The dark side of community engagement as a public servant

by Kent Aitken

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Last week I had a dark thought. I considered the possibility that my stakeholder community would possibly be equally well off if I was an anonymous public servant who never got out of the office. You might imagine that this goes against my general philosophy on modern public service, and you’d be right.

So I want to share my experience as a public servant for the last few years, with an emphasis on the "public" part. I recently wrote this on Twitter in response to Amanda Clarke, on the trend towards public servants having digital presences linked to their roles in government:

@KenRasmussen1 @kentdaitken It may also be a necessary feature of open, networked policymaking. PS needs to have an online presence.

— Amanda Clarke (@ae_clarke) October 16, 2016

@ae_clarke @KenRasmussen1 I'd second this. I can't imagine being good at my job without the presence.

— Kent Aitken (@kentdaitken) October 16, 2016

And I believe that, but I have to nuance it.

Three years ago I joined the Government of Canada's Open Government team (I've since taken a year of interchange). I took a broad view of Open Gov, and considered the principles and in a way the ideology in how I worked and wanted the team to work: open, engaged, collaborative, empathetic. I didn't think we could run a successful Open Gov program if our world was an office in Ottawa.

I wanted to get the know the community, hear from stakeholders, and look for opportunities to work together with groups in and outside of government. And I feel as though I did a reasonably good job of that.

In three years I've learned so, so much from people. Over Twitter, over beer and coffee, in meetings, and at conferences. My understanding of the problem space is immeasurably richer for those conversations, and they made me better at my job. 

Here's the downside.

For all of those insights and partnership possibilities, I was able to act on them and help change things maybe, maybe 10% of the time. Which, in my view, means I couldn't fully respect the time and effort that the community puts into helping governments and government employees. Increasingly, I started telling people that I'd love to help them but that they may want to contact my senior executives directly and try that route as well. Which is time-consuming for everyone, and hamstrings the analyst-level value of adding context and considerations.

I don’t think I was delusional. In many cases, executives in my organization responded positively to the ideas and partnerships discussed. But people in such organizations rarely make complete decisions; instead, they make parts of decisions while this complex amorphous thing called an “organization” is responsible for the overall picture.

So where does this leave me? I’m going to stick with being a public public servant. I’d feel like I had earplugs in and blinders on otherwise. But that impact gap concerns me. In a vacuum, the more senior a public servant is engaging with a community, the better it is for the community - except for the fact that available time to engage in “rigourous hanging out” decreases in proportion to seniority (see: relevant Matt Bailey Twitter essay). This concern, like so many others, has common roots in big governance questions, including how well we align expertise, responsibility, accountability, and authority. And I don’t know if we can get to an open, user-centric, empathetic, and ultimately a more effective government without addressing those questions.

Bursting the Filter Bubble

by Kent Aitken

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Let’s start with a Twitter essay from Matt Bailey, DC’s former Director of Tech Innovation who just left for the White House:

(1/n) ..There are so many great people in DC government who want to hear from you. Sometimes they don't know how to find you. Seek them out.

— Matt Bailey (@MattBailey0) April 29, 2016


(2/n) ..There are a *lot* of times when public input really makes a difference in the decisions that get made. More voices are needed.
— Matt Bailey (@MattBailey0) April 29, 2016

(3a/n) ..A lot of govfolks have no idea that the public cares about they do - they think it's too nerdy, too esoteric, etc..

— Matt Bailey (@MattBailey0) April 29, 2016

(3b/n) .. and the pure joy on their faces when they find out the contrary is a thing to see <3 <3 <3

— Matt Bailey (@MattBailey0) April 29, 2016

(12/n) ..The old model of limiting public interactions to senior and communications officials is deeply broken.

— Matt Bailey (@MattBailey0) April 29, 2016

(12a/n) ..Government needs to remunerate/incentivize employees to attend after hours public events.

— Matt Bailey (@MattBailey0) April 29, 2016

(12b/n) ..People deserve to be paid for their time and this is a core competency of government.

— Matt Bailey (@MattBailey0) April 29, 2016

I caught that string of tweets on the train back to Ottawa from Toronto. I had facilitated a lunch workshop for the Government of Canada’s next open government plan, latching onto the National Youth Leadership and Innovation Strategy Summit who graciously included us in the event.

The weird thing is that I’m slightly uncomfortable pressing “Publish” on that last paragraph. I’m hesitant about the idea that I was there representing the Government of Canada. But there’s no two ways about it, as far as the participants were concerned. I was. And a lot of us represent the government, directly or indirectly, on a daily basis.

And we have to get used to it. I agree with Matt Bailey about the value of public servants interacting with the public. For the Summit I could have left after lunch, but I chose to get the latest train possible back to Ottawa (rolling in around midnight) so I could spend more time with the participants. Here’s the breakdown of my afternoon, after my "official" duties were done:

• I think I corrected a lot of misconceptions about how far along government was. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in gov that’s well-known to public servants and completely opaque to the public.
• I had a string of “3b/n” moment (I’m very lucky to have them regularly). Indelicately put: hearing from people who genuinely care about the work that you’re doing in gov really, really makes you want to work your ass off.
• I had opportunities to get clarity on what the stakeholders of my program really need and care about.
• I met some fascinating people who could turn into future collaborators.
• I’d like to think I helped people understand the ways in which they can influence government, and provided some reassurance that government is actually influenceable.
• ...and that government is, well, human.

That is, it was positive to the point where I’m actually legit worried about what we’re not at. Where our presence is missing and our voices are absent. How much opportunity for understanding, collaboration, and inspiration are we missing?

On that note. Thinking about the public service/public relationship, here’s a couple recent articles. First, a TVO piece summing up a point that former Clerk of the Privy Council Wayne Wouters has been making lately:

"Sometimes we send the strangest signals to the people who work in the public service. In the best of all worlds, here’s what we want from them: We want them to be brilliant. We want them to be much less bureaucratic and much more creative. We want them to serve us better, find solutions to our problems, and explore new ideas that could help save us money. But woe betide a single one of them if they ever experiment with a new idea that goes south, then costs the taxpayers money. In that case, we’ll be the first to string them up in the town square and shame them from here to eternity."

And this, on public servants becoming increasingly public:

"Does it in fact matter if civil service leaders become more public figures than they have previously? I argue that the reason these changes matter is because the traditional anonymity of civil servants is linked in important ways to the impartiality of the civil service. To dispense with the former is to endanger the latter in ways that re-shape the core role of civil service leaders in a Westminster system."

...At which point I'm going to let the post hang, and I welcome your thoughts. 

Risk, Failure, and Honesty

by Kent Aitken

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Last year Nick and I went down a long rabbit hole on the idea of the faceless bureaucrat (see: Embracing Authenticity Means Embracing Complexity). There's a maxim that bureaucrats are rightly anonymous, in that it facilitates professional, non-partisan advice, but I've been wondering if the foundations on which that maxim rests are shifting. We're in an era of hyper-connectivity, citizen engagement in governance, and an increasing recognition that end users' needs should be the starting point for policy and program design. In other words:

• The public service (and the public, for that matter) is made up of people
• People not in government can be trusted, invaluable partners in governance
• The starting point for solutions should be a genuine understanding of the problem

All of which begets pretty fundamental questions about the relationship between government and citizens. One that Nick and I did not thoroughly cover is the approach government takes to honesty, problems, and failure.

Recently, David Emerson suggested that public service needed to adapt quickly to the state of the world, and the article was summed up with the headline that Public servants risk becoming policy dinosaurs. Is this a problem we have to face?

Well, the strongest language that we tend to admit to is that we face challenges and that there are risks. We don't have problems, we don't have failures. So it can't be a problem.

That said, over the last year, there has been talk about adopting Engineers Without Borders' Failure Report model, one Crown Corporation has admitted the need to reinvent its business model, and the idea of change labs has spread, a model dependent on a laser focus on problems, as well as experimentation and iteration based on past results, including failures.

It seems as though we recognize that honesty is needed about the problems that we're facing, so that we can bring to bear the appropriate resources to solve them. And yet, the language stays firmly fixated on opportunities and innovation, never on problems or failures. When multiple people approve documents, it becomes very likely that at least one of them will soften the language.

Innovation requires taking chances, and chances can lead to failures. Any system that involves humans, no matter how reliable, will generate mistakes as a matter of statistical inevitability. It's okay. And small failures, if done well, will contribute to consistent successes. And until a would-be innovator can as easily summon anecdotes of failures being accepted as being maligned, we're stuck with the safe road or, at least, pretending to others that we're on it. Either of which is exceedingly hard to learn from.

I think part of it is the Shopping for Votes approach: defenders of soundbite-based communication argue that average Canadians don't have time for complexity, and won't appreciate the nuances of real, gritty problems. To boot, every piece of even internal communication can suddenly become external through Access to Information. However,there is evidence that experts that own up to their shortcomings, or demonstrate a degree of fallibility, can be seen as more credible and reliable (and certainly more likable) than those who maintain an strictly stoic veneer. Nick once suggested that a culture of acceptable failure could be a competitive advantage.

And the decline in trust in government would suggest that in general, the problem-free communication approach isn't working ideally. It may be worth considering the possibility that we systematically overestimate the risk of admitting to problems and failures, and underestimate the longer-term risks of losing trust and credibility - and the risks of inappropriately intervening on ill-defined problems.

It could be a tragedy of the commons effect, in that individual actors know that long-term stewardship requires a certain approach but are incentivized to take a different one. In that view, it's not so much a question of whether we should embrace an honest focus on problems, or that our communications model needs to evolve, but a question of how we normalize those admissions of humility and humanity.

When everyone around you is touting success, who goes first on failure?

If it is a tragedy of the commons, the answer is less in the culture change and more in altering how the market works.

What We Lost in the Fire, We Gain in the Flood

by Kent Aitken

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Several observers of Canadian civil society have painted a portrait of increasing centralization of power, over at least the last half-century. And perhaps it is a failure of imagination or thoroughness on my part, but I haven't found anyone aiming to dispel that notion. I'm writing on the premise that it is true, and from the point of view of the bureaucracy, which I believe has lost influence at the national table of leaders.

The rationale for increased centralization tends to be increased efficiency. With information and decision-making power held in one place, it's easier to launch bold initiatives and move an agenda forward. Consultation and consensus is tricky and time-consuming.

Yet there are trends in decentralization. There is increasing recognition that policy expertise exists in a distributed network of networks in NGOs, think tanks, citizen groups, and individuals. This was a major theme at the 2012 IPAC conference, and you see it in open policy initiatives such as the Open Data Policy in the U.S. that anyone can edit on Github. Like, right now.

But this seems like adding insult to injury for the bureaucracy: losing voice at the top, and losing the de facto monopoly on policy advice (see: The Bazaar World of Fearless Advice 2.0). But distributed policy actually represents the best opportunity for reclaiming some of the influence lost at the national table: the key distinction is "at the national table of leaders" and "at the national table. Period." That is, though the bureaucracy will remain a small player at big tables, it'll become the core of a distributed ecosystem of influence in Canada that will only grow in importance.

This is a good thing.

What we lost in the fire, we gain in the flood

What's going to drive this? Complexity and legitimacy leading to increasing public engagement, and technology as a thread running throughout.

We live in a time when we can no longer pretend that issues aren't complex, and decisions predicated on an oversimplified world get called out. When Radio-Canada announced a name change to ICI in June, they suddenly found that they hadn't considered all of the consequences. They walked it back after listeners and journalists expressed incredibly strong feelings about the name, based on complex feelings about identity, tradition, and politics. Broad consultation is a very effective way to figure out how complex an issue really is.

Partially for this reason, and partially because it builds legitimacy for decisions when people feel included, public engagement in policymaking is gaining traction in Canada and around the world. Well, digitally-enabled engagement. Lifelong public servants and politicians that held townhalls, knocked on doors, and wrote letters would probably take issue with the idea of complete novelty, here.

And I actually think that the increased transaction speed technology affords in soliciting opinions will be partially offset by the wrenches that having more voices will throw into an issue. And the fact that some of these voices have bullhorns to turn to, if their ideas aren't respected. Regardless, policy wonks will have a well-networked civil society on their side when synthesizing and submitting policy advice.

There are both dark clouds and silver linings for public participation in democracy, but I don't think there is a countervailing force that can prevent the rise of public engagement in policymaking. As the public's uptake and demand for involvement increases, the bureaucracy will get better at including the public in the policy process, which will increase demand, and voilà: virtuous cycle.


The Ecosystem of Influence

Michael Lipsky argues that "frontline public servants, such as police officers and social workers" are policymakers, as a result of the discretion and autonomy they have in carrying our their jobs. Here's an example: when I was sixteen I got pulled over for speeding, in the gray area between the speed limit and mandatory ticketing. So the options were a warning, or a ticket.

However, the officer ran the license plate and invented a third option: he called his friend about it, instead. My dad. 

With direct interaction with the public, there's a level of influence, and accordingly responsibility, within the leeway available in achieving results. What's going to happen is that far more bureaucrats are going to find themselves in that position, as policy analysts become the face of public engagement in policymaking. Policy is increasingly going to become a frontline activity, and bureaucrats will be able to put their mark, embrace a greater responsibility, and add value. On the ground, in the weeds, with Canadians.

As I said, this is a good thing. But it won't be an easy thing. 

Towards a New Professionalism in Government, Part II

by Kent Aitken

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I was hoping to get to the heart of how I view the future of public service professionalism. But the road turned out wordy, so I've split it into two posts, this one continuing the link between the discussion that's been going on here lately and professionalism (See: Embracing Authenticity Means Embracing Complexity).

Before I bolted east for vacation (and got that photo, above), I decided that I'd explore what a new professionalism in government would look like, and prefaced it with a post on the importance of authenticity and storytelling. I wondered if it would seem like a non sequitur (See: Towards a New Professionalism in Government).

Evidently not. Ashleigh Weeden handily beat me to the segue:

The amazing by-product is that when I am grounded in my own authenticity, I am in a much better position to receive the stories of the colleagues, citizens and agencies that I work with because I am open to hearing what they have to say and not preoccupied with the mind-reading that comes from filtering what I hear and see through the voice of my own gremlins. By engaging my wholehearted self, I am better able to connect with other individuals as well as connect the dots of concepts and see patterns in the anecdotes that lead to important questions about the way we do things.

In other words, we need to be open, authentic, and genuine with those we serve. In doing so, we'll understand the human context and feedback that will motivate us to swing for the fences – to which I'll return next week. And we'll understand people's needs and perspectives, how we need to communicate, and how complex our issues really are.

Professionalism is results. Results achieved sustainably, with integrity, and with a stronger public service emerging through their achievement. In the short term, solid policy and services. In the long term, a trusted and strong public service. Remembering that neither horizon is served by working in a vacuum.

Complexity versus Voltaire's Bastards

From John Ralston Saul's website, about his book Voltaire's Bastards: 

A simple truth which our elites deny: far from being a moral force, reason is no more than an administrative method. Their denial has helped to turn the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts - “Voltaire's bastards" - whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality.

I've referenced Saul before (See: Left and Leaving). He both chastises technocrats for oversimplifying things from ivory towers, and – related – laments the erosion of honour, status, and trust in the Canadian Public Service over the last half century. He paints a vicious cycle of the decline of professionalism.

This is the virtuous cycle I posted a few weeks ago. I discussed how public trust through authentic interaction is key for status and, thus, attracting talent. I'd propose that we add that such interaction bolsters the cycle significantly at the performance stage as well, because it helps us understand the complexity of what we're up against.

I don't think the world is much more complex than before. Honestly. It may be faster, but the force far outweighing increasing complexity is increasing awareness of complexity. We weren't spraying DDT on fields 50 years ago because ecosystems were any less complex – we did it because we had no idea how complex they were (See: What We Don't Know).  Now we have:

• A better lens on complexity
• The lessons learned that more or less every time we learn about something, we find out it's more complex than we first thought
• Knowledge of the ramifications when we fail to appreciate complexity

And thus we have a duty to change our approach to problem solving, appreciating all that.

I feel as though we have fallen prey to various memes*. One is that we're smart enough to make decisions from Ottawa on behalf of those we're imposing them upon. We're not. The world is large; it contains multitudes. 

*To be returned to next week.

Embracing Authenticity Means Embracing Complexity

by Nick Charney

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Today I wanted to focus on the connection between authenticity and complexity but before jumping to the meat of it I wanted to recap how we got here. Whether you've noticed or not, we've been deliberately walking you down a very deliberate path recently:

• I asked a thought provoking question about the tenuous relationship between bureaucrats who see value in pursuing innovative and a public narrative that demands predictability (See: Can Bureaucrats be Interesting When the World Demands they be Boring);
• I put forth an argument that positioned the problem of facelessness as one that is self made, that the bureaucracy relies on passive rules and protocols rather than active relationship buildings (See: The Real Problem of Facelessness); 
• Kent argued that continuing to rely on these things is unsustainable and that potential for public servants to have an impact on the lives of others at this point in time is nearly unparalleled (See: Moving Public Service Mountains Part I & Part II); 
• I positioned the solution to the problem of facelessness as greater authenticity in our dealings with each other and by extension those we serve (See: The Solution to Facelessness is Authenticity);
• I shared a whimsical video and a powerful story that exemplifies the type of authenticity that the civil service desperately needs (See: Peak Bullshit & A Noteworthy Example of Authenticity);
• I re-iterated a recent discussion that helped me realize the importance of the stories we set in motion today while Kent argued that good storytelling is akin to usability for ideas (See: On the Stories You Tell Today & Towards a New Professionalism in Government);
• I shared a personal story about a little boy I met ten years ago that still shapes my expectations today to illustrate the point (See: We All Have Our Defining Moments); 
• We even reviewed a book that serves as a powerful example of the need to and the difficulty of elevating a more authentic public policy discourse (See: Impossible Conversations: A Review of Jeffrey Simpson's Chronic Condition); and
• As an added bonus, the conversation spilled over to another a blog we happen to like (See: The Whole Hearted Bureaucrat: The Public Service as Reflective Practice written by Ashleigh Weeden)

So here's the rub

If we are going to embrace greater authenticity than we must also be willing to embrace greater complexity; or as Ashleigh put it:

If we disallow public servants to embody their authenticity by insisting on facelessness, we are taking away the critical factor of connection that allows human beings to find and create meaning. Creating spaces that function solely on technical objectivity and risk aversion ... we numb our institutional nervous system with a false anaesthetic that makes it incredibly difficult for public servants to exercise compassion and holistic understanding. And the problems we face today require and deserve the full force talents of courageous, compassionate, wholehearted people.

Which is precisely what I take to be the meaning of fearless advice: courage, compassion, and wholeheartedness, not just with our political masters but with each other.

The connection to public policy

The complexity that authenticity creates in our interpersonal relationships and the friction between that malleable authenticity and our rigid organizational structures is not only palpable but also serves as a fair proxy for what we should expect as we enter more authentic discussions about pressing public policy issues. This is precisely what Simpson gets to in his book and can easily be extended to a number of other public policy challenges.

Where does that leave us?

Given what I've outlined above, our course of action seems fairly clear. From where I sit, I think we ought to wholeheartedly embrace the richness of complexity in both our interpersonal relationships and the policy solutions we pursue while telling the right stories today with a view to making them usable tomorrow.

My hope is that you agree with me, my fear is that you don't.

Towards a New Professionalism in Government

by Kent Aitken

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Last week I compared Sir Ken Robinson's views on the success of Finland's educational system to the way organizations are managed [see: Escaping Death Valley]. Success due, in part, to the attribution of a high degree of status to the teaching profession.

Status is an odd word, with less than ideal connotations. But public service carrying status is a necessary state for the sake of public trust, attracting talent, and – importantly - because status is a natural result of a challenging, high-performance workplace.

Regardless, I'm not going to call it status. I'll look instead at the road to a new professionalism in government, over a couple posts. And because everyone is so - rightly - jazzed up about it, I'll start with storytelling. The new professionalism is less formal. Messier at the edges.

 

Storytelling 

For that virtuous cycle, above, we don't enter at one particular node. Organizations have to build the performance scaffolding to raise the talent attraction scaffolding, which then allows the performance scaffolding to go even higher.

There are several angles to why we need good storytelling in terms of performance and talent. We need it when pitching to decision makers, to convince them of the value of projects and programs. Our peers' storytelling provides inspiration and good ideas. And our public storytelling builds understanding and trust - vital both for relationships as we work for and with those we serve, and to convince talented Canadians to become public servants.

I've been very inspired by my colleagues who work on user-centred design in government*. I hit on this recently [see: What We Don't Know]: it doesn't matter how technically impressive a product is if people don't use it well. It doesn't even matter if they can, or can't. Just that they don't. But you can design for this, test assumptions and prototypes, and create useful products that people will use productively.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the U.S. exists largely to protect citizens from suffering because they don't understand the exceptionally hard-to-understand financial system. Doesn't matter if they can, or can't. In a spectacular move, they hired Audrey Chen away from Comedy Central to serve as their Creative Director (in government?!). Chen, who was nice enough to speak to us a while back, conducted usability testing on their websites, informational documents, and templates for, say, student loan forms. The goal was maximizing the likelihood of people understanding what they were getting themselves into, and minimizing the likelihood of personally and socially expensive financial issues down the road.

They're making sure things aren't just broken, as Seth Godin would put it.

Good storytelling is essentially akin to usability for ideas. It's the same principle. It doesn't matter how good our ideas are, if people - decision makers, citizens that influence outcomes, or peers whose support you need - don't understand them, they aren't useful, and we have failed in our duty as public servants. And we can work on this.

Nick pointed towards George's authentic storytelling in Canadian Government Executive magazine, and I'll echo his hat-tip (oh, it's vortex rings we're on now? Okay).

I also respect my friend Dave Fleming's approach on his blog, as he takes a role as Executive Director of Halifax's North End Business Association:

"I’m going to introduce myself with a list of 13 things about me – a little about my vision for our city, about my experience and business knowledge, and a few which are about the person. If you want an answer to something I haven’t covered, please get in touch."

It's a simple, authentic step, but necessary for working productively with those whom he serves.

When Nick posed a question about faceless bureaucrats [see: Can Bureaucrats be Interesting when the World Demands that They be Boring?], there was some disagreement about whether bureaucrats can be, or should be, faceless. But the reality right now is that we have scrutiny without visibility. And thus, without understanding. We have availability without transparency. I don't think it's enough to simply post PDFs of receipts online, dust off our hands and say job well done. Nor do I think it's a good idea for us. We could storytell what we're doing, what is meaningful, and communicate it in such a way that people have a reasonable chance of understanding it.

Hell, we can even be boring ourselves. But I doubt that our work, which materially affects Canadians, is. So I agree with George: it's time to tell our stories. And it might even get us here:

And talent, understanding, and impact might get us into the first virtuous cycle.

Professionalism isn't APA formatting. It's results. Jargon, opacity, and bullshit don't achieve them.

*As a side note, this is not a sentence lightly said. The UX experts in government, and their excellent story, actually blow my mind. Their dedication, capability, and professionalism inspire me to be a better public servant.