Digital helps Government reduce costs… really?

August 22nd, 2010 § 2

I find myself thinking about Government’s desire to reduce costs by ‘going digital.’

It’s as though the very notion of something being online instantly results in reduced effort and cost and provides a useful and usable service to Citizens.

In recent years, Government has seen digital as a means of reducing ‘avoidable contact’ – that type of contact that Government might not have to have with its Citizens face-to-face or on the telephone if it could service them digitally.

It could rationalise this by saying that digital was a progressive means of servicing a society of such diversity, breadth and distance that face-to-face was no longer an appropriate medium to provide services.

Of course this begs the issue of the ten million or so UK residents who do not have access to or use of the Internet.

So then you need to create programmes to get people onto the Internet – because ‘digital exclusion’ would be counter-productive to a progressively digital society – and mean the Government now had to maintain both digital and face-to-face services, not realising any savings at all.

In all of this, the main issue is one of an anticipated reduction in effort and cost to Government. Such a strategy would have to look at value over the:

    1. Short term: The quick win solutions where Government can make information available to Citizens in low cost ways. This might include a slimmer, more efficient Directgov. It might encompass other efforts such as the data.gov.uk initiative, or even providing support to My Society, where a bit of investment could build on existing successful efforts to inform Citizens.
    2. Mid term: Creation of a strategy that focuses on the development of smaller more agile services that address very niche audiences and provide for the development of simple, centralised security frameworks that would allow Government to roll out these services quickly and efficiently.
    3. Long term: A revisit of all existing services, rating their effectiveness, rationalising them, and building them using user-centric methodologies that ensure they encompass the needs of the department and expectations of the users.

Of course, in evaluating the benefit of moving to digital, Government needs to be honest with itself about the amount of success it ‘allows’ users of digital services to have when using them.

For example, if a Government department responsible for providing a benefit to Citizens had a budget that could only pay that benefit to a percentage of all those who are eligible for it, would that department want to make the online application process quick and efficient, potentially resulting in over subscription to the benefit – or might it design something that is so complicated that only those with incredible patience and endurance might get through it?

In this particular instance, the issue is not about a choice to go digital – it is a strategic choice in how accessible you make the benefit.

Under this circumstance you’d have to ask: is there any real benefit to going digital at all?

But allowing that not all services suffer from this potential complication, to realise some value from digital, Government needs to understand:

    1. Does the service belong online? There should be an assessment as to whether the service solves a problem that Citizens need solving, making access to information or benefits useable and simple, beyond the current mechanism for doing so.
    2. How big does the service need to be? Rule of thumb is that you should design the minimum amount required to complete the service or access the information – each incremental, low priority requirement built into the service reduces its chance of completion.
    3. Is your project led by technology, departmental requirements, the needs of the users, or all of the above? The reality is that the larger and more complicated the service, the more likely it is to be technology driven – driving out the needs of the business and the users. You need to find balance to be successful. Delivering something doesn’t always equal success.
    4. Can it be made simpler? Projects always get larger before they can be rationalised. Everyone’s requirements are thrown in, technology insinuates itself, stakeholders complicate things and somewhere along the way the end user has been forgotten – they are mentioned in meetings, and in people’s heads they believe they are representing the users, but in reality the complexity of the project has intervened and marginalised the people for whom it was originally intended.

Digital services will ultimately be accessible to all. We are in a period of transition from pre-Internet users to digital natives. In this interstice we have created a belief that it is ‘our duty’ to get everyone online so that they can experience the benefits that online has to offer.

I worry that Government forcing people online is not the answer – enabling can sometimes lead to bullying.

In a couple of generations this argument will have passed. Access to digital will be ubiquitous. All Government services will be made available online. And Citizens and Government will feel empowered to collaborate with one another to make this a better experience.

Really?

Hack Days: What expectations do they set?

August 9th, 2010 § 1

I love Hack Days.

I love them because of the anticipation, the spontaneity, the community and the creativity. They generate energy – if for a short time – around the issues they are organised to expose, and for a brief moment overcome the inertia that most people come to dread within large organisations – like Government.

I say ‘expose’ because in my experience of Hack Days often people come to ‘show off’ their skills, ‘show’ the organisations or sectors whom they are targeting ‘how to do things better’, and ‘show’ each other what they are capable of.

None of which is bad. But all of which worries me slightly.

While those coding and participating in the coding teams, at some level, understand that not all digital development projects are the same, not everyone who attends a Hack Day necessarily ‘gets’ it.

I think Hack Day participants break down into several categories. These include (but are not limited to):

    1. The organiser. These are the people who run the events. They are often bright, dedicated, and clever. They also often have an agenda. This agenda can include trying to show up the organisations or sectors at whom the Hack Days are targeted. This is fine, but is not always clear to the people on the street.
    2. The hacker. These people vary in age, are often male, are sometimes a bit disgruntled with the idea of ‘large agencies’, and almost always feel they can develop better than the organisations or sectors they are targeting for their Hack Day.
    3. The business constituent. In most cases, representatives from the organisations are in evidence to view the proceedings. They vary from the technical to Marketing and PR types who want to be present to understand the outcome of the event. Not all of them want to be here – they were sent to observe.
    4. The public. Individuals from the public range from the inexperienced, to the professional – they are all linked by some desire to come and view and see what this thing is all about. They do not always fully understand what is happening.
    5. The press. Many Hack Days get little to no coverage. Some Hack Days, particularly ones focussed on the Government, get more press coverage – the angle is usually ‘hackers outshine Government…’

My worry really centres on types 3 and 4 above. These are often the ones who come away incredibly inspired and often believe that if hackers can do it in a period of 1-5 days (depending on the length of the hack sessions), then why can’t their organisations do it?

I say this because in my experience, having run a successful digital product design agency, these prototypes – and that is often what the applications developed are – can give the false impression of fully developed, functioning and robust services.

They create a sort of illusion that feeds the myth ‘if it’s digital, it must be fast to develop’.

I worry that many inexperienced people who attend Hack Days may:

    1. Expect that ALL digital services can be built quickly, and cheaply
    2. Be ill equipped to differentiate between simple standalone development/enhancements and large-scale systems integration
    3. Perpetuate within their organisations a false sense of expectation
    4. Drive forward projects without understanding the needs of the organisation and the users
    5. Simply fail out of ignorance

These may seem like harsh things to say. And they are not exclusive to Hack Days. In my twenty-two years of participating in and running technical and digital projects I have seen these issues occur all too frequently to believe it is a limited phenomenon.

However, with respect to Hack Days, I hope that as these types of events progress and mature that they will find some balance between showing spontaneity and creativity, and informing those attending that there can be a vast difference between what they see and the digital service or product idea manifested in the real world.

It feels a bit too much like the pendulum has swung from projects taking many months to several years, to whacking something together and launching it.

As with most things, there is a happy medium that will ensure digital services and products are developed in a way that meet the needs of the organisation and users, and can also take advantage of technologies and methodologies that ensure we are not constantly building more or taking longer than we need.

In the interim, I do believe that Hack Days are an important and vital step in the transition we need to make from ALL technical and digital services needing to be large-scale infrastructure projects, to developing a more discerning view of building ‘just enough!’

I welcome your thoughts.

The 80:20 rule of Agile and UCD

July 17th, 2010 § 2

I want to tackle the intersection of User-Centred Design (UCD) and Agile. I’ll start by saying I am fundamentally not an Agile detractor. I respect and appreciate the need for process to help shape and deliver complex projects.

When it comes to UCD I am a strong believer in designing the ‘right’ thing for the ‘right’ user – of course, I also strongly believe the most successful UCD projects find a good balance between the needs of the user and the business.

In my experience, whether intended or not, Agile has typically promoted the technology team to the front of the pack, with the consequence of producing the product through the eyes of a team focused on what it can do in the time (Sprint) and with the team (capabilities) to hand.

The needs of the user and the business as a whole are minimised and the view of the overall product becomes lost. In fact, instead of a product comprised of functionality and workflow, it becomes functionality and workflow that define a product – and one that you may never have intended to build.

With a rule of thumb of 20% of the product design done in advance and 80% done within the Sprint, highly complex projects run the risk of delivering functionality that meets the needs of the stories but not the final needs of the product, business or users.

I believe that in the rush to kill Waterfall and move to Agile – ostensibly so businesses could deliver incremental functionality to their users – we threw out the baby with the bath water. At a time when the competing methodology of UCD was gaining traction and helping give shape to digital products and software, and a stronger voice to the business and users, the zealous deployment of Agile derailed the process and the product.

The end result is a process that is driven to deliver – but what?

I think that we need to regain balance in the system. The pendulum has swung from using a methodology (Waterfall) that people felt took too long to get to a deliverable, to one (Agile) that gets there quickly and incrementally, but may never give us the product we wanted.

I think we need to consider 3 things:

    1. Is the project itself about an incremental addition to an existing site or application, or is it a small to mid-sized piece of development?

    Knowing the answer to this will help determine whether the 80:20 rule is relevant, as the more complexity is involved, the more time must be allocated to up front requirements and product design – perhaps making the split as much as 50:50.

    This helps determine whether you dedicate the bulk of your product design resource to the Sprints, or you require an advance team that provides an overall shape to the product allowing those working in the Sprint to provide the detail.

    2. Where are the users and stakeholders in the process?

    There needs to be a clear plan that incorporates stakeholder reviews and user testing. There should be real user testing on prototypes or development sites prior to any releases, with enough time planned into the process to make real changes – and test again if necessary.

    All too often this is lopped off, along with any thoughts of making the applications accessible due to lack of time to develop. Stories to fix designs languish in the backlog and never see the light of day and the end product delivers something – but is not the piece of brilliance it could have been.

    In fact it might not even be fit for purpose.

    3. Are you designing with the thought that there will be ample opportunity in future Sprints to make changes?

    We’ve all gotten stung by this one. Consider the very real possibility that what you are developing now may well be the final product. As a UX person, fight your corner to get the most out of the process to ensure that users and the business can live with what will be deployed.

    Don’t allow anyone to compromise this and don’t believe that the backlog will one day magically equal zero and all stories will become reality.

I think that we have to be pragmatic about what can be achieved in the Agile environment and need to encourage the business to understand the risks involved in letting it become a fully technology-led approach.

It is meant to be a methodology for delivery. Ensure product design is represented in early discussions about the project and in the plan and that we don’t mystify it to the point of becoming marginalised in the process.

I’d love to hear your experiences.

Campaigns v. Social Media

February 17th, 2010 § 2

I’ve been thinking about struggles faced by marketing and comms teams and brands.

Having attended quite a few unconferences, read many blogs and watched with great interest large brands struggle with social media I can acknowledge one simple truth: Campaigns are not the same as social media.

But wait… that’s not big news!

I just think it should be acknowledged that many traditional marketing and comms teams are used to developing time-limited campaigns around awareness, retention or acquisition-oriented activities.

There is a thought that enough of these run over time will establish momentum in the creation of relationships between consumers of products or content and the brand.

Doesn’t PR or Customer service handle engagement with people?

Social media is about establishing – and maintaining – relationships with and between groups and individuals. There is only a starting point.

Once you begin, you establish an expectation that the brand will continue to communicate with you via the selected mediums for an indefinite period of time.

So where can we look for answers?

One place to look is to those who run community-based sites. They learned the importance of establishing community managers and a hierarchy of user advocates.

These individuals build the community into something that once it has established a critical mass, can begin to become seemingly self-regulating.

The ongoing work of community manager(s) continues to keep the community refreshed, listens and acts as an intermediary between the users and the site owner and ensures that there are established channels of communication.

But where does this leave campaigns?

When the interaction is a competition mechanic, banners and microsites to communicate a message, forms to collect some information and send some information – all automated – where are the the marketing or comms team in the mix…

Winding down the current campaign and planning the next.

Where does actual engagement and relationship build occur? It is left to the ‘momentum’ they have hopefully created in the prior campaign to fuel the next – and over time accumulate or acquire brand advocates.

This worked when campaigns were the primary means of communicating brand to the mass public. That communication was a controlled, predominantly one-way broadcast to the intended audience base.

It fits into one of the engagement mechanisms of social media – that of broadcaster – where there is no expectation of two-way communication and the impact on the broadcasting organisation is writing and delivering the message.

Engaged broadcasters will listen for a response.

With individuals creating their own social communication strategies, and used to active engagement with one another, there is a new expectation that brands who extend into the social media space will do so on the terms of the medium in which they engage – and not as though it is a time-limited, one-time-offer type of communication.

Which for traditional marketing creates a problem.

Prolonged communication and engagement can – and often does – mean there is a need for ongoing budget and staff to engage.

Not only that, but developing relationships means that fiscal years, and the budgets allocated to them, mean nothing to the individual – they expect the engagement to continue beyond end of year budgets.

For Government engagement there is the odd period known as Purdah – a virtual shut-down of comms that can be in any way construed as political or in support of an incumbent Government’s agenda in the run-up to an election.

This of course creates a problem for all of those currently engaging in Social Media activities as it could mean a complete cessation of activities for a given time – how will this affect relationships?

So what next?

At present I see a world going crazy over Social media but applying the techniques of campaigns to what is essentially an open-ended, ongoing relationship building exercise.

I strongly believe there is room for both traditional campaign-oriented activities and new (though not so new) social media activities – as long as the rules of engagement that guide each are applied, and the expectations of the individuals they are trying to reach are matched.

Over time this will sort itself out as large brands stumble and pick their way through the maze of engaging with social media, e.g. Habitat on Twitter.

And finally, longer term, I think a return to incorporating more traditional research methods – and realising that quickly setting up and using a Twitter account doesn’t make you an expert in micro-blogging or engagement – will help us to better define the mix of traditional and new methods of engagement, and how best to measure them to understand value.

FutureGov feat. Measurement Camp

February 15th, 2010 § 4

Today I attended the FutureGov meets Measurement Camp session held at Edelman in Victoria. It was a mix of some of the usual (and always pleasant to see) faces and a lot of faces I didn’t recognise – always a bonus! And Edelman provided a pleasant space and plenty of tea and coffee to keep us going.

The first 2/3 of the afternoon was a mix of talks given by Dominic Campbell of FutureGov, Will McInnis of Nixon McInnes, Steph Gray of BIS and Ingrid Koelher of IDeA. There were also the obligatory sponsorship presentations by Lithium showing off their Social CRM suite and Brandwatch who gave an interesting intro to their Council Monitor beta. Certainly I could see the nodding heads of interest from several Local Authorities who were present.

The final third broke down into small barcamp-like spontaneous sessions on such subjects as ‘How to get senior management buy-in’ and ‘Internal comms’. I wandered about and listened to some of the sessions before heading off for the day.

The idea of measurement of social media and Government digital engagement is an interesting one. One participant from a Local Authority said to me they hadn’t considered measurement – they were so focussed on how to implement digital engagement that they hadn’t gotten as far as how to measure it.

Thinking about my days of FMCG campaign work, I can’t help but think how can you develop a campaign without knowing if it’s for building awareness or increasing acquisition? How can you not have a set of targets in mind to report back on the success – or failure – of a campaign?

But social media isn’t really like a campaign, is it? It’s about building relationships (which campaigns should be but are often too short in tenure to really achieve anything so complex as a relationship). That’s why we talk about measuring social perception and reputation. Believing there are some simple truths, Will McInnes made an interesting point that we cannot discount academics. There is, after all, a great deal of historical rigour in research techniques that should be leveraged in our work in analysing the impact and effects of social media.

It’s easy when you work in digital to think that we are inventing everything for the first time. But in fact, apart from the medium, we are actually talking about how people communicate with one another, engage with brands and react to content and products. Historical techniques give us not only a good starting point, but also a good foundation of research theory that can teach us how to interpret the effects of our efforts – and set and measure the metrics of success and failure.

I think part of the issue is not so much with developing research models, but more of understanding how to use existing ones and develop tracking technologies that give us useful and useable research data that will help us to understand the effectiveness of our social media work. I think more thought needs to be given to what data we need to collect and then reverse engineer technology to give us the data we need to understand effectiveness.

I also couldn’t help but think – as the sponsors were presenting – about how today measuring reputation and perception is not just a brand thing – not in the traditional sense of a brand as a company. It’s as much an individual thing. There were certainly people in the room who are their own brands in the social media space.

Measuring one’s personal brand, while inherently narcissistic, is also a gauge of a new social era, where individuals can rise above the crowd while hiding behind a keyboard, creating a measurable reputation and perception wholly independent of those they work for – but which can enhance or detract from the reputation and perception of those they work for. It creates a new social dynamic and certainly a new set of issues for companies and organisations who spend a great deal of effort and money to manage their brands.

I’m looking forward to seeing more about some of the tools shown today and hearing about how people take what they heard back into their organisations. I think some of these event mash-ups are a great idea and hope to see more of them this year. I certainly think some public/private sector event mash-ups would give everyone a lot more to think about.

UK Govcamp was good fun. So what’s next?

February 1st, 2010 § 2

I’ve obviously waited a couple of weeks to write this. I suppose I didn’t want it to feel like a recap of the event by writing it within a day or so, or something that followed on the heels of a torrent of blog posts over the following week – some of which I’ve read, and some I haven’t.

I enjoy going to the Government barcamps. They give me a chance to see friends I worked with in Government, put a face – and voice – to twitter folks I follow and have the odd disagreement over blog posts we’ve all written.

As I wandered around attending sessions and talking to people – and before the day had even ended – I found myself wondering the same thing I did at last years Unconference (and the many other Government unconferences and events I’ve attended since) – what happens next?

I came away from sessions I attended feeling somewhat unfulfilled – not because the sessions weren’t interesting – they were. But because before the sessions ended I knew that there would be no actionable items for the attendees to take away with them, no driver to say ‘by the next time we come together we should have accomplished x, y or z’.

Note: This may have been a symptom of the sessions I attended and so I fully understand no one else may have had the same exact experience – as was pointed out in a blog by Public Strategist about the event.

While some of the sessions were engaging, it was actually the conversations I had between the sessions where the most interesting opportunities and issues presented themselves – with some actionable items.

These conversations hold the tangible things I’ve taken away from this year’s event.

It reminds me of literary theory I’ve studied where individual texts provide a rich canvas of insight into a subject, author or set of events, but the comparison of two texts and the analysis of the interstice between them often provide the deepest insights.

The sessions for me were those texts, and the conversations that occurred in between them the interstice where the real insights came.

Still, I look forward to the next event!

Open data is not a panacea – but it is a start

January 21st, 2010 § 13

Today the UK Government officially launches its effort to open up UK data. This is a project that I am proud to have even a small part in developing.

In certain circles there is a real fervour around the release of data, this being the essential ingredient missing to give citizens the power to manage their own destiny.

Wait.

If what I’ve been hearing is right, it sometimes seems there is a real belief that Citizens – not Government – will be developing ‘Services’ based on the data that is released. Who are these Citizens?

For years I have made the argument for the guy on the street. Let’s call him (as I so often do) Joe Bloggs. He works hard, spends time with his family and mates. In fact he represents a significantly large portion of the population. Is the supposition that he is going to suddenly take an interest in the release of Government data, teach himself how to code and do SPARQL queries, and develop his own ‘Services’?

Not likely.

So if not him – then who? Those who campaign for the release of Government data seem to fall into a few major camps:

  • Those who want more access to information because it will inform their work – e.g. the press via MP Expenses
  • Rights activists who once the data is free will move onto another cause – because that’s what they do
  • Those individuals who encircle Government who continually talk about how they could produce far better ‘Services’ than Government, at a fraction of the cost and time

Better access to data for those who monitor Government and then report on its activities will have certain benefits. We can all agree that some portion of the expenses scandal was beneficial and could lead to positive change in Government spending policy. We should also acknowledge the reality – that probably 80+ percent of the scandal was merely spectacle to earn revenue for news organisations.

I will admit that the efforts of rights activists will help groups 1 and 3 above by fighting a meticulous battle to gain access to what many term as Public data in any case.

But what about those ‘Services’?

To understand the drive behind this, we need to understand that with the Government in a precarious position due to over-extension of resources during the Recession, anything that could lead to a reduction of costs will look attractive. Take, for example, the appointment of a Digital Inclusion Champion to get the remainder of the UK population online.

Why would the Government do this?

Because long-term, the consumption of digital services, that can accommodate millions in the way a physical location cannot, will result in cost savings through the reduction of said facilities and staff to run them.

So who, in reality, will create those digital services? It will be same internal teams, companies and consultancies who currently work for Government.

In practical terms, they are the only ones who have the infrastructure and capital to go through ISO accreditation, PRINCE training, supply account and project directors, planners, technical architects, UCD experts, designers, developers, testers and hosting.

I am not saying there won’t be any applications of importance or use developed. But to make them robust in a way that they will need to be to accommodate the complete shift to online, they will require more thinking and better development than they currently undergo.

At this point in my diatribe, people often talk about applications like FixMyStreet from My Society. Don’t get me wrong. I love the work that My Society do, and I love FixMyStreet. I think it’s a fantastic crowd-sourcing app with a specific focus – I believe there should be more of these apps developed. But to integrate it with the ~434 Local Authorities, find the correct staff to deal with the issues, and ensure that it’s not simply a one-way communication or Broadcast tool, there needs to be a level of development, architecture and cost expended that would promote this app into the realm of the very Government services that developers often rally against.

I have been waiting for a single significant ‘Service’ to be developed over the last year, either in the US with its earlier release of data, or here in the UK with the slow drip-feed release of data into the developer community.

I have been waiting for someone to explain what benefit to the greater Public will quantifiably occur with an open data policy.

In truth, I’ve been waiting for Joe Bloggs on the street to mention in passing – “Hey, just yesterday I did ‘x’ online” and have it be one of those new ‘Services’ that has been developed from the release of our data. (Note: A Joe Bloggs who is not related to Government or those who encircle Government. A real true independent Citizen.)

It may be a long wait.

The reality is that releasing the data is a small step in a long walk that will take many years to see any significant value. Sure there will be quick wins along the way – picking on MP’s expenses is easy. But to build something sustainable, some series of things that serve millions of people directly, will not happen overnight. And the reality, as Tom Loosemore pointed out at the London Data Store launch, it won’t be a sole developer who ultimately brings it to fruition.

Regardless, I’m looking forward to today’s official launch, not because it is a panacea to all of Government’s problems around developing digital services – because clearly it is not.

I’m looking forward to it because I believe it is a necessary step to getting to whatever is next in all of this. The prolonged argument for releasing data has only left us in a grey space, waiting, anticipating and hoping.

With its release, I believe in short order the idea that the release itself will solve our problems will pass, and the real work of understanding the possibilities, engaging with Citizens to understand what problems they needs solving, and then wading into the sea of data to try to find some answers, will begin.

So today is a good step forward.

Las Vegas industry event – or London data store launch?

January 10th, 2010 § 9

On Thursday, 7 January we experienced a bit of both. Ostensibly, most of us in London turned up for the official launch of the latest in Open Government efforts, the launch of the Greater London Authority Data Store – an effort not unlike DataSF, the Guardian Open Tech Platform or the UK Government Open Data initiative.

The event, CES Government 2010 (#cesgov10 for those on twitter), was styled around a Skype-provided video link-up with Las Vegas, which reminded me of why businesses still avoid extensive use of videoconferencing. The link was unreliable, and had to be re-established so many times that momentum of the event was difficult to maintain.

Even so, the early third of the event was interesting, featuring London Mayor Boris Johnson, and Deputy Mayor Sir Simon Milton. Boris was entertaining – and to be fair handled the vagaries of the video link with his affable humour and aplomb. I think he’s to be congratulated for opening such a ‘geeky’ event and I welcomed his comments.

Sir Simon handled the detail of the announcement and drove home that London is committed to transparency and would work hard to deliver in its data release. Of this I had no doubt going into the event. There has been a general movement towards transparency and open government and from the GLA’s initial session with the development community three months ago until now we’ve seen – in Government terms – substantial progress and commitment.

In Las Vegas, Aneesh Chopra, the CTO for the US Government consistently implied that all of the UK’s efforts followed suit from President Obama’s initiatives – a point that Carol Tullo, Director for OPSI was quick to correct when she had the chance by touting the UK’s ongoing efforts in this area and around open data in general. I would echo that by saying the Power of Information Taskforce report released in draft this time last year already extensively spoke of open government and free data.

The line-up of speakers included a representative from NASA (who seemed completely out of place), Gerry Pennel, London 2012 CIO, Ailsa Beaton London Met Police CIO, and a panel with Chris Thorpe from Guardian Open Tech Platform, Tom Loosemore from 4ip and Carol Tullo from the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI). Expertly moderated by Professor Jonathan Raper, this panel could easily have lasted three times its allocated slot.

Tom Loosemore, in announcing 4ip’s ‘challenge’ to apply for potential funding, made a clear point that it would not be individual developers who received funding but companies who came up with good ideas and plans for developing sustainable services. This last point is one I’ve sometimes gotten into trouble with the development community for making

And while I wanted to talk about utility apps and mobile here, I think Chris Thorpe’s blog post on this event has already done a fair job of it. Suffice to say that I agree with him that apps that represent utility will be the ones that provide the most benefit and see the most success.

While much is said about transparency, openness and releasing mountains of data, I can’t help but think about all of the companies I’ve watched in my 16 years in digital, who collected data and analytics – and then couldn’t figure out what to do with it all.

There is so much pressure on Government at the moment from the press, developers and rights activists to release data that I can’t help but wonder how the average Joe on the street will benefit from it all. This is best summarised by an observation I made attending the Young Rewired State event last year. A group of 15-18 year olds came together for a 2-day hack event held at Google in London.

Somewhat different to the Rewired State held earlier in the year with adult developers, I felt the young hackers were more interested in solving problems:

  • What is my safest route to school?
  • Can I carry identification that simply states am I legal/not legal for purchase?
  • How many minutes away is the bus – or have I missed it?

I guess this last bit is what I am waiting for. With so much data being released and on the verge of release (note the UK Government open data initiative) what problems do people need solved that they will find acceptable in a digital environment, that is useful and usable, and that we can source the right data to help solve the problem?

I found the CES Government 2010 event worthwhile and progressive. I think that the simple work is done, and that Emer Coleman and team – who did a magnificent job in pushing this effort forward – now has the difficult work of delivering on Sir Simon Milton’s promise that ALL GLA data sets will be in the site by the end of this month – and in maintaining momentum beyond the end of the month.

I think the battle with Tfl, the Met Police and others will be an ongoing one, and the only real proof of success in this effort ultimately resides in whether the average Joe on the streets has a need that is being successfully met using applications that are built using the data.

12/01/2010 – Video of Sir Simon Milton

Even baby steps are progress – if you’re heading in the right direction

January 3rd, 2010 § 0

I am currently reading a book by Chris Gardner (Pursuit of Happyness [sic] fame) called ‘Start Where You Are’.

It’s very timely, because over the Christmas holiday I had a couple of weeks to rest, spend with family and generally let my head decompress.

The result surprised me.

Even though I’ve had some really good success over the years, I hadn’t realised just how much I’d built up an ‘excuse barrier’ between my ambitions and actions. With two weeks off and no office ‘noise’, clients, meetings, etc, my own thoughts came strongly to the surface.

Serendipitously, I was browsing in a bookstore and came across ‘Start Where You Are’, the title of which resonated with the psychological space I was in.

Among the many interesting reminders – and the crux of what I want to share here – was that ‘even baby steps are progress – if you’re moving in the right direction’.

I suddenly heard my mother’s voice reminding me to ‘keep it simple’ when even as a child I had a tendency of overcomplicating undertakings. It reminded me that often the simpler approach was in reality the one that generated a result.

Even though some of the things I want to do seem quite complex, as long as I take some action – even a very small one – the very act of doing something will take me that bit closer to my goal.

Oh, and I recommend ‘Start Where You Are‘.

Built in 2 weeks – the Pendulum swings

March 18th, 2009 § 4

Q: How long should it take to develop a new digital product?

A: As long as it takes to get it right – within the limits of time, scope and budget (oh, and don’t forget the needs of the user… and the organisation)

I am a long-time believer in the User-Centred Design process. For me (and to most people in the business) this means (to a greater or lessor degree):

  • Gathering and understanding both user and business requirements
  • Developing personas, site maps, wireframes, content strategies and taxonomies
  • Creating and refining rapid prototypes for iterative testing with real people
  • Developing functional and technical specifications
  • Creative design and user feedback on design
  • Development and UAT
  • Launch – with the proviso there will be post-launch testing to ensure how you thought people would use your tools or transactions is in fact how they are using them in a live environment.

Of course it’s not just me who feels this way. Many commercial organisations, for whom web represents a significant means of generating revenue or reputation, follow these practices.

They know that there is value to be gained through increased revenue, decreased costs and customer satisfaction and retention when a digital product works well.

When it comes to developing digital products in government, there is a growing perception in some quarters that government isn’t capable of developing them in a cost effective, easily modifiable, user-centred way.

To counterbalance this issue, the development community holds hack days (i.e. Rewired State: National Hack the Government Day held at the Guardian) where they get together developers and data and spend a day hacking together solutions to address user needs.

Now, let me first say that I am a firm believer in open crowd-sourcing of ideas and solutions, allowing for innovation to occur by supplying people with data, inspiration and space, and looking for truly inspired ideas to float to the surface.

Where my optimism changes to concern is when the proverbial pendulum swings the other way.

To their advantage, the external developers have decreased development time (in most cases with simple services that do 1 or 2 simple things) and cost. Do they have durable, usable, sustainable services? Quite probably not. They have somewhat working prototypes. But this is not to say they couldn’t be developed into something sustainable.

It’s not the speed or cost that concern me.

It’s the quality.

In many cases, both the government and developer community approaches fail to utilise a proper UCD process. Neither will readily admit this.

Rushing the process and slashing the budget won’t provide a better service…

…just a more easily disposable one.

I would like to see more digital product development in government take into account the sometimes quite disparate needs of the organisation and the users – and the potential size of the audience.

This will allow for the scaling of robustness and a focus on quality – after all, if a site has 15 million users but only 2% of that audience are potential users of a specific digital product then the scale of product development should take this into account and a level of quality should be ascertained at the outset.

Ideally, I would like to see more collaboration and less mud-slinging between government and external developers. It creates division, not collaboration.

I think there are great people on both sides who really do want to develop with the best possible interests of users in mind. And together, I think that the outputs of such collaboration will ultimately lead to better digital products for everyone.

Recommended reading: The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper.

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