Published on the 17/01/2017 | Written by Donovan Jackson

‘Digital’ has replaced multiple devices, industries and ways of doing things. Could it see off government, too?…

It’s a claim being made by Gerry McGovern, digital customer experience consultant, and one which may have some merit: could digital technology make government redundant? If one considers how technology in everyone’s favourite example of a digital company, Uber, has bypassed the need for government regulation of transport by empowering consumers with information and choice (Kiwiblog’s David Farrar explains why) then yes, it is possible (although governments around the world are kicking and screaming to reassert ‘control’).

In a recent missive, McGovern pointed out that like all organisations, governments claim to exist to serve citizens but are usually more interested in serving themselves. He noted that ‘digital’ is increasingly exposing government incompetence and how remote from the real life of people so many in government are (particularly at a senior level).

McGovern quoted Michael Ferguson, Canadian Auditor General, who in November 2016 said, “We see government programs that are not designed to help those who have to navigate them, programs where the focus is more on what civil servants are doing than on what citizens are getting, where delivery times are long, where data is incomplete, and where public reporting does not provide a clear picture of what departments have done.”

In the same month, Paul Shetler resigned as Australia’s government Chief Digital Officer – just weeks into the job and around 15 months after he was first appointed as CEO of that country’s Digital Transformation Office. He has talked about how it became impossible for him to witness a string of ‘cataclysmic’ IT failures, about how this is ‘not a crisis of IT’ but a ‘crisis of government’.

McGovern said this is true. “We are seeing a global collapse in trust in government. What is it good for? Does it serve ordinary people or just special interests? Is government capable of dealing with digital transformation? Government just assumes it can continue being the same old government. That’s a dangerous, lazy assumption,” he wrote.

Sparing a thought for those in government who do add value, McGovern nevertheless said those individuals tend to be swimming against the current. “They often do this great work in conflict with the very institutions they work for. As you go up the bureaucratic management tree the eyes look ever upwards, seeking to please the politicians and massage egos,” he noted – pointing to comment by Shetler, who has stated “You’ve got an entire bureaucracy of IT bureaucrats who are backed by large vendors.”

That’s an issue picked up upon by IT probity advisor Darryl Carlton, who in the wake of the Australian Tax Office experiencing a major IT failure, told iStart: “You can’t trust what [government is] saying…. Their immediate reaction was ‘trust us to protect the data’. Well, we can’t trust them to run the systems.” He added for good measure that the Australian Tax Office hasn’t done its due diligence, instead deferring to systems suppliers. “They’ve relied on ‘Trust me, I’m the vendor’.”

Continuing, McGovern said these two groups -vendors and bureaucrats – are locked in a ‘love-hate affair’. “Most of the people involved in this sordid affair have never once seen an actual citizen use the IT Titanic monstrosities that they allow to sail out with unrelenting regularity. The idea of creating something that’s simple to use is utterly alien to these people. Citizens are supposed to use what they’re given and be grateful. There’s no such thing as a software bug, just stupid people who need more training. When problems occur, government just denies they exist. Only when things explode in an absolute mess are they forced to grudgingly look around and find someone else to blame.”

And McGovern contextualises those seemingly harsh words with an observation of just who is important in the bureaucracy: “I have been in government buildings all over the world. One thing I have noticed again and again is that when there are pictures of people hanging on the walls of these fine buildings, they are never pictures of ordinary citizens. Instead, they are pictures of politicians and senior bureaucrats.”

He comes back to Shetler, who has said, “Policy is not just something you dream up on a piece of paper. It’s actually also the results that you see on the streets.”

McGovern said this is the very problem with government. “It measures itself based on the creation of the policy and its ‘communication’ to the press. And the further up in government you go, the more relentless that navel-gazing focus becomes.”

In the digital age, said McGovern, government must become useful again, and to do that it must measure the outcome of the policy. “It must measure the use of what it creates and rapidly learn and evolve based on use. What is digital transformation? What is being transformed? Digital is just the enabler of transformation. It is the government, the senior bureaucrats and the politicians who must be transformed.”