Hack Days: What expectations do they set?
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):
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 the business constituent and the public. 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:
- Expect that ALL digital services can be built quickly, and cheaply
- Be ill equipped to differentiate between simple standalone development/enhancements and large-scale systems integration
- Perpetuate within their organisations a false sense of expectation
- Drive forward projects without understanding the needs of the organisation and the users
- 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.
FutureGov feat. Measurement Camp
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. What happens next?
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
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?
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
UK Government
It was during my time as Founder and Managing Director of phunQube, a digital product design company, that I began my relationship with Directgov. We conducted research around authentication methods, providing wireframes, prototyping and user research. I continued my relationship with Directgov, post-phunQube, as a consultant.
I held two roles with Directgov, Head of Product Design and Head of Innovation, and later provided consultancy to the Cabinet Office, via the COI, to the Cabinet Office’s data.gov.uk project, which was being spearheaded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
While at Directgov I managed a team of Product Designers working on a variety of projects, to include developing a new semantic prototype of a future Directgov site. We conducted research, requirements capture, wireframe design, functional specifications, prototypes and user research. It was a true UCD project which underwent iterative design and testing.
I also set up the first Directgov innovate team, a skunkworks focussed on rapid design and prototyping, working with open source technologies, and developing relationships between Directgov and the open source developer community. We also defined and developed widgets which could be deployed and used by other Government departments, and mobile apps for transport and job search.
As part of this role I was also the Directgov Board member and one of the founding members of Dotgovlabs, a joint innovation initiative between Directgov, BusinessLink and NHS Choices.
I was also quite involved in Barcamps and Hackdays during this period of time.
Built in 2 weeks – the Pendulum swings
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.
Upcoming speaking engagements
5th Communia Workshop: Accessing, Using, Reusing Public Sector Content and Data
On 26 March 2009 I will be speaking at the 5th Communia Workshop: Accessing, Using, Reusing Public Sector Content and Data held at the New Academic Building at London School of Economics.
I’ll be speaking during the 14:30-16:00 session titled “Getting the right tools for the job: technology and communities”. I will be talking about innovation and data use in government. Be sure to register early for this event.
OpenGov
On 22 April 2009 I will be speaking and participating in OpenGov taking place at Boston Computer Society. This is a 1-day conference to discuss and debate the challenges and opportunities in using digital technology to enable transparency, engagement and collaboration in government.
I will be speaking and participating throughout the day. Be sure to register early for this event.
