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"The Government Digital Service truly was once world-beating. What happened?"
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/24/government-digital-service-truly-was-once-world-beating-what-happened
Hmmmm....">https://www.theguardian.com/society/2...
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/24/government-digital-service-truly-was-once-world-beating-what-happened
Hmmmm....">https://www.theguardian.com/society/2...
There& #39;s lots in here that& #39;s right - there was some great work and lots of Whitehall pushback - but there are lots of omissions of where GDS got it wrong.
Not just failed big projects - hello Verify, UC, RPA - there was too much focus on one lever & #39;civil servants building transactional services that end in a website& #39; to change govt
While ppl would rave about ease of ordering a driving licence online, there were closed post offices
While ppl would rave about ease of ordering a driving licence online, there were closed post offices
While ppl would rave about the transparency of the performance dashboard, there wasn& #39;t accountability
While ppl would rave about the ease of using Universal Credit, there was a fall in benefits payments, a rise in food banks & humans being sanctioned thru a smartphone screen
While ppl would rave about the ease of using Universal Credit, there was a fall in benefits payments, a rise in food banks & humans being sanctioned thru a smartphone screen
While people would talk about a single government website and citizens not needing to understand the structure of government, there was a failure to understand and work with some of the useful democratic tensions between bits of central/local/the rest of govt
As a human who pattern matches I see many similar human failings in current government& #39;s plans around data.
This time it might hit even higher heights, & lower lows, as the data leaders might have more political agreement with their political leaders
This time it might hit even higher heights, & lower lows, as the data leaders might have more political agreement with their political leaders
So, yes let& #39;s damn well praise the good but let& #39;s also recognise that some things go wrong.
More humility and honesty in the debate about GDSv1 might help create a culture that expects, or even demands, more humility & honesty in the debate about the new data teams
More humility and honesty in the debate about GDSv1 might help create a culture that expects, or even demands, more humility & honesty in the debate about the new data teams
Because we all learn from the past and the work of other teams....
