Read on Twitter
We all knew (working on COVID) that there would be an inquiry eventually...
many colleagues don’t write things down, in emails, confluence, Jira tickets, some key staff left weeks or months ago
Unfortunately product and service decisions may be lost in the ether, or inside a maze of anonymous Miro boards
Proud to say all our researchers have been super open about all their work, collaborative, great at documenting and sharing findings regularly, being independent voice of users, proactively escalating problems, 150% service availability
However, despite that, evidence of many basic service failures have been ignored, left unfixed, in favour of reactively building out even more new service channels
Of course none of these are easy decisions (and surely) stakeholders, policy and senior management must be agonising over the benefits/drawbacks of every option
Metaphor: quickly build a new motorway (with dozens of pot holes) then immediately build another. Do this every week for 4 months, without fixing pot holes.... Of course a few cars will get broken along the way
we were told the main user issues would be fixed by a “new service model” in the “next few weeks”, but that has taken well over 3 months to deliver and mostly these issues are not fixed as yet
I am sorry to say that root cause will surely find many issue comes back to (well documented) historic organisational design, culture, power, management and stakeholder related issues in GOV/NHS IT
Have we learnt anything from the past?
throwing all the best “digital staff” onto a problem, doesn’t necessarily solve these problems, unless they are organised in delivery teams optimised to succeed, and empowered to solve problems they identify
And yes, rolling the service nationally when it was hastily designed (and not optimised) for a small group of key workers... was always going to have broad inclusivity problems
So while satisfaction and ease of use are fairly “ok”, to our average digitally savvy person with smartphone and car, lets not forget that “key insight is usually found at the edges not the middle” of the statistical curve
we really have tried our best to help make this Testing “thing” work, optimise everything where we can, despite all the many problems and interesting strategic decisions
The delivery has been 80% driven by policy, business and technical requirements. 10% user needs. 10% mystery, luck, magic and prayers
COVID has definitely put a spotlight onto the very best and the very worst elements of working in digital... brilliant things happened like cross department collaborations, and other times terrible joke beyond a W1A comedy sketch
Sorry again, covid testing people, but the truth and basic facts about the key decisions over time (and spending etc) need to be out there, and to be reflected on
The sooner we can have an inquiry, the better longer term progress and outcomes for all
They are right however in saying it could be massively disruptive, however, to the delivery. Perhaps this could be a good thing to shake it up
If we could do a few things to make it better right now:
1- trust and empower all the brilliant staff on the Testing programme (ie, stop asking the team to build new motorways and shiny features every.single.week)
2- Have a product strategy and roadmap build on solid design principles and user needs
3 - understand that we need to find a way to integrate Testing as a simple and accessible health process within all our citizen lives
(i.e. not make a big spectacle out of it, or a political issue dividing communities further)
(i.e. not make a big spectacle out of it, or a political issue dividing communities further)
I’m only saying this because no one else will, let’s be honest
And of course it’s not all working too well (under the surface), and hiring (yet another) consultancy in probably won’t fix this jigsaw either...
