[Video script for the Institute for Government study: System Error Fixing the flaws in government IT]

Why is government IT so challenging?

Two factors immediately come to mind: vast scale and continual interference.

A sensible response is to amplify the real benefits of scale [such as buying power & heft] and also guard against simplistic solutions getting out of their depth. There is both real challenge and opportunity to improve both efficiency and effectiveness – an obvious example is the rationalisation of the data centres which in private industry would have been done already.

One of the challenges of size is the need to ensure coherence with a more distinct and recognised direction, a coalition of the willing fails without appropriate coordination and here we introduced ‘comply or explain‘ to emphasise the role of centre integrating and enabling federated delivery.

The issue of interference and changing priorities is more intractable – resolved by faster delivery of new capabilities, closer working together of the elements of government and an overriding focus on simpler more standard services. Examples such as the VISA network or Amazon show that massive scale is achievable. In our report we discuss some of the technical factors that lead to complexity but we also need to change the behaviours that lead to complexity.

Why is it important to co-ordinate some IT activities across departments?

There are very many advantages here – but best explained by thinking just how easy commercial systems are to use [such as Amazon or Google] and how obvious things are the norm such as entering your details just once. This focus on ease of use also delivers an efficiency and standardisation of code. New features and functions draw on an existing base and do not require reinventing the wheel or building different ways of doing the same thing.

There is a great phrase that sums it up – intuitiveness is familiarity –

Let us assume that government IT is targeted at value (which is a matter of experience) not simply cost (a matter of fact). And here there are 2 essential drivers firstly ‘customer pull‘ [often the citizens interests do not neatly fit into the here today gone tomorrow organisation] and secondly innovation & change accelerating great ideas. In our networked economy the challenge is not simply producing ideas – but to drive ideas to mass adoption or to kill them off. Solutions which remain limited to the few restrict innovation, are cranky to use and become a liability. By any measure government has more than its fair share of once innovative, now backward systems.

Appropriate coordination ensures that great ideas get recognised, rewarded and amplified across government and that ideas that did not take to mass adoption are withdrawn and replaced. Great ideas must quickly become part of the platform – standard in operation & available to all. This can only be achieved by positively managing the ecosystem of systems and services.

What are the benefits of taking an agile approach?

Agile developed from two factors: the need to deliver systems in a more flexible and speedier fashion and the maturity of technology to use ‘big’ building blocks not starting with basic elemental code.

Together they allow a double pareto: best known as the 80:20 rule. Here the users select the 20% of the requirements which provide 80% of the benefit and the developers focus on the 20% of the code that delivers 80% of the features. It requires working in partnership with very short describe-build-use cycles – typically only a few weeks – obviously the antithesis of the traditional long drawn out multi-year developments. Also in cases where intractable difficulties emerge agile allows progress to be assessed are experiments to reach a conclusion quickly and cheaply. The worst of government IT is seen when projects fail slowly and expensively.

There is nothing magical in agile – it simply exploits the advances in working which have driven the manufacturing revolution. Any student of lean will recognise the characteristics of customer pull, just in time, low inventory and re-use. That’s why in the report we emphasise the combined merits of agile and platform: agile enables timely, focused and flexible change the platform enables this through commodity pricing, broad standardisation and an existing collection of widely used, robust components.