrier to delivering good public services and policy outcomes, and is a challenge most public servants experience daily, directly or indirectly. This gap wasn’t always the case, with policy design and delivery separated as part of the New Public Management reforms in the 90s. When you also consider the accelerating rate of change, increasing cadence of emergencies, and the massive speed and scale of new technologies, you could argue that end-to-end policy reform is our most urgent problem to solve.

Policy teams globally have been exploring new design methods like human-centred design, test-driven iteration (agile), and multi-disciplinary teams that get policy end users in the room (eg, NSW Policy Lab). There has also been an increased focus on improving policy evaluation across the world (eg, the Australian Centre for Evaluation). In both cases, I’m delighted to see innovative approaches being normalised across the policy profession, but it has become obvious that improving design and/or evaluation is still far from sufficient to drive better (or more humane) policy outcomes in an ever changing world. It is not only the current systemic inability to detect and respond to unintended consequences that emerge, but the lack of policy agility that perpetuates issues even long after they might be identified. 

Below I outline four current challenges for policy management and a couple of potential solutions, as something of a discussion starter 🙂

Current policy problems

Problem 1) The separation of (and mutual incomprehension between) policy design, delivery and the public

The lack of multi-disciplinary policy design, combined with a set-and-forget approach to policy, combined with delivery teams being left to interpret policy instructions without support, combined with a gap and interpretation inconsistency between policy modeling systems and policy delivery systems, all combined with a lack of feedback loops into improving policy over time, has led to a series of black holes throughout the process. Tweaking the process as it currently stands will not fix the black holes. We need a more holistic model for policy design, delivery and management.

A cartoon of a policy team celebrating because they completed their policy, and handed over the policy instructions to a picture of a black hole, all the while wondering what it would be like to see it through. The policy instructions are caught by an implementation team who know the policy design team have moved on, so do their best to interpret and implement their understanding. The impacts of the delivery are lost in a black hole as well, where the people affected by the policy can have their lives literally ruined, and eventually an evaluation team asks “why didn’t they just evaluate earlier?”.

CC-BY: Pia Andrews, 2023

There is also a significant gap with the public. From the start, there is usually a lack of diversity in expertise and experience in shaping a policy, and once an intervention is decided and rolled out, the people affected by policies have limited means to give feedback. Engaging the public early and often, and then providing clear feedback loops would help policies be better designed and improved over time.

Problem 2) The lack of real time monitoring of intended AND unintended impacts

The laudable efforts to improve policy evaluation are great, but formal evaluations usually have two limitations that could be better addressed with other mechanisms. Firstly, formal evaluations often tend to be positivist, in that they look for “has this initiative delivered what it said it would”, and aren’t often driven or set up to explore and understand unintended impacts, such as human or environmental patterns that emerged as a result of a new policy interacting in a complex domain.

Secondly, formal evaluations are usually a point in time assessment, rather than real time monitoring of policy impacts. Evaluation teams are not connected to the day to day delivery of policy interventions, creating a timeliness challenge in mitigating issues that are identified. Evolving and improving policy evaluation methods will create greater understanding, but perhaps too little, too late for those affected in between. Real time monitoring of intended and unintended impacts would nicely complement formal evaluation methods, while also providing a timely trigger if anything trended in the wrong direction.

Problem 3) A systemic inability to iterate policy in response to impact, feedback or change

Policies are often designed by a policy team, and then handed over to implementation, so that policy team can move on to the next policy priority, creating a systemic inability to iterate policies as the real impacts are felt in delivery. It doesn’t matter how collaborative or inclusive you are in designing a policy, there will always be perpetual change in the environment, and unintended impacts to mitigate. We need to take the lessons from the creation of “Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery” (CI/CD) pipelines in service delivery, to create a “CI/CD Policy” approach which would manage policy design and delivery as part of the one continuum, drawing upon continuous feedback loops, monitoring and measurement of policy and human impacts to inform and iterate policies and the respective interventions. This would not only help policies to maximise the realisation of policy intent in a rapidly changing world, but would also provide the means to proactively identify and manage policy impacts (positive and negative) as they emerge.

Problem 4) Inconsistency in policy literacy and practice across the sector

Last, but not least, is the inconsistent definition, context and practice of “policy” across the sector, creating confusion and real issues of authority, decision making and accountability. Unfortunately today, many of the “policy guides” currently available limit themselves to Government Policy development, which has led to the common but dangerous assumption that Government Policies are the highest authority, and that the peak of good public service is to simply advise the Government.

To my mind, there are three highest level and fundamental categories of “policy”:

  1. Foundational Policies: the constitution, legislation and regulations which provide the context, framing and highest legal authorities and accountabilities of a department;
  2. Government Policies: the directions of the Government of the day via the respective Ministers, which is subject to foundational policy limitations; and
  3. Operational Policies: which covers all the operational, whole-of-government, department-defined rules and delegated policies, which are subject to both the government and foundational policy directions, but are the authorititative domain of Secretaries.

The diagram below provides a useful reference on the hierarchy of authority of different policy types, as well as a guide to decision making involved in each. This should help public servants realise that different actors are needed for change to different policy types, and that even Ministerial directions are constrained by the Foundational Policies above. It also should provide public servants more understanding as to what decision making is actually within their delegated authority, such as operational policies. 

This diagram shows 5 types of policies, starting at the highest authority with the Constitution, which is only changed by the people (public) via referenda, then Legislation (inc regulations) which is changed by the Parliament via Bills/Acts, followed by Gov Policy (Big P) which is changed by the Government via Ministerial directives, then Operational policies followed by the Department Secretary via departmental approvals, and finally internal operational decision making (implementation, program planning, delivery, etc) which is determined by department executives via internal delegations and processes.

CC-BY: Pia Andrews, 2023

Potential solutions

Solution #1: Adaptive policy management

So what might adaptive policy management look like? Well, let’s start with what the characteristics for delivering great policy and human outcomes might look like, and then we can reverse engineer an ideal policy operating model we could work towards.

FromTo
Narrowly informed, largely driven by generalist policy professionals, with occasional expertise or end user input.Multidisciplinary and diverse expertise and experience informing the whole process, including early testing of several interventions with representatives of those affected.
Static policies are defined, the policy team moves on, policy change is slow and difficult, often principles-based and subject to varied interpretation in delivery.Dynamic policies, with policy expertise present in policy interventions end to end (leg, services, reg, programs, grants, etc) with continuous, evidence-based policy iteration.
Reactive to issues, as they are identified. Constantly looking backwards, mitigating symptoms, without time to look forwards or address causes.Responsive to change as it happens, monitoring for impact (intended and unintended) and constantly adaptive to change in a forward looking way.
Assumptions driven, policy interventions are based on past or current assumptions, without testing, exploring or co-designing a range of approaches.Test driven, a diverse range of potential policy interventions are explored, with a range of stakeholders, with feasible options tested prior to finalising policy options or ratifications.
Culturally exclusive, policies are developed without culturally diverse experience or expertise. Culturally inclusive, policies are developed in a culturally inclusive way, embracing diverse knowledge systems and methods.
Split policy infrastructure, where policy design and modeling happen in one place, but policy delivery happens in a different place, leading to inconsistencies in implementation assumptions, and the inability for policy owners to monitor the reality of policy implementation. Modeling is often limited in scope and domain, so policy conflicts are only identified in delivery, too late to inform design.Shared policy infrastructure, common and shared digital policy models are used for both modeling/design and delivery, such that there is no gap between the two. Policy owners can have higher confidence in the likely impacts of change, whilst also keeping a finger on the pulse of actual policy impacts. Policy intent and impact are monitored alongside performance and CX measures, and feedback loops loop back to policy.
Policy realisation is slow, as the whole lifecycle requires policy options, legislation/regulation, operational policy development, with several opportunities for misinterpretation. Policy intent can take years to even start to be realised.Policy realisation is fast, policies are developed in a faster way with reference implementations resulting from rapid and test driven drafting of human and machine readable policy. This results in better rules & dramatically speeds up implementation.
Community engagement, engaging the public in research or testing ideas is currently ad hoc and inconsistent.Community empowerment, could refer to both the ability for communities to generate new policy ideas with government, but also that public sectors attempt to devolve more decision making on policy or investment to communities.

Perhaps policy making could be more of a team sport:

All teams involved in policy work together to co-design the policy intent, instructions, success criteria and to pre-test some interventions. The all teams work together to design, delivery and continuously improve all policy interventions, using shared policy tools, data, systems and methods, with impact monitored (intended and unintended) and evaluations triggered as required.

CC-BY: Pia Andrews, 2023

Below is a high level potential approach to the policy lifecycle, where policies are designed and delivered collaboratively, with shared policy infrastructure, and real impacts monitored,  escalated and fed into policy improvements over time, with formal evaluations able to be triggered when things go terribly wrong, not years later. Policy makers could, for instance, establish a theory of change between the vision / outcomes and the actions being taken, to ensure the indicators and measures are connected to and represented in delivery from the start. If all policies required a purpose statement, it would help implementers to ensure the delivery was aligned to the purpose and intent of the policies.

A diagram of a policy journey, from defining purpose, then outreach, definition of success, optioins, trials to decision point, followed by establishment of interventions, then a cycle of test/design-deliver-management, which continues till close or policy change.

CC-BY: Pia Andrews, 2023

In this model, there is only two phases in the policy lifecycle:

  • Policy purpose and authority – collaboratively developing the overarching policy purpose/intent, definition of success, and exploring options with a wide range of stakeholders, experts and those affected by the policy, including options testing, with clear definition of the measurable change(s) that should result, and the problem or opportunity the policy is trying to address. This all leads to a decision point, which varies according to the policy type above.
  • Policy interventions design & delivery – this includes the end to end co-design and management of all related policy interventions, including the program(s), services, grants, rules/legislation/regulation, or operational policy development. Policy interventions are continuously monitored individually and at a portfolio level for intended and unintended impacts, constantly improved and iterated based on feedback loops, and improvements are fed where relevant back into iterating overarching policies based on evidence and expertise.

Any form of policy could follow this model. Whether Constitutional reform, legislation/regulation reform, advice/options to Government, whole of government policies or operational policies, the intended outcome can be better realised through being a little more test-driven, participatory, multidisciplinary, iterative and through managing the whole policy lifecycle as an end to end approach with real time and continuous improvements to interventions (like services, regulations, etc), while also continuously monitoring for policy impact that can feed into policy improvements.

Proposals for reforming how policy is done are often – understandably – met with concerns at “slowing things down”. But if you look at the full journey of policy today, policy intent realisation is already quite slow. If we had a more end to end and test driven approach, we’d get better policies designed that are easier and faster to implement, which would dramatically shorten the time to realise policy intent, even if it means a little more time up front. 

Solution #2: A focus and expansion of policy professionalism in the APS

We need to not only teach what all types of “good” public policy looks like, but create a culture of continuous learning and improvement for policy professionals. Perhaps we could start by complementing the excellent digital, data, HR and strategy professions coordinated by the APSC, with a “Policy Profession”? 🙂 

But we also need to teach public service craft to all public servants, including what a healthy, politically neutral and evidence-based approach to public administration looks like, and why we aren’t achieving it as a norm across the sector. For instance, we need to have clear and consistent guidance on how to engage with Ministerial offices appropriately, so that everyone can maintain the integrity, dignity and trustworthiness expected of our public institutions. We also need clear guidance on how to promote an open APS that engages appropriately and regularly with the community, something which will hopefully be addressed in the APS Reform Agenda proposed Charter of Partnerships and Engagement.

All public servants should be confident to maintain real and long term stewardship of public good, above and beyond day to day pressures or policy objectives, and also be knowledgeable of their foundational policy accountabilities, which are found in the constitution and relevant legislation and regulations. For instance, I have been surprised and somewhat horrified to hear people talk about how AI is a problem in government because it isn’t regulated, seemingly unaware that all government systems, regardless of the technology, are subject to Administrative Law, the Privacy Act, PGPA and many other foundational policies (leg/reg). We have many checks and balances we can use to ensure good governance, we just need to be aware of and apply them more consistently across the whole sector. For example, here is a paper where I documented the “special context of government” and then applied that special context to the use of AI in government. It resulted in a holistic approach that is complementary to the concept and practice of responsible government. When everyone has a shared and common understanding of the special context and responsibilities of the public service, we have a good chance to get shared and high integrity approaches to everything we design, deliver and administer in the public sector.

Solution #3: Shared and end to end “Policy Infrastructure”

Given how long this post has become, I’ll share more on this concept in a subsequent post, but here’s a teaser 😉 Basically, whilst difference teams have different tools, including distinct and separate interpretations of policy, then we’ll continue to see an interpretation gap, and a lack of end to end policy visibility, which impedes end to end policy management.

CC-BY: Pia Andrews, 2023

The model above includes the following elements, aligned to the broad temporal phases of policy delivery:
·        To support test-driven policy ideation and announcements (pink):
o   Public engagement tools to explore, co-design & test policy options, both initially (new policies) & ongoing (continuous improvement to policies and policy interventions).
o   Linked and integrated admin data for research, policy modelling & patterns monitoring, best hosted by an independent, highly trusted entity, like the ABS.
o   Case law and gazettes as a utility to use for analysis and to test new ideas.
o   Publicly available modeling tools for testing and exploring policy change.
·        To support test-driven policy design, development & drafting (purple):
o   Consistently applied Human Impact Measurement Framework used across government, including for new policy proposals and for monitoring.
o   Public repository to share policy tools, government models, measurement frameworks, synthetic population data, etc.
·        To support the Parliamentary publishing and visibility (aqua):
o   A linked data representation of the administrative orders to automate reporting, accountability, auditing, security, access & to streamline MOGs.
o   Publicly available Policy as code (intended outcomes, legislation, models, defined target group) available at api.legislation.gov.au
o   Policy catalogue where all operational and Government policies can be discovered, along with measures and transparent reporting of progress. 
·        To support policy implementation (green):
o   A “Citizen’s ledger” to record all decisions with traceable explanations, for auditing & citizen access
o   Policy test suite to validate legality of system outputs in gov services & regulated entities.
·        To support policy compliance, iteration & improvement over time (yellow):
o   Open Feedback loops for public and staff about policies & services, to drive continuous improvement and to identify and mitigate harm.
o   Continuous monitoring of policy & human impacts, including dark patterns & quality of life indicators, alongside usual systems monitoring, to ensure adverse impacts are identified early and often.
o   Escalation and policy iteration mechanisms to ensure issues detected are acted upon at portfolio and whole of gov levels.

What do you think? 

What are the challenges you see, and what do you think needs to be done to improve policy management end to end? How might the APS Reform agenda help drive change, and how can we all do our part to improve things? How could we better deliver policy outcomes, and better public and community outcomes? How can we close the gap between policy and delivery? Would love to hear your thoughts and examples!

I want to acknowledge all the people who are contributing to this work, especially the folk involved in the Intended and Unintended Impact of Social Policy research project which is worth keeping an eye on!

Building agile and adaptive public institutions: insights and observations

Last week, I had the delightful opportunity to host some discussion tables at the 9th Annual FSTGov Government Summit in Canberra. It was an event designed just for public servants, to explore challenges and opportunities for reform and how to better serve the public. I hosted four groups in discussions about “how to build agile and adaptive public institutions”, which included 40 public servants from around 30 departments and agencies. The challenges, insights and highlights are captured below, for broader sharing and learning 🙂

What does agile and adaptive mean?

Challenge: The groups reflected that agile and adaptive still sound a bit buzzwordy, so we explored and documented roughly what they could and should mean in the context of public institutions. 

Insights: Several participants talked about the use of Agile in their orgs (usually in the IT departments) as a development methodology, which helped others to understand that context. When we discussed how to build agile and adaptive public institutions more broadly, we identified a few useful characteristics, which made it more broadly practical:

  • Evidence-based and purpose-led at every step – too many people think agile just means fast and iterative, but you can’t iterative towards a destination that is undefined, and if you aren’t using evidence, testing and experimentation to validate and invalidate along the way, then you end up building a lot of unnecessary or even counterproductive things.
  • Actively monitored and measured – we discussed how you can’t adapt to change if you don’t have the means and mechanisms to detect change in the first place. Active monitoring is already usually done for system performance (uptime, downtime, latency, etc) and for CX (user satisfaction, etc), but if we don’t also actively monitor for measurable policy impacts and for unintended quality of life impacts, then how can you adapt the policy interventions (which includes services) to ensure policy intent is being met in a humane way? In other words, how can you do no harm if you are unable to detect it? Active monitoring is critical to being adaptive, and to prioritising decision making about investment and efforts (including in the backlog).
  • Operationally enabled for continuous change – it’s not enough to just detect change. You need to be able to respond in a timely manner. This is the heart of being both agile and adaptive. If you have a hard and unmovable plan for what you are doing, then you systemically remove the ability to naturally change or adapt according to the results of user testing, to new evidence  or to new extrinsic pressures. This means change only tends to happen under the pressures of urgency, which leads to a lot of short term and techno-centric prioritisation, rather than policy or user-centric prioritisation. Modern organisations needs to be operationally enabled for continuous and evidence based change. This includes delegating actual decision making as far down as possible, so that the people closest to impact and expertise are able to respond quickly to change, with oversight but also trust from their managers, a serious culture change for many teams. 
  • Active feedback loops – Monitoring gives you quantitative data, but feedback gives you qualitative data, which can be key to identifying when things are not going well where the monitored measures might be missing something. Open and continuous mechanisms for feedback from end users AND from staff are key to keeping a finger on the pulse, to be adaptive to early indicators of problems before they snowball.
  • Staff capacity: necessary to experiment, innovate and think – most public servants are working 100% on the most urgent thing, with no time to stop, think, plan or try something new. Under such conditions, it is little surprising that public institutions are generally slow to detect and respond to change and challenging for individuals to innovate. All public servants, at all levels, could choose to free up 5% or 10% capacity to experiment, innovate and even just to think and plan. For those horrified at the idea who are looking at the exponentially growing backlogs of work, I would suggest that throwing more resources at doing the same thing (a linear response) will only continue to fail at addressing the backlog, because we need exponential solutions to exponential problems. A little time to innovation, to re-engineer, to address causal issues and to work smarter, would create the conditions for more agility and adaptation at a grassroots level. The best way to scale is to support all public servants at all levels to improve their impactfulness, which can’t be done without a little capacity.
  • Operational transparency – when you have easy to access visibility of your work program (what is currently being worked on, what’s done, what’s on the roadmap, etc) as well as in showing the outputs of your work (eg, sprint/code/policy reviews, showcases, blogs, research papers, etc), the you achieve two things that helps with institutional agility and adaptability. Firstly, you create an environment where anyone can offer peer review, expertise, experience and serendipitous networks of similarly motivated collaborators, providing the ability to deliver the best possible outcomes. This leads to the building of confidence in what you are doing, which speeds up delivery and adoption because we all work essentially at the speed of trust.
  • Financial agility – all tables spoke about the challenges of “waterfall” budgeting and having to define every cent and deliverable years in advance of starting the work (through business cases, NPPs and the like). But even the Finance people in the discussion talked about wanting to shift to outcomes-based budgeting, and encouraging smaller investments in delivering an MVP rather than high risk big-bang launches of new systems at the end of the program plan. There is certainly opportunities to do small things within the cadence of budget planning that can help bring financial agility. For instance, choosing the use outcomes or epics as milestones in delivery roadmaps (rather than functionality or platform based milestones) which ensures you deliver something that works with flexibility on how to get there. We discussed sprints-based procurement, which I first saw at Dept Finance (APS), but none of the APS knew about it, so I dobbed in the incredible Sharyn Clarkson, from whom I learned about it 🙂

“We already have adopted agile in IT, what’s next?”

Challenge: We discussed how agile adoption in IT has helped, but not solved the big challenges facing service and policy delivery in government. When IT/dev teams adopt agile methods, they are usually still in the position of receiving “business requirements” from other parts of the department who are themselves disengaged from the process of designing or delivering the service/system. We identified the fact that many departments have maintained the issues of functionally segmentation structures, with multiple “product owners” emerging (eg, a business PO and a tech PO), which defeats the purpose and undermines the benefits of product management as a methodology. We also discussed how product management, where it has been adopted, still usually relates to managing platforms rather than services, so decision making, prioritisation and risk is analysed at a platform level, not at the service level, leading to cannablistic resourcing behaviours across “product teams” that are actually part of the same service. 

Insights: Ensuring each “product” being managed is at the service level to provide a more realistic and impactful way to priotise, manage risk, maximse intended policy impact and to actively manage the end user experience. Funding a diverse product team, with the design, dev, ops, business and policy expertise all represented (even if only part time, such as 3 hours a week for a policy person) dramatically helps to ensure the benefits, cadences and agility of a proper, agile, test driven and continuously improved product management approach. Explicitly adopting an MVP deployment strategy is also necessary for product management to work, otherwise the team is still driven to build and deploy everything all at once, which never works.

How do we balance risk and agility?

Challenge: Some of the group discussions reflected on what real risk is and isn’t, and we determined that the public sector reputation of being risk averse, has created a mythology that taking no action avoids risk, when the reality is that a culture of taking no action actually creates risk in a world that is continuously and unexpectedly changing around us.

Insights: Analysis of the risk of non-action should always be included in risk assessments, as well as risk to the public and those affected by the proposal. The SES reforms underway could include KPIs for executives to ensure that personal risk is well aligned to the portfolio and policy objectives, as well as aligned to the impact on the public, so that we avoid a situation where personal risk aversion can create risk for the public institutions and/or communities we serve. Risk needs to be assessed in the context of stewardship, looking at long term and short term implications, to ensure a balanced approach, that should also then be prioritised based on measurable policy and public impact.

These are just a few of the insights and observations from our discussion, what are your thoughts? How can you contribute to creating a more agile and adaptive organisation where you work? 🙂

Exploring and advising public sector reform across the ANZO region

TL;DR – I’ve taken on a new role, and this blog post explains why and how I came to the decision I did 🙂 Please scroll to the bottom or see my LinkedIn page if you just want to jump to the job.

If you’re reading this blog, you probably already know that I am passionate about and professionally committed to genuine and systemic reform/renewal of the public sector. I have spent the last decade in public service, and a decade before that in the tech sector, mostly focused on how to create better government services and policies, with digital/data transformation often providing a useful means for much needed reform.

I have written extensively about the many barriers facing systemic reform of the public sector, including on my blog. I know most public servants want change, but at this exact point in time there is a pressing need to:

  • create greater “demand” for genuine public sector renewal – demand is needed to prioritise investment in systemic reform, otherwise real transformation efforts become the can that continues to get kicked down the road, 
  • explore and invest in creating a more trustworthy public sector in a time of rapidly declining public trust, and 
  • explore what “good” could look like – especially in a world of rolling, continuous emergencies, where people understandably expect more of gov than ever before.

So when I left Service Canada, I realised I most want to focus on three key areas to address these pressing needs, to hopefully help make a real difference:

  1. A Transformed Public Sector: although we see a lot of effort around “service transformation”, there are still very few transformation programs that actually change the system. There are still significant barriers to create a genuinely adaptive, agile, human-centred, test driven and humane public sector, because it requires transformation of structures, budgetary approaches, program/project/product management, public engagement and culture across the sector, especially if we are to close the widening gap between policy and delivery. There is only rarely a planned or co-created future state being worked towards that would result in better, more equitable and more inclusive services and policies for all, and I suggest if you don’t have a clear and distinct future state, then you likely aren’t transforming but rather doing an iteration or digitisation of the current state. For example, RPA is usually used for just automating the status quo, and rarely a tool that enables process, policy, service or system redesign.
    Practically, I’d like to help shape future oriented, human-centred and adaptive policies, services, strategies and programs with governments.
  2. A Trustworthy Public Sector: public trust and confidence in public institutions is paramount to a stable and equitable society, but trust is in decline and communities are being gamed like never before. It is critical that public institutions take some time now to stop asking for trust (the “social licence” route), and to start focusing on how to be considered trustworthy. I think “trustworthy government” requires public participation as an important starting point but government systems and services also need to be reliable, traceable to their legal authority, testable against the law (regulation and legislation), audited in real time, easily understood by and appealable by citizens, and monitored for accountability. I’d basically like to see a modern implementation of Administrative Law coupled with a culture of openness, accountability and participatory governance with peer review, operational transparency and public participation. Finally, to be considered trustworthy, we need to collectively support the existential renewal of the sector, to support and demand a public service that is a long term steward for public good, not just a tool of the government of the day.
    Practically, I’ll be continuing to work on Legislation/Regulation as Code, explainable and high veracity systems, auditable and appealable systems, and of course, participatory governance/democracy initiatives. Imagine if we had a publicly available community repository of legislation as code to build upon and test against 🙂 What does a blend of participatory and representative democracy look like, that gets the best of both?
  3. An Augmented Public Sector: finally, I want to explore and support the timely concept of augmentation (rather than automation) in our public sector, whether it be service augmentation (“Alexa, I’ve lost my job, help me get support”), workforce augmentation (Hey Google, show me the human impact of this policy change across NSW”), or human augmentation (“I want to be the world’s best rock climber, so I might add a few more limbs for the Auglympics next year”). Augmentation to me is where a system purposefully supports humans and machines/tech to each do what they do best, without compromising our human values or the ethical and humane obligations we each have to each other. Too often I see “efficiency” projects that simply speed up or automate the status quo, or remove staff from a process, but we need to have better processes, more inclusive services, and more humane experiences with the public sector. There is no point speeding up the journey off a cliff 🙂 Rampant automation often undermines or misses the opportunity for better, more equitable, more ethical or more humane services and policies, so exploring and demonstrating the opportunities for service and workforce augmentation would be quite timely. Exploring and growing the understanding of human augmentation is also important as we will need to collectively deal with the potential implications for social cohesion when body hacking becomes more mainstream, given the human form is considered everything from sacred to irrelevant, depending on your culture and personal comfort or beliefs.
    Practically, this means exploring and demonstrating AI/AR/VR for the use cases above and getting away from pure automation uses of AI. Ideally in collaboration with others who are committed to more humane futures.

So, having decided these are the three areas I’d like to focus on, I had to consider where could I work to explore them? Where could possibly provide the breadth of opportunities to explore, build, influence, strategise and collaborate on public sector transformation? Sadly, many departments are pushed to stay within their wheelhouse and have become highly reactive to politics, and it is hard to drive a 5 or 10 year cross portfolio and systemic transformation agenda (let alone a 50 year vision!) within the constraints of an election cycle. Ideally, we need public institutions that are stable, operationally independent and confident stewards for long term public good, but this is a chicken and egg issue.

So I decided to work from the outside for a little while. A public service sabbatical of sorts, where I can contribute my expertise in the public domain, explore and demonstrate what “good” could look like, help build the demand and ambition for change (with executives, politics and the public), participate in community initiatives and grow my own experience. I plan to return to the sector to help drive systemic change when demand supports it 🙂

I’m pleased to say that after months of considering some very interesting and exciting options across different sectors, I was approached for a role as a Strategic Advisor with AWS, working with a small team called Strategic Development that works with the public sector across Australia, New Zealand and Oceania. Our focus is on supporting public institutions to dream big and explore new horizons, to achieve long term policy outcomes and sustainable public good, and to develop genuinely transformative plans with practical roadmaps to get there. As a team of accomplished public servants, we all understand the domain and want to help support and champion the sector and all public servants 🙂 I think I can both contribute a lot and learn a lot from this role, and it gives me a strong basis to drive my three objectives.

I will continue to work in the open, not just because it is my preference, but for peer review, collaboration and so you can all help me to keep it real and stay on track with the mission 🙂 Thanks to all those who advised me on this decision, and I hope to join a number of government advisory groups and boards where I can usefully contribute.

Please get in touch with me on piagov [at] amazon.com if you’d like to chat about any of the above! 🙂 I’m looking forward to collaborating on ambitious and transformative initiatives that create more mission oriented, values driven, humane and participatory public sectors across the region 🙂

In other news, my family had to return to Australia. Sick family + NZ travel policies at the time = having to move country again, but luckily the family member has recovered and we are now only a flight away from family 🙂 We decided if we were in Aus that we wanted to live somewhere glorious so we moved to Broome (WA), which has been just wonderful. I’ll be traveling for events and conferences, but am always available online and I’m looking forward to reconnecting with the Australian tech/data and public sectors after the last few years in NZ with the Canadian Government.

Personal thoughts for the Digital Strategy for Aotearoa New Zealand

On the 6th October, a public consultation about a Digital Strategy for Aotearoa New Zealand opened for feedback and participation. Contributions close 10th November, and I thought I’d share a few thoughts, and encourage you all to contribute 🙂 I also wrote a paper on two major issues I see facing us here, Service Delivery and Public Trust in New Zealand Aotearoa: a Discussion Paper which might be of interest, I hope these thoughts are helpful and I want to thank DIA and MBIE for engaging so openly on this topic. It provides a good opportunity to create a genuinely bold and visionary approach that serves us well into the future 🙂

The discussion paper paints a vision of Aotearoa New Zealand being a world leading digital nation built on trust, known for the ethical deployment of new technologies, and it defines success as predominantly: 

  • Higher productivity
  • Lower emissions
  • Everyone flourishes

The rest of the paper however, seems to focus almost mostly on the productivity goal, for example, talking about trust as “We have the right foundations to sell our products and services to the world with confidence, while all New Zealanders embrace the digital future because they feel safe and secure”. “Embracing the digital future” ignores that we are in a digital present, and ignores also the current stress, fears and uncertainty that many feel, as they are actively gamed online today. Ethical deployment of tech also needs defining, because what you can’t describe, measure or monitor for will not lead to an ethical outcome. For instance, to my mind, ethical means all decisions or actions taken are traceable back to a legal authority, are explainable, and are easily appealable by the people affected, and independently auditable. Ethical means a program, policy, service, etc demonstrably and measurable contributes to wellbeing, and does no harm. Define it how you wish, but defining it is critical to assuring it 🙂

This paper seems very focused on “digital” as just the adopting of technologies, but doesn’t really address what is needed to live well in a digital age. I would hope the draft digital strategy that is developed as a result of this engagement addresses the fact that to be meaningful, a digital strategy for Aotearoa New Zealand needs to address the paradigm shifts, future state, and the necessary systemic and structural changes needed to live well and thrive in a digital age. 

General comments

  • The Strategy provides no real vision for a better or different future state, no real mission beyond more use of tech, just a series of tactics clustered into the three themes. I would suggest it is important to use the opportunity to co-create a shared vision of “good” in collaboration with the public to have a future state to work towards. Otherwise, any and all efforts will simply extend the current status quo system, which will at best provide symptomatic relief, without addressing any causal issues or the potential of new opportunities. Driving faster in the same direction will not get you anywhere better than the current trajectory, and COVID has shown us irrefutably that our current direction is not sustainable, equitable or inclusive.
  • The themes are ok, but the goals seem very specific to, or intended to only enable, economic outcomes. It implies that to “flourish and prosper” are assumed to be purely financial, whereas I would hope that trust, inclusion and prospering are considered within the broader Wellness framework: economic, social, human and environmental. Why doesn’t trust talk about how to ensure critical sectors for social cohesion and democratic stability are made more trustworthy (like the public sector, research sector, and the 4th estate)? Why doesn’t inclusion talk about how to ensure people can participate in policy development, participatory democracy and shared governance arrangements? Where are the supports for self-sovereign systems, like an Iwi as an IdP? Why does growth not talk about cultural growth, digital taonga, etc? My suggestions for the theme goals:
    • Mahi Tika (Trust): All New Zealanders are supported by a trustworthy and accountable public service, which provides transparent oversight and appealability for all decisions and actions. People can see and trust their information is being protected and used appropriately, across all sectors in New Zealand, and have help available to navigate truth and authenticity online.
    • Mahi Tahi (Inclusion):  all New Zealanders have the tools, skills and nous to work, play and participate in society with confidence, with equitable access to inclusively developed public infrastructure, policies and services.
    • Mahi Ake (Growth): All New Zealanders have the right digital infrastructure, foundations and skills to build globally competitive new services, products and value in every sector.   
  • The Digital Strategy for Aotearoa is written like just a response to changing technologies, rather than a response to changing paradigms. Technological changes are only a part of being in the 21st century, and it is in the reimagining of our society, economy and sectors that we have a chance to truly become a digital nation. Otherwise we’ll continue to be an industrial nation with some shiny new toys.
  • A transformed public sector that provides trustworthy, reliable and extendable digital public infrastructure, inclusive and highly integrated public services, and a modern approach to regulation and compliance including regulation/legislation as code, and participatory governance where the public can play a part in defining the policies and services they need.
  • A national measurement framework that values and prioritises quality of life outcomes. Such a measurement framework would influence funding, grants, taxation and investment across all sectors, which would in turn influence the use of and outcomes from all technologies deployed, especially artificial intelligence.  
  • Where is the wellness framework in this Strategy? Why not set some targets from here https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/wellbeing-statistics-2018 like “80% people trust the Parliament and Media”
  • Government systems that need to be governed under Te Tiriti need to stay within jurisdiction of Te Tiriti, therefore onshore.
  • The Digital Strategy of UAE was based on the OECD Digital Government Policy Framework, I suggest this be considered as part of this strategy https://u.ae/en/about-the-uae/digital-uae/uae-national-digital-government-strategy 

What would reaching this vision mean for us as New Zealanders? – Feedback

  • New Zealanders have better access to, and use, public services when and where we need them, with well supported online and offline choices so we are never left behind;
  • Small and medium sized enterprises (or SMEs) are increasingly able to grasp digital innovation opportunities and create growth and jobs;
  • A public sector that is digitally innovative, and provides reliable digital public infrastructure to democratise the creation of new value in the digital economy;
  • New Zealanders are safe, secure and confident in a digitally enabled world, can trust that their private information is safe and are able to view and appeal decisions when mistakes are made;
  • We would see ourselves as leading the world in the creation and adoption of responsible digital practices, across all sectors.
  • Policies are developed in the open, with public participation, which are monitored publicly and when policy objectives are compromised due to unexpected change or contradictory policies, it can be dealt with holistically. Policy reform will be holistic, easy and fast to implement, and result in less unintended consequences.
  • Compliance with government regulations will be much cheaper, faster, and more automatable for all sectors, through the provision of digital rules for public consumption and reuse. 
  • All government reporting and other obligations will be designed as digital first to reduce impost, improve compliance, and improve monitoring of policy objectives and real world impact.
  • All industries will be able to leverage technology and in particular, Artificial Intelligence, to augment the workforce, getting the best that people and machines can bring to the table, without losing the benefits of both. An augmented work force is far more innovative, sustainable, resilient and productive than an automated work force, because the former can adapt over time, whereas the latter is stuck in time.

Big issues – feedback

  • Public trust and confidence in the public sector and in the government – need to establish more trustworthy practices, processes, oversight and systems in the public sector, which must be perceived as independent of politics.
  • Deep fakes will dramatically heighten the misinformation wars, and will contribute heavily to ransomware and other attacks. Imagine being bribed about a damaging video that was generated by deep fake technology.
  • A lack of systemic measures will drive non-systemic outcomes
  • It is the processes followed in government that slows things down and makes it less responsive in a time of crisis. The fact that emergency powers had to be so leaned on shows that there is an opportunity to streamline and improve government processes. A review should be done into the entire policy lifecycle, and how it could be streamlined to improve policy agility.
  • Why does the paper say “susceptible to future of work”, paint an alternative.
  • The future of work is something people are scared of, so this area needs leadership on alternatives. An augmented workforce vision would provide a better balance than an automated one, but people are presuming the value of machines is only in automation, which is setting them up to be less adaptive, resilient or innovative into the future.
  • Promoting investment in IT R&D, including how to engage with the computer science and academic community around leading edge research. Perhaps make IT R&D tax deductible?

Measuring success – feedback

Whatever measures are created (there should be clear measures for all three themes) must be applied to all initiatives. If a department is funded to do something in the trust theme, then they must be accountable for demonstrating how that initiative contributes to the trust measures, as well as being accountable for how that initiative contributes to Wellbeing measures. Otherwise we’ll continue to see a lack of systemic pressure to drive the intended outcomes.

  • The ICT sector doubles its economic contribution to GDP by 2030 – (please include the number) 
  • All significant government services are designed inclusively, and have omni-channel options (online, phone and in person options) to ensure New Zealanders are fully supported
  • New Zealanders increasingly feel safe online (target)
  • More secondary school students are taking technology standards (or, just make it part of the core curriculum so you get 100% coverage?)
  • The numbers of tech-related graduates increases (and number of multidisciplinary, why not have tech literacy in most degrees?)
  • Our small businesses are more digitally capable (as measured by the SME Digital Index).
  • Government entities are more digitally capable (as measured by the same SME Digital Index)
  • New Zealand will boast 100,000 highly skilled IT and digital professionals across the economy by 2030 including to double the capacity within government to ensure enough internal expertise to deliver, to innovation, and to engage expertly with the broader tech sector.
  • Wellbeing target measures to improve quality of life for all people.

Opportunities for Māori – feedback

  1. Shared governance – rather than just building Te Ao Māori into frameworks, why won’t government agencies actually share governance with Māori?
  2. Government could provide support for self-sovereign systems for Māori to manage digital taonga, in line with Te Tiriti
  3. Government could provide interoperability with Māori self-sovereign systems where appropriate, including for identity solutions
  4. Government could ensure all services and policies are co-governed with Māori
  5. Government should use Te Tiriti as a framework for the digital strategy, and ensure all “digital whenua” is co-governed

Components that underpin our digital environment – feedback

I suggest adding the following, which are critical components for a digitally inclusive, equitable and consistent ecosystem.

  • Digital and Service Standards – to ensure consistency of high quality, inclusively designed and well supported public services.
  • Trust infrastructure – the records keeping, public access, traceability back to law, independent oversight and participatory governance to ensure auditability, appealable and trustworthy systems.
  • Digital government should include a digital public infrastructure, a digital twin of government, including legislation/regulation as code, all of government modelling, measurement and monitoring, the structures, functions, authorities and policies of government available as code, and reusable government as a platform components that the broader economy and society can rely upon and build upon.
  • Public reporting – all government reporting will be done publicly, including compliance to the algorithmic charter, digital service standard reports, policy and service measurements, and other areas of compliance and oversight, unless there is a national security consideration

Opportunities to improve trust – feedback

  • The opening paragraph paints a rosy picture that does not align to the Wellbeing Measures, which say the Media is trued by less than 50% of the population, and the Parliament only slightly more. There is more trust for the people, health system and courts than for the media and parliament. In fact, declining trust has had real world implications, from vulnerability and social exclusion to vaccinations and public compliance. So surely improving that trust is key to a functional and cohesive democracy? Growing trust in both the public sector and 4th estate should be a key focus of this strategy.
  • The issues with social media are named, and yet the Strategy doesn’t address the problem with any tactics. What are the “trust settings” mentioned?
    1. The embedding of ethics into technology sounds good, but if the government funding, budgets, business cases, grants, taxation and full financial management system doesn’t have “ethical” measures or requirements, let alone Wellbeing or human measures of success, then “cheapest” will continue to be considered proxy for “value for money”. Where are the digital rules to be able to get consistency of implementation and monitoring for how rules are being applied for adverse patterns, etc? Rather than seeking social licence, why not build a social contract, and build more trustworthy systems that protect privacy and dignity while also providing better services, through techniques such as verifiable claims, confidentialised computing, and user consent driven federated approaches to data, including integration with self-sovereign data sources from community-led data initiatives.
    2. Where is the strategy, guidance and approach for full stack security for NZ? How is national connectivity assured and monitored? Where is the all of system monitoring and patterns analysis? How are service analytics being used as a first line of defence?
    3. What “work is underway” across government to help people understand what can and can’t be trusted? This seems key but no details are present.
    4. Customer centric services would great but digital government is more than digital services. What is the strategy and investment approach for digital public infrastructure, how is policy being made more agile and real time, how is government monitoring itself for human measures of success for all policies and services, where are the digital regulations and digital legislation, and where are the reusable government systems or service components to make it easy for everyone else to build upon government as a platform? 

Inclusion section – feedback

  • It isn’t just about tools, services and skills. It needs to include participatory approaches to designing, delivering and managing public policies and services. This means the public sector should implement the new Public Service Act requirements to engage New Zealanders in the processes around design and delivery of the services and policies that impact upon and support them.
  • Anyone and everyone, given the wrong set of circumstances, will need or will want to choose supported services (phone, in person, through a trusted NGO, etc) if they are struggling with great complexity or some form of vulnerability. For instance, a person who recently had an accident might prefer to deal with a person because they are worried they might get their online applications wrong. Or a person who is escaping a domestic violence situation might be more comfortable getting services through CAB or a refuge than coming directly to government in the first instance. The notion that only people with a disability need support is both patronising to people with a disability, and missing the critical aspect of choice, preference or different types of service for different points in time. Inclusive services means designing government services that give people a choice, and provide the wrap around support for anyone if they need or choose it, as well as providing support through third parties.

To address social exclusion, I suggest you adopt all the recommendations from the Citizen Advice Bureau recent submission here https://www.cab.org.nz/assets/Documents/Face-to-Face-with-Digital-Exclusion-/FINAL-CABNZ-collated-submission-to-Petitions-Committee.pdf.

Growth section – feedback

There needs to be strategic investment in computer science as an area of hypothesis led research, looking at national issues. The regular use of computer science as just a means to commercialise something misses the critical need for research into bleeding edge and emergent opportunities/challenges as a critical pipeline for innovation across all sectors. Such research and input is also critical to inform government policies, services, infrastructure and regulation in an evidence based and non commercially motivated way.

Goodbye Service Canada, and thank you for everything

I recently finished my last day working for Service Canada, and I wanted to capture and share the journey and accomplishments, as well as a few thanks to the excellent people I have had the pleasure and privilege to work with over the last couple of years. But let’s start at the beginning!

Every year since it started, I have attended FWD50 (coming up next month!), which is my favourite government conference in the world because it actually explores true transformation of the sector, with a laser like focus on creating public good. FWD50 isn’t just a conference, but a community of people committed to the journey of changing and transforming public sectors to be fit for purpose in the digital age, including policy, services, culture, legislation and all of it! I came over to Canada for FWD50 in November 2019, and I spoke with several people about potentially working for the Canadian Government. I was invited by Benoit Long to present to his team about Government as a Platform and some of the other themes from my 2019 FWD50 talk, where I had presented the Public Service Pia Review and he talked to me about his vision for true transformation at ESDC (Employment and Social Development Canada).

I was subsequently hired under the “Interchange Canada” program (which itself is a wonderful Canadian Government innovation) as part of an ambitious and visionary agenda at ESDC, called the “Benefits Delivery Modernisation” (BDM) programme. BDM aims to achieve service excellence, policy agility, and a genuinely transformed organisation. It is rare you see an agenda that even vaguely scratches the surface of systemic transformation, but BDM is just such a programme. The breadth and ambitious scope of vision, and the commitment to change, reaches into every part of ESDC and is supported up to the very top of the leadership chain. It has been a highlight of my career so far not just to contribute to such a magnificent change agenda, but also to work with and learn from exceptional people all around me, at ESDC and beyond. I will always be thankful for the growth opportunity, support, encouragement and trust I have had at ESDC, thank you all so much. It is extremely hard to leave, but almost two years of sleep deprivation finally caught up with me, and my family and I look forward to being able to live a little more normal a life, without the 2am and 3am starts that extend into the weekend 🙂

I wanted to share a little about what we achieved in a couple of years:

  • We researched, defined and designed the framework and vision for a digital channel for Service Canada, both the service itself as well as the capabilities and operating model to ensure continuous and responsive improvements, innovation and user centricity. We also achieved organisational wide support for this framework, no small feat! We wanted to have a minimum viable capability to both deliver and then operate the digital channel for Service Canada, with continuous design, experimentation, effective feedback loops for client and staff input, and a CX pipeline and robust channel(s) management, all built into the business as usual operating model to tie it all together.
  • We worked with our colleagues to establish an omni-channel principle and service approach from day one, with the intent to manage Service Canada channels in a holistic way to ensure equitable and equally high quality of service, regardless of the channel of need or choice. 
  • Part of our framework was a clear purpose for the digital channel, namely:

To deliver a dignified, user-centric, responsive and integrated digital journey that delights, empowers and motivates people to get what they are entitled to.

Digital Channel Roadmap for BDM, 2020
  • Each part of that purpose was backed by definitions, metrics, strategies and clear deliverables. This purpose statement acts as both a sword to carve out our path into new territory, as well as a shield to ensure new ideas always are tested against and not diminishing any aspect of our purpose.
  • At the end of 2020 I spoke at FWD50 (again), and presented the vision, approach and progress we had made on defining, designing and planning a digital channel for Service Canada. At this stage we had grown a little, but were still in “Programme Definition” stage, so the fun delivery work was largely yet to begin.  
  • Early 2020 we all transitioned from the planning phase to ”Tranche 1” (delivery!) and continued to build out the team, starting with the original and excellent 8 staff (with a little external support) that I joined at the beginning of 2020, and we grew to over 140 people, a health combination of staff with service integrators, working together as one team. Over the last 2 years we have grown DECD into a formidable team, described by our ADM as “a rockstar team with arguably the best digital talent ever assembled in Canada” 🙂
  • We took the Government of Canada Digital Standards and built them out to a full process and assurance model, pegged to Service Design of course.
  • We launched an early deliverable, “Service Canada Labs”, to create an open way of inviting and recruiting the Canadian general public to contribute formally (or informally) to the design of their experience with Service Canada, and to test early concepts or services openly in the public. It also gave us a good dress rehearsal for delivering a product live in ESDC. 
  • We established the first ever Life Journey Program in the Government of Canada (that we know of!) to help understand and build our services to be sensitive to and helpful for the context of what a person is going through in their life. A huge thank you, as always, to the New Zealand Government, especially the SmartStart and End of Life services team for showing the way on the value of life journey based services.
  • Our team worked closely with the procurement teams to establish an innovative first for ESDC, and first potentially for the Government of Canada. We created a sprints-based procurement model, where we brought in delivery teams who had a combination of fixed and variable members, who work with internal product managers and product owners to an internally controlled backlog. This allows for multi-scrum product delivery, as well as flexibility for the vendor to swap out the variable team members to draw in expertise relevant to the particular sprint or product as it evolves over time. This also helps to ensure longer term decision making and client-centric design with accountability staying with the department, which is critical for a digital channel so that the department truly manages the direct relationship and interface with clients. The Australian Government Department of Finance did this a few years back, and it was also successful, enabling genuine partnership, with internal and external delivery teams working as one product team.
  • We had two Code for Canada teams join us to explore new areas of public sector reform. The two teams were Team Babel who created the world’s first “Policy Difference Engine” to explore, test and understand the real impact of policy changes. This has been a 10 year dream for me (with a hat tip to Lovelace and Babbage of course) so it was very exciting to see Team Babel bring it to life! The second project was Team TOAD who explored ways to meaningfully support a client online, not just in the short term, but into the future, with a wonderful combination of service design and speculative design, they created a first iteration product that is being testing with real users right now 🙂 We incorporated C4C into our program not just to explore some new areas, but to help shape how we bring design and dev together, and by having C4C teams join us every 2 years we will be able to plan a way to help ensure new eyes and fresh thinking on the many challenges to delivering highly ethical and excellent social services to Canadians.
  • Finally, we were pathfinders for several new capabilities for ESDC that will serve the department, and the people of Canada, well into the future. We established growing practices in product management, service design, multidisciplinary product teams (where IT was embedded rather than separate to the “business”) and omni-channel management, working closely with the newly formed CX capability in ESDC, and along with all the other capabilities required to run and continuously improve services.
  • Finally, we established a strong culture of being always the kindest, calmest person in the room, and working openly and collaboratively with all our partners and colleagues across the department. It is the team itself that I am most proud of, and I will continue to be a big fan from outside the department! 

I want to briefly say a few thank yous to my Service Canada friends:

  • To the initial 8, thank you for making me feel so welcome and for coming on this epic journey with me, with open hearts and open minds. We have achieved much together! Thank you!
  • To everyone who joined the team, thank you for contributing to the culture, ethics and delivery needed to create a digital channel for Service Canada. Every one of you has extraordinary talent, experience and heart to bring to the table, and I can’t wait to see you deliver the digital channel late next year!
  • A big thank you especially to Meg, Nicolas-Benoit, Grace, Wafa and all who contributed to DG Office, for all your support, care and help!
  • To Benoit Long and Tammy Belanger, my ADMs, thank you for trusting and supporting me and the DECD team, and for supporting the vision we developed together.
  • To all my colleagues across BDM, thank you for being amazing to work with and for engaging in the quest for what is best for all the people and communities of Canada.
  • To my fellow “vertical leads”, with whom I shared delivery accountabilities and who are, each one of them, inspiring and wonderful. Thank you for sharing, teaching and collaborating so closely and with such integrity every day.
  • To Martin Duggan, whose integrity, commitment and passion for better social services and systems around the world was inspiring. We collaborated, learned from each other, and enjoyed an occasional spar, but I truly enjoyed working with you Martin 🙂
  • To Nada and Brad, who showed selfless kindness at a period of enormous personal stress. Nada for when we moved into our house and needed help with some furniture, and Brad for driving us to Montreal to get on the plane at short notice, when we realised Ottawa airport was closed from COVID!  
  • And finally, I need to say thank you to my family, because without their support, this would not have been possible.
  • I have just one more thank you, but it requires some context…

On a personal note, the journey has been epic journey from the start. When I joined ESDC, I worked remotely from Australia for a couple of months before we travelled to Canada. This involved horrendous hours but I reassured my family it was just a temporary temporal displacement, words I later had to eat 🙂 We moved to Canada in February and had one week to familiarise ourselves with Ottawa, then one week in the office meeting my fabulous initial team of 8, before the COVID-19 lockdown started, and my family found ourselves physically and socially isolated in a hotel, in a new country. We had just a couple of friends and one family outside of work, with just the one set of kids in that family that had befriended our little one. Otherwise she knew no one and felt very alone in this new country stuck with only her parents. We struggled along until we moved into a lovely home about 5 weeks in. Globally, people were starting to be encouraged to return to their country of origin, with just a hint of the global shutdown that was yet to occur, but we were just relieved to have somewhere to live, and had committed to staying in Canada for 3 years. That intent was unexpectedly interrupted when our little one decided to ride her scooter off a step, crashing face first into the pavement, resulting in an immediate series of disruptive moves. The family above continued to show us great kindness over the subsequent couple of years, so I wanted to finish this post with the biggest thank you of all to Julie and Z (and your wonderful girls!), thank you both so much for everything. We couldn’t have done it (and stayed sane) without you, and we can’t wait, some day, to share a meal again someday, this time at our place 🙂 

So to complete this story, which I know is just one of 7 billion 2020/2021 COVID stories, we are actually thankful for the opportunities, the experience, and the kindness and support we have had along the way. From work, friends, family and even from strangers. There are many that have had a much, MUCH worse experience over the last two years, and for all the disruption we have experienced, at least we have had a lot of support and have come through it with our health, our sanity, and with each other.

I’m looking forward to some rest and reflection, and a new professional chapter, with so much learned and achieved from serving with this incredible team in Canada. I’ll miss you all, but will be delighted to continue to contribute to public service transformation, perhaps here in Aotearoa New Zealand 🙂

Renewal of the public service is everyone’s job

This article originally appeared in the Public Sector journal July 2021. It is reproduced here with the permission of IPANZ (Institute of Public Administration New Zealand).

Pia Andrews sees wonderful opportunities in the new Public Service Act 2020 (New Zealand).

As someone who is passionate about public sector renewal and transformation, I was fascinated to read the new Public Service Act. I believe it provides a powerful lever for systemic change, but a lever is only effective when you use it.

I’ve heard different opinions about the Act across Aotearoa. Some see it as the start of getting the sector back to being a vehicle for public good. Some view it with scepticism. To my mind, both of these perspectives are valid, because the Act provides both a light on the hill, and a stark counter-factual to the daily experience of many. 

At the end of the day, the Act is what you make of it, what we all make of it. If you are one of the many people “waiting for it to be implemented”, then I suggest you are, at best, missing an opportunity. I urge you to do everything in your power to take this moment and make it count. The lever is there, let’s use it. 

This article examines key aspects of the Act, then provides some practical examples of how it could be applied. 

Unpacking the new Public Service Act (2020)

The Purpose of the Act is bold because it recognises the need for change and modernisation, for establishing a shared purpose, and for better ways of working that are more collaborative, transparent, and outcomes focused. Most importantly, the Act affirms that the fundamental characteristic of the public service is to “act with a spirit of service to the community”.

But we need to look back in time to understand why such a legislative intervention was needed.

From the mid-1980s, there was a global shift in public sectors away from service to the public and towards managerialism and artificial “business” imperatives. This pseudo-business approach, combined with subsequent generations of leadership who increasingly see themselves more as executives than stewards of public good, has resulted in some institutions losing their core purpose, losing their stewardship culture, and losing touch with the public they serve. 

Short-termism has become rewarded at the cost of long-term planning and delivery of public value. The Act’s purpose supports a balanced public service approach that actively holds the role of caretaker of the long term public interest, while supporting democratic, constitutional and successive governments, and actively engaging citizens. It is with this balance that resources, no matter how stretched, could be purposefully and proportionally distributed to both urgent short term priorities as well as strategic long term ones. 

Principles and values

The principles and values reinforce a way of working that is politically neutral, free and frank, merit based, and focused on long-term planning, with a commitment to open government and stewardship. The values reinforce a way of behaving that is impartial, accountable, trustworthy, respectful, and responsive to the people of New Zealand. These provide a powerful call to action for all public servants and a systemic framework for a culture that rewards high integrity and brave pursuit of values-based public good for Aotearoa.

Crown’s relationship with Māori

Public service leaders are “responsible for developing and maintaining the capability of the public service to engage with Māori and to understand Māori perspectives.” This requires us all to seek to understand different ways of thinking, living and seeing the world, including our own worldview. It presents an opportunity to shift towards an open-minded and respectful partnership framework with ngā Iwi and Māori. You can start small by simply taking the time to understand the whakapapa, stories, values and whanaungatanga of the people you work with and serve. A greater engagement of and understanding of Mātauranga Māori could help us all live up to the intent, sovereignty, and community empowerment outlined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Integrity and conduct

The Act states “… public service employees have all the rights and freedoms affirmed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990”. To have public servants acknowledged as actual people with rights and responsibilities like any other citizen might seem an unnecessary truism, but this simple acknowledgment promotes a public service that trusts in and empowers all public servants to be an active part of civil society. It also improves the confidence of public servants to engage effectively and openly with others (citizens, ngā Iwi, other sectors, experts, community forums). By contrast, there are many jurisdictions around the world that inhibit, intimidate, or simply prohibit public servants from having any role in civil society.

Joint operational agreements

The Act supports the establishment of “joint operational agreements”, which always need to be hosted by an existing department. The challenge is new initiatives may be constrained by the host departments, so when establishing these new agreements, carefully consider how to structure and empower them to do something differently or better, otherwise they will simply become carbon copies of their hosts.

Applying the Act to two problem areas

Problem #1: Maintaining trust in the public service 

Trust is hard won and easily lost. Public institutions globally are struggling to shift from simply seeking trust, to being more trustworthy. Trust in the public service is certainly impacted by real or perceived issues with services, policies or decision making, and reduced confidence can lead to people not trusting, engaging with, or respecting the policies or democratic outcomes administered by the public sector. 

Ways to apply the Act: 

  • Engage the public to inclusively co-design “trustworthy” policies, programmes, services and infrastructure that reflect societal values and needs. 
  • Explore what would be needed to support transparent, appealable, and auditable decisions and services that are traceable back to law, such as publicly available and testable legislation as code. 
  • Be operationally transparent – publish your operating procedures, governance, oversight mechanisms reports, etc. Make it easy for the public to find, learn about, keep up to date with, and contribute to your programme, and publicly track your progress and impact. 
  • Ensure that reports to the Public Service Commissioner on progress towards goals are publicly available.
  • Embed, measure, and monitor the various accountabilities and performance requirements outlined in the Act.
  • Take a human and whānau-centred approach, not just a user-centric approach. 
  • Apply the Wellbeing Framework into policy proposals, funding proposals, measurement and performance frameworks, and independent baselining. 

Problem #2: Focusing on long-term planning and policy futures  

The public service has become largely reactive. While there are exceptions – like the Department of Conservation 50-year goals and planning – most agencies are largely driven by the latest urgency, budget or electoral cycle. But how can you take the right next step if you don’t know where you are going? 

Ways to apply the Act:

  • Dedicate a percentage (I suggest 15%) of your programme resource to community engagement efforts, long-term planning, and staff innovation.
  • Establish a joint “policy futures” operational agreement between all policy units to co-resource policy proposals and optimistic futures for Aotearoa that draw on research, emerging trends, public values and changing needs.
  • Assume and monitor for continuous change in everything you do. Be operationally proactive.
  • Consider how your department could better support community initiatives. Provide public infrastructure (including digital) for others to build on.

Conclusion and what next?

The Act reminds public servants of our responsibilities to communities, but it also recognises us as independent  individuals with a democratic right to be engaged in civil society. It promotes a more adaptive, confident and collaborative public service and includes stronger recognition of the role of the public service to support partnership between Māori and the Crown. 

At all levels, individuals, teams, divisions and departments should take time to review and apply the Act to all programs, structures, services, policies and ways of working, to nudge the entire machinery of government towards a greater “spirit of service to the community”. Here are some more things you could try today:

  • Be proud and have a voice! Join user groups, meet-ups, blogs, and communities of practice, and explore what “good” could look like for Aotearoa. Actively resist cynicism or complacency. 
  • Close the policy-implementation divide through multi-disciplinary design and delivery of policies and services.
  • Raise thoughtful opportunities to apply the Act with your team leads, managers, executives, and leaders and at conferences and hui.
  • Question the status quo and take time to learn about the history of the public sector. 
  • Explore what it means to be participatory, trustworthy, and equitable in the 21st century.
  • Actively watch for and resist the use of technology, structure, hierarchy, or policy to dehumanise or disempower the people and communities you serve.

This path will not be easy, and some people will be systemically or personally motivated to maintain the status quo. But there are many more public servants who want to create change for the better, so use forums like GOVIS and IPANZ to support each other. Being the kindest and calmest person in the room will often help, but sometimes this will also mean not staying in an environment that doesn’t support the sort of public service you believe in. 

For all those who work so hard every day just to keep the lights on, may I suggest it is perhaps time to stop allowing yourself to be someone else’s crutch? Only then can we start to collectively repair and renew where things are broken.`

I’ll finish by saying the people of this wonderful country are relying on you. So please be brave, be bold, and together we have a chance of creating a more participatory, trustworthy, and humane public service, powered by the spirit of service that lies inside every public servant. 

With thanks to Simon Minto, Colin Benjamin, Ben Briggs, Kim Murphy-Stewart, Michelle Edgerley, Victoria Wray, Chris Cormack (Kaihuawaere Matihiko, Catalyst IT), Karen McNamara, and Thomas Andrews, for peer reviewing.

Reflections on public sector transformation and COVID

Public sectors around the world are facing unprecedented challenges as the speed, scale and complexity of modern life grows exponentially. The 21st century is a large, complex, globalised and digital age unlike anything in the history of humans, but our systems of governance were largely forged in the industrial age. The 20th century alone saw enough change to merit a rethink: global population rose from 1.6 billion to 6 billion, two world wars spurred the creation of global economic and power structures, the number of nations rose from 77 to almost 200, and of course we entered the age of electronics and the internet, changing forever the experience, connectivity, access to knowledge, and increased individual empowerment of people everywhere. Between Climate Change, COVID-19, and globalism, nations worldwide are also now preparing for the likelihood of rolling emergencies, whether health, environmental, economic or social.

“Traditional” approaches to policy, service delivery and regulation are too slow, increasingly ineffective and result in increasingly hard to predict outcomes, making most public sectors and governments increasingly unable to meet the changing needs of the communities we serve.

Decades of austerity, hollowing out expertise, fragmentation of interdependent functions that are forced to compete, outsourcing and the inevitable ensuing existential crises have all left public sectors less prepared than ever, at a the time when people most need us. Trust is declining and yet public sectors often feel unable to be authoritative sources of facts or information, independent of political or ideological influence, which exacerbates the trust and confidence deficit. Public sectors have become too reactive, too “business” focused, constantly pivoting all efforts on the latest emergency, cost efficiency, media release or whim of the Minister, whilst not investing in baseline systems, transformation, programs or services that are needed to be proactive and resilient. A values-based public sector that is engaged with, responsive to and serving the needs of (1) the Government, (2) the Parliament AND (3) the people – a difficult balancing act to be sure! – is critical, both to maintaining the trust of all three masters, and to being genuinely effective over time 🙂

Whether it is regulation, services or financial management, public sectors everywhere also need to embrace change as the new norm, which means our systems, processes and structures need to be engaged in continuously measuring, monitoring and responding to change, throughout the entire policy-delivery lifecycle. This means policy and delivery folk should be hand in hand throughout the entire process, so the baton passing between functionally segmented teams can end.

Faux transformation

Sadly today, most “transformation programs” appear to fall into one of three types:

  • Iteration or automation – iterative improvements, automation or new tech just thrown at existing processes and services, which doesn’t address the actual needs, systemic problems, or the gaping policy-delivery continuum chasm that has widened significantly in recent decades; or
  • Efficiency restructures – well marketed austerity measures to reduce the cost of government without actually improving the performance, policy outcomes or impact of government; or
  • Experimentation at the periphery – real transformation skills or units that are kept at the fringe and unable to drive or affect systemic change across any given public sector.

Most “transformation programs” I see are simply not particularly transformative, particularly when you scratch the surface to find how they would change things in future. If you answer is “we’ll have a new system” or “an x% improvement”, then it probably isn’t transformation, it is probably an iteration. Transformation should result in exponential solutions to exponential problems and a test driven and high confidence policy-delivery continuum that takes days not months for implementation, with the effects of new policies clearly seen through consistently measured, monitored and continuously improved delivery. You should have a clear and clearly understood future state in mind to transformation towards, otherwise it is certainly iteration on the status quo.

There are good exceptions to this normative pattern. Estonia, Taiwan, South Korea, Canada and several nations across South East Asia have and are investing in genuine and systemic transformation programs, often focused on improving the citizen experience as well as the quality of life of their citizens and communities. My favourite quote from 2020 was from Dr Sania Nishtar (Special Assistant to the Prime Minister of Pakistan on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection) when she said ‘it is neither feasible nor desirable to return to the pre-COVID status’. It was part of a major UNDP summit on NextGenGov, where all attendees reflected the same sentiment that COVID exposed significant gaps in our public sectors, and we all need significant reform to be effective and responsive to rolling emergencies moving forward.

So what does good transformation look like?

I would categorise true transformation efforts in three types, with all three needed:

  1. Policy and service transformation means addressing and reimagining the policy-delivery continuum in the 21st century, and bringing policy and implementation people together in the same process and indeed, the same (virtual) room. This would mean new policies are better informed, able to be tested from inception through to implementation, are able to be immediately or at least swiftly implemented upon enactment in Parliament and are then continuously measured, monitored and iterated in accordance with the intended policy outcome. The exact same infrastructure used for delivery should be used for policy, and vice versa, to ensure there is no gap between, and to ensure policy outcomes are best realised whilst also responding to ongoing change. After all, when policy outcomes are not realized, regardless of whose fault it     was, it is everyone’s failure. This kind of transformation is possible within any one department or agency, but ideally needs leadership across all of government to ensure consistency of policy impact and benefits realisation.
  2. Organizational transformation would mean getting back to basics and having a clear vision of the purpose and intended impact of the department as a whole, with clear overarching measurement of those goals, and clear line of sight for how all programs contribute to those goals, and with all staff clear in how their work supports the goals. This type of transformation requires structural cultural transformation that builds on the shared values and goals of the department, but gains a consistency of behaviours that are constructive and empathetic. This kind of transformation is entirely possible within the domain of any one department or agency, if the leadership support and participate in it.
  3. Systemic transformation means the addressing and reimagining of the public sector as a whole, including its role in society, the structures, incentive systems, assurance processes, budget management, 21st century levers (like open government), staff support and relationship to other sectors. It also means having a clear vision for what it means to be a proud, empowered and skilled public servant today, which necessarily includes system and design thinking, participatory governance skills and digital literacy (not just skills). This can’t be done in any one department and requires all of public sector investment, coordination and cross government mandate. This level of transformation has started to happen in some countries but it is early days and needs prioritization if public sectors are to truly and systemically transform. Such transformation efforts often focus on structure, but need to include scope for transformation of policy, services, workforce, funding and more across government.

As we enter the age of Artificial Intelligence, public sectors should also be planning what an augmented public sector looks like, one that keeps values, trust and accountability at the heart of what we do, whilst using machines to support better responsiveness, modelling, service delivery and to maintain diligent and proactive protection of the people and communities we serve. Most AI projects seem to be about iterative efforts, automation or cost savings, which misses the opportunity to design a modern public service that gets the best of humans and machines working together for the best public outcomes.

COVID-19

COVID has been a dramatic reminder of the ineffectiveness of government systems to respond to changing needs in at least three distinct ways:

  • heavy use of emergency powers have been relied upon to get anything of substance done, demonstrating key systemic barriers, but rather than changing the problematic business as usual processes, many are reverting to usual practice as soon as practical;
  • superhuman efforts have barely scratched the surface of the problems. The usual resourcing response to pressure it to just increase resources rather than to change how we respond to the problem, but there are not exponential resources available, so ironically the
  • inequities have been compounded by governments pressing on the same old levers with the same old processes without being able to measure, monitor and iterative or pivot in real time in response to the impacts of change.

Sadly, the pressure for ‘good news stories’ often drives a self-congratulatory tone and an increase to an already siloed mindset, as public servants struggle to respond to increased and often diametrically opposed expectations and needs from the public and political domains. Many have also mistaken teleworking for transformation, potentially missing a critical opportunity to transform towards a 21st century public sector.

Last word

I’m planning to do a bit more writing about this, so please leave your comments and thoughts below. I’d be keen to hear how you differentiate transformation from iterative efforts, and how to ensure we are doing both. There is, of course, value to be found in some iterative efforts. It is when 100% of our time and effort is focused on iteration that we see public sectors simply revert to playing whack-a-mole against an exponentially growing problem space, hence the need to have SOME proportion of our resource on genuine transformation efforts. Proportional planning is critical so we address both the important and the urgent, not one without the other.

Where next: Spring starts when a heartbeat’s pounding…

Today I’m delighted to announce the next big adventure for my little family and I.

For my part, I will be joining the inspirational, aspirational and world leading Service Canada to help drive the Benefits Delivery Modernization program with Benoit Long, Tammy Belanger and their wonderful team, in collaboration with our wonderful colleagues across the Canadian Government! This enormous program aims to dramatically improve the experience of Canadians with a broad range of government services, whilst transforming the organization and helping create the digital foundations for a truly responsive, effective and human-centred public sector 🙂

This is a true digital transformation opportunity which will make a difference in the lives of so many people. It provides a chance to implement and really realise the benefits of human-centred service design, modular architecture (and Government as a Platform), Rules as Code, data analytics, life journey mapping, and all I have been working on for the last 10 years. I am extremely humbled and thankful for the chance to work with and learn from such a forward thinking team, whilst being able to contribute my experience and expertise to such an important and ambitious agenda.

I can’t wait to work with colleagues across ESDC and the broader Government of Canada, as well as from the many innovative provincial governments. I’ve been lucky enough to attend FWD50 in Ottawa for the last 3 years, and I am consistently impressed by the digital and public sector talent in Canada. Of course, because Canada is one of the “Digital Nations“, it also presents a great opportunity to collaborate closely with other leading digital governments, as I also found when working in New Zealand.

We’ll be moving to Ottawa in early March, so we will see everyone in Canada soon, and will be using the next month or so packing up, spending time with Australian friends and family, and learning about our new home 🙂

My husband and little one are looking forward to learning about Canadian and Indigenous cultures, learning French (and hopefully some Indigenous languages too, if appropriate!), introducing more z’s into my English, experiencing the cold (yes, snow is a novelty for Australians) and contributing how we can to the community in Ottawa. Over the coming years we will be exploring Canada and I can’t wait to share the particularly local culinary delight that is a Beavertail (a large, flat, hot doughnut like pastry) with my family!

For those who didn’t pick up the reference, the blog title had dual meaning: we are of course heading to Ottawa in the Spring, having had a last Australian Summer for a while (gah!), and it also was a little call out to one of the great Canadian bands, that I’ve loved for years, the Tragically Hip 🙂