Two Lessons After a Few Weeks In

by Nick Charney

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I quietly changed roles recently -- shifting away from a role working on policy innovation at the macro systems level to working on the implementation policy innovation at the micro program level. I'm enjoying the experience so far and (as usual) have been reflecting a bit on what I can learn along the way.

The danger of templates and the tension of task completion
Templates might be useful tools for standardization but they also create an artificial barrier that limits our thinking, especially templates that only push us to think to a certain milestone (e.g. design) and stop short of another (e.g. implementation). In other words they can create artificial barriers that reinforce an "out of sight out of mind mindset" when in reality those things -- while downstream -- ought to be given due consideration upstream. Similarly, there's a constant tension between doing completing the task that is immediately in front of you and that which is not. It takes a high degree of effort to say no to the pressure of the immediacy and keep your focus on longer term objectives. The risks closer to you often seem more important than those downstream but it is that very proximity that inflates their severity not their inherent characteristics.

The importance of stepping outside of strategic policy
Take the time to step outside the strategic policy world and work in or on a program and/or on implementation; there's a lot to be learned.



Note(s): 

• If you are interested in stepping into parts of my old role you can find more information on it here (internal link).
• I'll be in DC talking policy innovation + holding a small hackathon on the Policy Innovation Portal (internal link); contact me if you'd like to set up a meeting or hit the link above to register for the event.

A Quick Note on a Public Service Highlight

by Kent Aitken

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For my first four years in the public service, I worked for what is known as a Common Service Organization: a government department that provides services to other government departments. It has only been in the last approximately 18 months that I've held a position with public-facing elements.

Over the weekend I traveled to Vancouver for the CODE Hackathon, a competition based on the creative use of Government of Canada open data. We logged the better part of a week's work from Friday night to Sunday night, supporting participants and learning from them. It was fantastic. 

A while back I wrote that "Ottawa, the concept, needs to spend more time out of Ottawa, the city", an idea reinforced by every opportunity to do so. I went from reading daily media monitoring reports to a room seemingly exempt from politics. I realized that participants were downright excited that the Government of Canada, of all entities, would be interested in the works that they accomplished. And I got to see, firsthand, what many public servants' hard work meant for people on the ground.

A post like this would, stylistically, merit a pithy observation at this point. Something like "We need more of that/X". But my purpose for sharing is stylistically boring, as a combination of many things: a reminder that the cynics about the public service are louder than those content with it, a note that government does interesting things, and an expression of appreciation for being a part of them.

Unrelated: hackathons are basically Mac advertisements.

An alternative to the hackathon

by Nick Charney

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By now most are familiar with the concept of an open data hackathon: jam people and data together into a small space for a short time and ask them to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and/or publish analyses (often by providing a monetary reward as an incentive). This has been the model for a long time now and at the height of its hype its merits were debated extensively online. I'm not really interested in re-hashing the debate, but if you want some context you can go read the following from a few years back (and everything those pieces link to):

• Open government hackathons matter by Mark Headd
• Everyone jumped on the app contest bandwagon. Now what? by Alex Howard
• On Hackathons and Solutionism by David Sasaki
• To App Contest or Not App Contest by David Eaves

What I am interested in is fleshing out why we need an alternative approach, how that approach could be structured and what it could mean to the big picture.

Hackathons produce apps, not solutions to wicked problems

A bus tracking app is great at helping me leave the office just at the right minute to catch my bus, but it's completely ineffective at solving the gridlock that hamstrings the bus as soon as I board it.

A health tracking app may help me eat better and exercise more but does little to address the looming healthcare crisis in this country (See: Impossible Conversations: A Review of Chronic Condition by Jeffrey Simpson)

In short, apps address downstream problems facing individuals that are generally easy to deal with. Ought we not be digging in a little deeper, thinking upstream, and investing our effort into solving problems at the macro rather than treating their symptoms at the micro?

Refocusing on wicked problems

Maybe we ought to engage our best and brightest from academic institutions, the public and private sectors and create teams of cross functional experts to gather, crunch and analyse the data.

Maybe we shouldn't ask them to build a minimum viable product in a weekend but rather give them the time required for them to conduct a thoughtful analysis of the status quo, a desired future state, and options on how to get us there (See: Enduring Ideas: The Three Horizons of Growth from McKinsey).

Maybe then we can sit down, have the hard conversations, weigh the evidence and options and chart a coherent way forward.

The wicked impact of solving (or even mitigating) wicked problems

I have no evidence to support this claim so feel free to take me task on it, but I get the sense that solving (or even mitigating) a wicked problem in society will always yield better returns to society at the macro than any app ever could.

I could go down a long tangent on how I think the focus on apps (to the detriment of research) is a by-product of our shortened shadow of the future, our culture of immediacy and the omnipresence of attention economy, but I'll spare you the diatribe for the moment.

What I will say is that I think we need to spend less time scrolling up with our thumbs and more time leaning in with our shoulders.

Unsolicited Thoughts on Destination 2020

by Nick Charney

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On Monday, the Clerk of the Privy Council Wayne Wouters released Destination 2020, the response to the government-wide Blueprint 2020 engagement process. The report comes on the heels of both the 8th Report from the Advisory Panel on the Public Service and the 21st Annual Report to the Prime Minister (See: Thoughts on the 8th Report from the Advisory Panel on the Public Service). While I could just cut to the chase and offer my take, there's actually a lot at stake here so I have to tread lightly.

A couple of high level thoughts

First, the report wasn't written with guys like me in mind. Clerk's reports generally speak to the early and late majority, not the innovators or the early adopters. If you are on the left side of the adoption curve like me, you likely thought the report fell short; and while perhaps that is true for you, you (we) need to remember that it's pretty progressive for those on the right of the chasm.

Second, if the report rattles the cages of the status quo and rallies the troops around change, then it's something that we all need to get behind. We need all the momentum we can get and holier than thou attitudes from guys like me aren't productive. We can disagree on execution but let's at least agree that we have consensus on the vision. Can we do better? Of course, we always can. But let's not allow perfection to be an enemy of the good. That tendency is old-school bureaucracy, and if we fall victim to it now, we'll become everything we profess to hate.

What I thought was most interesting

The recognition that the public service brand (as a profession) was in need of a major overhaul. While it was clearly an overarching theme of many of the conversations I took part in when I was on the inside, I was surprised that it made it's way into the final report. It's obviously a theme we've explored at length here (See: When did the Public Service become an ignoble profession?) but it's also one with no clear-cut solution. Engaging civil servants in profiling their work online will do little to stem the tide of sniping ministers, rhetoric filled unions, prosecutorial journalists, self-censoring bureaucrats or apathetic citizens. In short, while the problem here is well-defined, I have trouble reconciling the depth of that problem with the response. 

What I thought was cause for concern

A common thread through the entire report was connecting senior managers more directly with the rank and file employees. Many of the actions the report proposes would do just this (tiger teams, innovation labs, dragons dens, etc); and while creating new feedback loops is important, so is unclogging the existing ones. It's a point I've raised before and won't belabour further (See: On Dragon's Dens, Hackathons, and Innovation Labs). That said, while dens, 'thons, and innovation labs may work for some people, they definitely won't work for everybody. By their very definition they are exclusive and exclusionary, they benefit only those who have access and how one gains access is still not well defined. In my estimation, access is likely to be left to middle managers and early career executives to operationalize. They are the permission seekers, the vetters, the filters. How will selection for these new endeavours be any different than the selection of who gets what training opportunities, what briefing notes make it to the deputy, etc? Isn't the filter issue the thing we are trying to address here? Would we be exploring these novel approaches if more information managed to permeate the clay layer? What's the old adage about letting the inmates run the insane asylum?

Ironically (or perhaps more rightly, sadly), the Association of Professional Executives (APEX) recently urged the government to take more action on mental health because it's most recent study found that the organizational commitment of executives was on the decline (from 64 per cent to 52 percent) and that about 32 per cent of them are disengaged, disconnected from their work and unable to deal with the demands of their job. I'm not being glib, mental health in the workplace is an important issue that ought to be addressed. I'm not trying to liken middle managers to inmates or the public service to an insane asylum, but sometimes you just need to use a metaphor to drive home the point. Truthfully, I have plenty of sympathy for the challenges facing middle managers. It's something we have written about in the past (See: The Plight of the Clay Layer and Where Good Ideas Go To Die) and something I speak to frequently during presentations. I won't belabour the point but there is still something here that just doesn't sit well with me. It strikes me as avant-garde but guarded by the old guard.

What I thought the report did well

Give people hope. While I wasn't in the room (I'm an outsider now remember — arguably I've never been an insider, but that's another discussion altogether) I was told that the energy in the room was palpable. The twitter stream exploded with a cacophony of support from across the country with only a few (quickly buried) objections (why we are so desperate for hope is another conversation for another time).

There are hundreds of briefing notes and decks being written across the public service as your read this that are using the Clerk's report as leverage. A quotation from the report on the front page, a photo of the Clerk and another quotation on the back. If an initiative can be tied to any of the report's pillars, it will be.

This is to be expected. After all a Clerk's report is never about the actual report — it's about what we all do with it.

Blueprint 2020, Renewal, and the Trough of Disillusionment

by Kent Aitken

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Recently one of my colleagues pointed out a perceived lull in Government of Canada chatter. On Twitter, blogs, and GCconnex, they felt a noticeable absence of conversations about public administration, innovation, and change. I’m inclined to agree. We bandied theories back and forth about why that might be, and last Friday landed on this possibility:

The current wave of public service renewal, launched by Blueprint 2020, is hitting its trough of disillusionment. If you’re not familiar, that term refers to the Gartner Hype Cycle for new technologies: people start talking about them, then everyone’s expectations get unrealistically high, and when they can’t possibly deliver, the technology slides into the trough. People start questioning its value. Eventually, things level out and people find the genuinely useful applications for the technology, and it enters a plateau of productivity.

If the hype cycle can apply to public service renewal - that is, if the current wave is entering a trough of disillusionment, and can be mapped like a technology in this way - it means a few things.

For starters, it would mean that Nick (and others) may have solid grounds to question the promise of Dragon's Dens, Hackathons, and Innovation Labs. That it is time to question our expectations and ensure that we are pursuing the right ideas, and that they make sense for our organizations. And that John Kenney may be right about the tension between innovation and ongoing operations (see his review of Beyond the Idea: How to Execute Innovation in Any Organization).

(For the record, I still think highly of hackathons, but I agree with Clay Shirky about their actual sustainably productive application.)

"The product of a hackathon isn't running code. It's the social capital people created among the people in the room." @cshirky #cfasummit

— Tim O'Reilly (@timoreilly) October 15, 2013

It would mean that some of the ideas that have surfaced since Blueprint 2020 launched in June won’t see the light of day, at least not in their current form, or applied to the problems proposed. Which is okay. Some of them shouldn’t.

Most importantly, it would mean that we, as an organization, are becoming more mature about innovation and the prospects for renewal. That we are questioning our assumptions, and moving towards those ideas that will actually create value in the long run. It would mean that we are actually on track towards implementing these ideas and reaching the plateau of productivity - which has always been the goal, whether we've known it or not.

That said, it would not mean that the champions and advocates for ideas can stop championing and advocating. These people are present in every stage of the hype cycle. That’s how it works.

The goal, now, is to focus on the problems that our organizations are persistently facing, and to find opportunities for alignment between problems and solutions.

People Act, Technology Helps

by Kent Aitken

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This quote from South by Southwest was making the rounds yesterday:

Which dovetails with Nick's post last week (see: Dragon's Dens, Hackathons, and Innovation Labs. Nick questioned whether such approaches are being used as innovation band-aids, plastered over more fundamental problems:

If pressed to offer a TL;DR of the problem I would say that the core challenge facing public sector institutions right now is that industrial age organizational models don't jive with digital age cultures and technologies.

I don't know if I can fully back the idea that it's the core challenge, but I'd agree that it's a major one (see: We Don't Make Widgets Any More or Healthcare.gov as a Case Study in the Digital Analog Divide).

We mistake the use of digital technology as evidence that we know how to use digital technology. Really, we're still very much so learning this world and discovering its potential and limits. We absolutely should continue to push the boundaries, but it strikes me that we're undervaluing reflection on what our recent history has meant.

And, for that matter, what it has not meant.

Humans are still human, if not more human than ever. Mid-century economic models assuming rational actors with perfect information have given way to the understanding that humans are not just irrational, but predictably irrational. Face-to-face canvassing impacts voter turnout at 5-8 times the rate that mail or phone calls do. Humans respond to what is meaningful to them, particularly connections to other humans.

With that in mind, here's a heuristic I've been considering. As government representatives and as employees of large organizations, we're faced with many situations in which we want to get feedback from stakeholders and colleagues. When thinking about how to design that interaction, consider how you'd ask a good friend the same question. If the answer is sitting down for coffee, email probably isn't the best approach. It might be the practical approach all things considered, but make sure you're aware of what you're losing in going a particular route.

As Nick asked, it's "What does governance look like in a digital era?" Not, "How do we use digital in governance?" Governance is still the key element of the idea. Some fundamental assumptions about governance have changed; many haven't. In the end, it's still about what people do.

Consider the Sandy Carter quote. Similarly, technology has helped people unearth many, many problems that always existed, but were hard to see. And the inadequacies of many of our solutions.

Technology will not revolutionize government, society, or democracy. But people might. Technology might help them realize that they have to, or help them find the people and tools they need to do it.

On Dragon's Dens, Hackathons and Innovation Labs

by Nick Charney

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I was asked recently to give a talk on injecting creativity in the civil service. The timing of the request is somewhat ironic given that I just left on an interchange and that one of the reasons I left was because I wanted more opportunities for creativity in the workplace.

Irony aside (and in fairness the invitation was issued a long time ago), the more I thought about the metaphor of injecting creativity, the more compelling I thought it was as a frame for discussion. As a metaphor, it speaks not only to the core challenge of creativity in the civil service but also to the underlying problem of how we think about solving it: We don't treat the underlying cause, we treat the symptom.

But the lack of creativity in the civil service - if you agree such a thing exists - isn't a structural problem per se but rather is the result of a myriad of other structural problems: hierarchy, risk aversion, group think and all the other usual suspects that round out the gamut.

There are surely creative people working for governments. I have met many, but the environment within which they work simply doesn't foster their creativity.

What's the solution?

The short answer is simple: fix the underlying problems.

The long answer — how to actually fix those problems — is much more complicated. If pressed to offer a TL;DR of the problem I would say that the core challenge facing public sector institutions right now is that industrial age organizational models don't jive with digital age cultures and technologies.

I would say that things are breaking.

Everyone kind of understands this, even if only implicitly

Leadership knows it. It's implied in their discussions about how the civil service is losing its monopoly on policy advice and evidenced whenever they turn a wilful blind eye to the established hierarchy or the machinery to better accomplish their goals.

Grunts know it. They exploit it whenever they use flattening technologies to reach across reporting structures, jurisdictions, geographies, languages, and ideologies.

Citizens know it. They are solving building solutions faster, better and cheaper than governments ever thought possible, let alone have the capacity to deliver (See: The Solution Revolution by William Eggers and Paul Macmillan)

Things are breaking and governments are struggling.

We're on our heels when we need to be leaning in

Despite these immense pressures, the cultural bias of bureaucracy is to subjugate new ideas to old principles (and processes) while thoughtful re-examination is anathema. That said, the former leads to press release by Twitter and extends industrial age thinking to digital technologies. The latter leads to a discussion about how democracy changes in the wake of communications technologies like Twitter, and in so doing it asks: "What does governance look like in a digital era?"

Where's the vein that runs through all of that?

How can any one individual reasonably expect to navigate such a complex system?

Distributed governance. Overlapping institutions. Supercharged technology. Agile citizenry.

Leaning in takes courage. Who among us is ready to stand up and take decisive action when the court of public opinions sees its public service as an ignoble profession (See: When did the Public Service Become an Ignoble Profession)? When the predominate discourse is about eliminating rather than creating (See: One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure)? When pundits and politicos jump on every miscue, and citizens are quick to scream "not in my back yard"?

Perhaps we need a different metaphor.

How do you eat the elephant?

There is an emergent patchwork of solutions that leadership seems increasingly interested in. It seems like you can't even have a conversation in this town without someone mentioning Dragon's Dens, Hackathons, or Innovation Labs. The patchwork is interesting, promising and even problematic.

It is interesting because it's evidence of my earlier claim that leadership knows something is amiss; it is promising because it demonstrates their willingness to try something different; and it is problematic because it's born of the same thinking that asks "how does one inject creativity into the civil service". It's additive, it doesn't address the underlying issues and if done in isolation is little more than another check mark in the column of innovation rhetoric.

However, if strung together under a larger plan the patchwork becomes something very different, and while I'm hopeful that those embarking down the path of dens, 'thons and labs have a vision of how these pieces fit together now and how they will be integrated into the larger whole (and what needs to change in order for that to happen AND how they plan on changing those things), I haven't heard anyone articulate it yet.

But maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself. After all, the answer to the question is one bite at a time.