Five quick things for the digital future

Ownership

The core reason why programmes, projects and businesses fail is ownership.

It’s unclear who owns delivery, the original “owner” left after 18 months, the “owner” has no control over staffing or budgets…

So who owns a cross cutting programme in government?

There is little point proposing new ways of delivering services if you have not sorted out how ownership will work.

And no, a board cannot own anything; it can provide oversight, challenge and guidance but a group of people cannot own delivery.

Ministers

Which leads us to the fundamental challenge for government in that we continually talk about departments.

“X will be the lead department on delivering Y”, “This will be a collaboration between three departments A, B and C”…

Departments do not exist as independent entities. They exist solely to support the democratically elected government through a Minister who has been appointed to a set of responsibilities.

So we should say “X will be the named individual Minister responsible for delivering Y”, “This will require collaboration between Ministers A, B and C.”

Since 1997 Ministers have spent on average 2 years in post. So how do you ensure Ministers own their delivery responsibilities?

Shiny Baubles

The UK cannot afford programmes which are environmentally unsustainable. There is a serious risk that within a decade there will be little point in worrying about the polls in places like Grimsby or Clacton as they will have been reclaimed by the sea.

So generative AI is simply unaffordable even if anyone can actually find a business use for it beyond bad clip art or making briefings worse.

That means that every programme MUST have a carbon budget as well as a financial one. And it needs to be a real carbon budget not mythical offsetting.

The useful parts of AI – image recognition, machine learning, pattern matching – need to be separated from the impossible dreams of the zealots.

It is mathematically impossible to verify the outputs of any sufficiently complex generative AI system and we cannot afford neither the power, the cooling or the water demands of these idiot demiurge.

Users

I had an MRI a fortnight ago. It was slightly delayed because someone had walked off with the mouse from the workstation the nurse needed to use. I actually went back last Friday and dropped off two spare mouses with the team.

Improving services means meeting the needs of all the users involved in the process.

And that means internal users as well.

Drop the D

This is all about services. As I have said before a good service is one that delivers the outcome the user needs.

So let’s be really clear that this all starts with that one key measure of success.

And let’s be honest about who that “user” is. Because it may be that the Minister’s or HMT’s “user need” that trumps all others.

So state that up front.