Alphagov musings
A few weeks before it launched, Tom Loosemore kindly invited me over for a preview of the Alphagov prototype. I was given a whirlwind tour of their agile process and some of the thinking behind their work. Not to mention a very dark – and thick – cup of coffee. Hey, I’m not complaining. I like it that way.
I met a few of the team (some of whom I already knew), and watched as a group of Government Communication types were taken through the same whirlwind tour – a mix of curious and skeptical faces making up the lot.
On the whole, it was a pleasant visit.
When Alphagov launched a couple of weeks ago, it was amusing to watch the crowd of people – who several years ago berated pretty much anything we did at Directgov – practically fall over one another in praise of Alphagov. Surely, if they are happy there must be something to it.
Certainly the £261k spent on the project didn’t bother them. In fact, it was considered a bargain.
However, after a couple of weeks of love, the veneer began to crack and UX expert Lisa Reichelt chose to write about ‘Opportunities Lost – AlphaGov’, while Steph Gray, former BIS digerati chose to write about ’10 Things that Alpha.gov.uk gets wrong’ – in 2 parts (Part 1 & Part 2).
This past weekend, I attended the OpenTech conference in London, and attended the Alphagov team session. There were a number of interesting questions and points raised by the audience – and not very many fully formed answers forthcoming from the team – with some answers unfortunately missing the mark entirely.
Asking a few questions at the event has codified my thinking about the project. Below are some of the things I’ve been thinking about and some questions I have.
In general, I’m delighted to see that the Alphagov project has sparked so many conversations about the Government digital content landscape.
Aggregation vs. Distribution
When I worked for Directgov and variably headed up the Product Design and Innovate teams, there was a general sense across Government digital types – and from colleagues outside of Government – that we were exiting the era of websites as destinations, and that content (and services) were not fully distributable commodities, e.g. through mediums like social media and devices.
‘Convergence’ had lost its sense of purpose because users no longer expected to only find content (or services) in one place. They were learning that they could find information, services, social connections and a voice in places where they naturally reside and not have to go searching for it.
Alphagov, on the other hand, seems to not only take on Directgov’s historical remit of convergence, but according to one of the Alphagov team at OpenTech, takes it a step further resulting in the dissolution of all Government websites, making Alphagov the UK destination site for all things Government.
David Varney, himself, couldn’t have put it better.
But still, I’m curious, if in a world of growing distribution of content and services, where individuals are finding more everywhere, is this philosophy of aggregation and centralisation – ergo portalisation of content and services really the revolution spoken about by Martha Lane Fox in her report ‘Directgov 2010 and Beyond: Revolution Not Evolution’.
Solving the content sourcing problem
Though the Alphagov prototype is ‘pretty’ (and I’ll come back to that later), what I was most looking for in the project was revolutionary thinking about how the content sourcing issue would be solved.
With thousands of pages representing many millions of words of content sitting across Government, all in quite different formats, some accessible via feeds, some inaccessible and requiring content scraping, what was the plan to source (and make relavent), in a sustainable way, content from across all of Government’s assets?
From their own blogs and comments, the Alphagov team scraped content, adding editorial and curation on top. Expedient? Yes. Sustainable? Probably not.
Directgov already has a Publishing model whereby approved editors write content with their departments and it goes through a process of ‘curation’ ending up on the site.
While the Directgov model is probably a bit too process-laden (as many things in Government become over time), I’m not sure that the Alphagov project, which should be more than just a collection of pretty pages with scraped content demonstrating a possible end-state, has even tried to posit a solution to the content origination, curation and publishing problem currently faced by Government.
Going forward, I believe this is still one of the largest challenges facing any such effort.
Revolution – or a change from one institution to another – in this instance does not necessarily mean success.
Low hanging fruit
When developing a prototype or creating a demonstration in a limited amount of time, one avenue you can take is to pick off the low hanging fruit. For me, the Alphagov project is a demonstration of that approach.
Given the prototype – which of course is all we have to judge the success of the project by – it would appear the team has yet to:
- Tackle the development of a content strategy that takes into account all of the diverse and deep content the Government has to offer
- Do the requisite user research to develop a core set of personas that would help to give the site focus and shape
- Understand how to take content on a journey from origination to relevance without losing users along the way
- Ask users – not technically oriented colleagues – what they want
- Consider the organisational structure that would give their project a chance of success
- Demonstrate a system that is scalable and sustainable
It’s one thing to say you are developing a better Directgov website. It’s another thing altogether to say you are developing a better Directgov – which is really the driving force behind such efforts (remember the revolution bit).
These two things are not mutually exclusive if you want the process of engendering Revolution to succeed.
Putting the emphasis on Google
For years, Directgov has spent millions of pounds purchasing key words, advertising, etc. Because of this, they have reduced the amount of direct traffic coming in to the home page. While this puts less emphasis on the home page, it puts significantly more emphasis on the navigational structures of the internal pages to perform and inform users of other content (and services) on the site.
While the idea of relying on Google seems interesting, it really only works when all of your content is indexed and large numbers of people have hit the pages to help determine any sense of weighting or relevance.
If you deep link to the prototype at the moment, the only real means of navigation to other content seems to be via the search bar. This assumes that NO users are browsers and that the page they have landed on contains enough information to satisfy their search. Of course, the premise is that if they do not find what they are looking for, they will ‘pogo’ from the site and initiate a new search on Google. This is, in fact, sustained by research conducted by Directgov several years ago.
One worry, of course, is that unless Government intends to continue to pay a significant amount of money to Google for key words and paid search, is complete reliance on paid search engines such a good idea? And of course, doesn’t this further promote the idea of Government as a destination, rather than support the direction of content and services as distributable commodities?
And one incidental point, as the prototype has been developed to work as though people are using Google as the primary search method, there is currently no real means of testing Alpha.gov.uk to see if their premise actually works. All visitors will go to Alpha.gov.uk, entering the site via the home page.
UCD, Analytics and Accessibility
Alongside the talk of this being a User-centred design (UCD) project, there has been a lot of talk about their use of Government site analytics and web logs. Nowhere has there been discussion of user testing with real users, persona development, or other means of Qualitative research used in a UCD process.
From all accounts – and from their own words – they have designed based on the ‘what’ of analytics and not the ‘why’ of a qualitative UCD approach.
Additionally, to ignore IE6 – used by the Public Sector and many large public organisations, and Accessibility, they have denied those in the Public Sector and those with assistive technology needs the opportunity to participate in the discussion about improving Government digital services.
Just as Lisa Reichelt stated in her aforementioned blog post, I don’t believe they can claim to be a user-centred project when in fact they ignored most of the basic precepts of a UCD approach.
Is too much design distracting?
This is a small point, but for an Alpha prototype, I would question the level of design they have used. In some ways I’m not surprised. Solving the real problems of how you build such a site in a scalable, sustainable way would inevitably lead you back to something similar to a Directgov model, albeit scaled down to prototype size. And I imagine that no one really wanted to go there.
By focusing on the design and not being able to answer questions around it’s scalability and sustainability, is this just an exercise in form over function?
If we make it look nice no one will look to closely at what we’ve done.
An alpha should have set about to answer more fundamental questions. It should have looked at the problems it ran into during development and asked, how do we fix those problems? How do we ensure that as we iterate this prototype, we move closer to a sustainable and scalable model for development?
Perhaps those questions have simply not yet been articulated to the public. I think there is some opportunity for some real debate here. Collaboration with the public over how to solve the content issue could result in revolution. Or it could end up with simple iterations to Directgov’s existing process of publication – boring old evolution.
Is Project Austin the real Alpha?
A few years ago, Directgov undertook a project called Project Austin. Austin was an attempt to postulate a metadata driven model for delivering Government content (and services). Research was undertaken, personas developed, content strategies looked at, a prototype was developed (tested and iterated), and then… well, I don’t know.
What happened to it?
It was predominantly designed and developed by individuals who came to Directgov from the Commercial sector. They worked with Civil Servants and external research agencies to develop a new model – sound familiar?
Did the Alpha team take any cues from its predecessor, Austin. Did they review the work? Did they learn any lessons? Did they find anything of use from the project?
Does having a predecessor really make Alpha a Beta?
What have you learned?
This brings me to my last thoughts (and some questions) on Alphagov.
Three months is a good amount of time to form some opinions and make some decisions about what you would have done differently, whether you think you addressed the right issues, what obstacles you see in taking the next steps.
How does the Alphagov team intend to take the project forward? I know that the site is essentially up for a couple of months for feedback. I also know that the team intends to take the work forward.
Given that you have opened the site up for comment for a couple of months, does it make sense to keep changing it during that process? If you think of this as a consultation of sorts, you wouldn’t expect the consultation to keep changing as people commented. Do you think iterating it while you’re getting feedback will possibly cause you to change things that an accumulated set of responses might cause you to look at differently?
Will you continue to use your blog to keep people informed? And will you publish the feedback and thinking that you receive? There were a lot of comments at OpenTech at the weekend. Will these be captured and published?
And purely selfishly… how much will Alphagov cost going forward? We’re told the project cost about £261k – was that to get it to its recent launch?
I’d like to commend the team on doing something we had difficulty doing from within Government – getting a prototype out for public comment. This would have been inconceivable a few years ago. With the change in Government it’s nice to see some things are changing in the digital space for the better. For that you have my admiration. Despite any concerns I’ve voiced above, I think it’s important that efforts like this are taking place. I believe the team that undertook this project was highly capable.
That said, I really wish they had placed some dedicated UX people on their team. I wish they had focussed more on identifying and tackling the work that needs to take place to make it sustainable and addressed the issues of how to get content from so many different sources into a single place – other than scraping it.
But I think this team has raised some big questions for all of us to consider and have certainly gotten discussion going around all of these areas, which should be supported by all of us who have an interest.
I look forward to the next steps…
Walking the line between Skunkworks and Business as Usual
Several times recently I’ve heard the word ‘skunkworks‘ mentioned. Most recently it was in a Guardian interview with Mark O’neill, the ‘leader of the government’s IT ‘skunkworks’ team – as well as CIO of two prominent UK Government departments.
I have to admit to being fascinated by the idea of a skunkworks capability in Government. Ideally, a skunkworks team is untethered from organisational rules and structures, and allowed the freedom and flexibility to focus on solving problems and pursuing real innovation – which often means failing a good number of times before (potentially) achieving a measure of success.
I’ve made the argument in the past that innovation could be as simple as taking the practice of one sector and applying it to another, bringing about change and introducing a new way of achieving something. This often requires people who work across sectors and have the ability to spot latent needs in one sector that can be met by standard or best practice from another. This is briefly alluded to in the afore mentioned article when Mr. O’neill speaks about what Government could learn from its engagement with London 2012.
Skunkworks have historically been used to come up with solutions where normal business practice has failed or where significant leaps in technology are required, the success and output of which may later be put into production using Business as Usual (BAU) methods of production.
All of which leads me to ponder what kind of leap is Government trying to make?
It strikes me, from my brief sojourn into Government a couple of years back, having worked for commercial organisations across multiple sectors for more than twenty years, that Government departments could do with more exposure to how businesses plan and manage their IT, develop their digital services, and have an imperative to find a balance between the needs of the organisation and the desires and goals of their customers. Indeed, even the Government itself has gone down this route by engaging people like Sir Alan Sugar and Martha Lane Fox.
On the other hand, if the idea of the skunkworks team is to be a rapid prototype development unit – that doesn’t get too bogged down in coding, and spends more time achieving some of the balance I’ve referred to – then they could possibly introduce more rigour into the process of developing their IT and digital services, introduce the people who design these services in departments to their users, and look to build ‘just enough’ to accomplish a specific set of tasks, then possibly there is some educational value.
However, with a large proliferation of open source technologies on the market, and project management and user-centred design methodologies that many in Government fail to understand or embrace, I worry that what many will think of as innovation, is already so imbedded as BAU elsewhere that BAU will get mistaken for innovation (I recognise a degree of my own hypocrisy here).
One other thing the article mentioned was the use of Agile development. I’ve had the distinct ‘pleasure’ of working with agile in projects that range from quite small (new builds and enhancements) up through major software development programmes. The one thing I’ve learned is that it’s rarely applied the same way twice, and that people rarely follow its basic values (see link above for source):
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
Skunkworks teams, by their very nature, should be agile. However, how the work that comes out of a skunkworks effort is then rolled into the organisation can be another matter altogether. As you can imagine, a skunkworks team can roll out some small live applications, websites and enhancements, but when it comes to large-scale services development, the best it can hope to achieve is to do some proof of concept work, prototype, and inform the larger project that will follow. And that is where the many varied applications of the Agile process will show varied results.
Still, though I’m quite baffled by what a Government skunkworks team hopes to achieve – and from the looks of it in quite a public way (keeping in mind that most skunkworks projects are secret with some percentage of the ones that succeed becoming a product we might one day see, and the rest buried deep in a basement vault never to be heard from again) I fully intend to watch this space and see what comes out of it.
I also wonder what roles the Parliament skunkworks team, Directgov | innovate, dotgovlabs, and the shadowy Alphagov team might play in the short to medium term in working with Mr. O’neill’s skunkworks team in the digital space.
I think it promises to be an interesting next twelve months for UK Government digital.
Digital helps Government reduce costs… really?
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
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.
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.
