“Technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing.”
I decided to start with Steve Job’s quote the second part of my attempt at sharing “experiences” on the digital transformation of the Public Sector (See The arduous path towards a “Smart City” … Aesop’s “The Fox and the Grapes” reloaded?), considering how his approach to innovation has changed our way of looking at the World of Consumers’ Technology in the last few years.
Since Steve Job’s premature passing, many Tech giants have been following his path and reinforced, in their product development teams, those areas focused on better understanding human behaviors and translate their studies in “more engaging”, “pervasive” and “relevant” (for the users) user experiences.
Companies focused on “Consumer Electronics” and the ICT Industry, have been chasing and confronting with Apple’s philosophy, refocusing resources and attention to how people uses technology, but also to the way technology could be made available to humans in order to solve their daily issues.
In other words, there has been an enhanced focus on assessing use cases on their “mass dimensions”, by introducing sociology, psychology and behavioral sciences in general as part of the development process of technological solutions, with the result of embedding them more tightly in our daily lives, in some cases heavily changing behavioral and social models (consider the impact of mobile smart-phones and apps on a global scale).
These considerations bring me to the question, that is, if we could consider applying this “behavioral” approach to the so called “Digital Transformation of Public Services“, in order to support and sustain change management projects aimed at implementing digital citizenship as part of a digitized society.
The Impact of the “Skills Gap” on Digital Transformation
Through the Digital Transformation of the way we do things, both in the Private and Public Sectors, we are hoping to change our society for the better. But for sure we have to admit that there are a number of negative implications and “side effects”, which are undesired “guests” at the table and, if not properly handled, insurmountable obstacles to achieve our goals.
And while the need of applying proper “change management” practices are “buzz-wordily” on the mouth of anybody who is part of the discussions on the “How-To’s” of Digital Transformation, on the other end, there is general consensus in identifying a broad Technological “Skills Gap” as one of the main root causes for this “lethargy”.
When talking to friends and professionals on the “techies-side” of the “digitization barricades”, it is common to hear them expressing their frustrations about the difficulties to collect, refine and finalize “specifications” necessary to design the new digitized business processes, very often implying that this situation is a consequence of the limited technical skills of their counterparts.
Being an “insider”, I cannot disagree with this view, especially looking at the broader definitions of skills gap given not only by the ICT Industry, but also by Academia, Analysts, etc and which I could summarize in the following: “A Skills Gap is defined as “a significant gap” between an organization’s skill needs and the current capabilities of its workforce.”
Especially when looking at the Public Sector, it is true that, because of tight and shrinking budgets, particularly “strict” labor regulations for public employees and a constantly aging population in western societies, it is very difficult to close some of these gaps with training, job rotations and other usual practices, especially when the required skills are deeply rooted into innovative and rapidly developing technological environments and require highly specialized workforce (the European Commission has addressed this in its study on “The Digital skills gap in Europe“, providing a clear pictures of the situation across EU Member States).
How to Mitigate these Risks and Reduce these Obstacles?
Acknowledging the problem, European Institutions have been steadily working in supporting businesses and public administration in reducing complexity of digital transformation of Industries by defining and promoting new “standards”, funding R&D and participating to pilot initiatives (e.g. through the Horizon 2020 Program), fostering the establishment of “common knowledge” and “best practices” sharing platforms.
On the other end, the ICT Industry seems to be moving in an extremely factual way, focusing on facilitating transformation by using new techniques to leverage on the assets represented by experienced employees (namely their knowledge of processes, policies and governance models) and moving towards platforms more focused on integrating processes, building knowledge across the organization and leverage on “best practice based” configurable interfaces.
More intriguingly, learning from best practices at Consumer Electronics giants, many Government bodies and ICT players are now systematically applying agile development, design thinking (cifr. C. Bason, Leading Public Sector Innovation: Co-creating for a Better Society) and behavioral sciences as methodologies to facilitate the transformation (into their digital “equivalent”) of processes established for the delivery of public services.
The main driver of these new approaches is the realization that the engagement of stakeholders (the public employees) in the rapid prototyping of subsequent tasks/phases of the redesign projects, is a real game changer, allowing technical experts and process experts to “discover” together how to better translate the analog world into its digital representation.
On one end, the civil servants involved in the delivery of the service appreciate that, with their direct engagement in the rapid prototyping phases, the peculiarity of their daily work is “valued” by the team they become part of, their concerns shared and more deeply understood by the developers, while on the other, the developers are able to concretely represent the progresses of the change team work and show, through the rapid prototyping of functionalities, what the real benefits of digitalization are.
In essence, the introduction of “transparency” as the key innovation driver of thedevelopment phase allows translating the codification of specifications into a “discovery journey” which could assure higher acceptance rates and a “final product” built not only on exploiting available technical features, but also on an improved user experience more in line with the expectations of the prime users (internal customers), the civil servants who will be called to deliver the new digital services.
This way, “change” is not anymore imposed on public sector employees, who become an active, positive driver of the transformation itself.
I was amazed by reading that companies like Deutsche Bahn are now actively engaging with their staff leveraging on agile approaches focused on the use of “rapid prototyping” in process redesign and process development cycles, while tech giants like IBM, are actively employing with their public sector customers “design thinking” techniques to accompany their customers’ employees in a discovery journey of how technology can be used to improve processes from the ground up. And this just to quote a number of examples.
There’s a way to do it better, … find it!
Thomas Edison
In conclusion, assuring a tighter level of inclusion and transparency, resulting in a stronger engagement from stakeholders in the past too often excluded from these projects, there is the chance to mitigate the risks of “resistance” to change caused by “fear of the unknown”, or by the difficulty to abstract from daily tasks, or even worse, by the unanswered questions on the benefits derived from digitalization (“digital” is not there to replace human beings, but to help them doing their job better!).
And it is a good feeling to realize how, thanks to this innovative blending of technology, behavioral sciences and design thinking, such promising results can be achieved in the deployment of new digital technologies for the delivery of public services (see S. S. Dawes, A. M. Cresswell, T. A. Pardo, “From “Need to Know” to “Need to Share”: Tangled Problems, Information Boundaries, and the Building of Public Sector Knowledge Networks”).
Illustration from an edition of Aesop’s Fables printed by William Caxton in the 15th century. (The Print Collector/Getty Images)
“Oh, you aren’t even ripe yet!” … said the fox “I don’t need any sour grapes.”
You will forgive the arrogance of posting my thoughts on this platform, but I have spent the last few years of my professional life trying to make some sense out of the continuous buzz-wording around “Digital Transformation” of the Public Sector (here we go with the first abused buzz-word) and in particular in the area of the so called “Smart Cities” (“errare humanum est, … perseverare diabolicum”, Seneca wrote), that I hope I can contribute to the discussion by sharing some of my thoughts and experiences.
First of all a few words on myself, just to put things into context. I come from a humanistic background, but I spent the last 10 years in “Technology”, trying to bring innovation into new markets and business models.
In the last 5 years I had the chance to spend most of my time in studying, assessing and implementing IOT solutions to support the digitalization of local Public Administration and “Utility” Companies, having often the privilege to sharing thoughts, ideas and concerns with politicians (… representing communities big and small), public administrators, managers of the IT & ICT infrastructures of those Authorities and many IT & ICT “industry players”.
This said, the “intellectual turmoil” leading to this “explosion” (this article) derives from recent events of the last few months, just after I left my position in one of the major European ICT players and joined a Public Institution (where I continue to focus on “efficiency” and digital transformation), events culminating in the realization of the gap, the still “un-bridged” distance, between the ways of Public Institutions and the ones of Technology players.
While it is undeniable that giant leaps forward have and are being made, every day, in building solid foundations to effectively digitalize entire public service areas (and in some fields the digitalization is already under way, or has even been partially completed), it is also true that there is still much to do to make replicability, scalability and affordability part of the DNA of these technological solutions.
The vast majority of “smart city” projects (even if there are many, intensively advertised ones, which are undoubtedly successful), unfortunately, seems to remain anchored to proof of concepts, pilots and small scale testing environments, very often limited to “theatrically stage” how technologies (or cosmetically customized versions of their applications) operate in “real-life”.
If you are skeptical about these first statements, just try to enter in a search engine the combination of words “smart city failures” and you will be amazed by the quantity and quality of the available content.
The question that raises from these considerations is why it is so difficult to move to the “next level”, i.e. the full rollout of a technological infrastructure to digitalize the provisioning of a public service to citizens.
And in addition to this, why is it, in the majority of instances, that moving from “pilot state”, seems to be a titanic challenge, with both parties (the Public Sector and the ICT “Industry”) very often unable to proceed together in their efforts towards full-scale digitalization?
Building a Theoretical Model
Here comes a theory (of which limitations and approximations I take full responsibility), based on the observation of the moods, motivations, aspirations, “clichés”, frustrations, from both sides of the barricades.
Using an oversimplified graphical representation of the “decision making” framework in which public administrators and executives of technology companies are tasked to operate, let’s try to elaborate on its implications.
The first point which takes the attention is the role given to what I indicate as “Policies“. Policies are the programmatic framework, the political platform on which public administrators are elected to office. During the elections campaigns, these sets of political objectives are the topic of discussion with constituents and represent the “strategic program” to which officials should be adhering during their electoral mandate.
So, why not calling this “Strategy”, instead of “Policies”, as academia and consulting usually do? For the simple reasons that, while strategies in corporations (“for profit organizations”) have as ultimate objective a “profitable” outcome of the organization’s endeavors, even in contexts where “social responsibility” is becoming more and more a driver in consumers’ loyalty (“profit“), a Public Local Administration (“non-profit” organization) will systematically target the implementation of social and political objectives and not pursue profit.
This passage is fundamental in understanding the stall in which some smart city initiatives are languishing and why “scaling” up of lab tests, proof of concepts and pilots appears often so arduous.
While the “Industry” usually blames this state of things on the political side (e.g., the skill gaps in the IT departments, the “magmatic change” of mood in decision makers, not enough focus on innovation, etc) the reality is that, too often, Technology organizations are failing to apply to these projects basic business principles.
And in too many cases, these Industry players seem not to be paying attention to the details of the “use cases” they are tackling and, even more often, they are unable to understand how Public Authorities’ operational and organizational models are affected by the programmatic Policies of the Public Institutions they are part of.
Visualizing to reduce complexity
Let me explain with a couple of charts how a public organization could be assessing technologies promising to provide new services to its community. But please be aware that this approach is just an exemplification and has no ambitions to design a “model” or being en exhaustive, “magic” tool to identify procedures for selecting technological solutions.
First and foremost, given the principles introduced by the new European Procurement Directive 2014/24/EU on Public Procurement, the total cost of operating the technological solution during the period of the assignment contract (total cost of ownership – T.C.O.), is now clearly identified as one of the drivers which should be part of the tender evaluation.
As a consequence, when benchmarking and comparing alternative “smart city” solutions, the T.C.O. better than the mere “purchasing cost” should be assessed versus the “technical value/content” of a solution, measured in terms of relevant technical features (relevant for the purpose of delivering the desired service to the community).
The chart below oversimplifies this process, which would end in ranking solutions in terms of value (available technical features) for money (the total cost of operating the solution).
This and similar benchmarking techniques could be the starting point for deciding to enter into a proof of concept.
But this is also where many Technology Organizations are systematically missing the opportunity to “learn” how to match their product portfolio (the set of standardized use cases they have “packaged”) with the “use case” at hand.
In my experience, this is due to the inability of exploiting the opportunities to learn fromthe environmental constraints and the feedback coming from public officials on what lays beyond the “use case”, i.e the social, political and “local economic interests” the provisioning of the service should be affecting.
The following chart should help visualizing, once again by oversimplifying the benchmarking process, how these social, political and local economic interests (usually “programmatically” addressed in a Policy document), could impact the decision towards a solution that maybe does not rank at the top of the previous assessment, but shows a much better fit to the Community objectives, like supporting local businesses, boosting new commercial/residential development areas, promoting social integration by supporting specific “economically underdeveloped” communities, etc.
In the chart, the dimension of the bubbles represents a different angle to assess the relevance of the solution from a social and political perspective, or with relation to the impact on the “local economy”.
As a consequence of this analysis, we could find ourselves in a situation for which a solution with, e.g. the lowest “technological” value (lower number of assessed technical features) would be the preferable one, as it maximizes the benefits from the Policy perspective.
For sure, to make the benchmarking more accurate, the weight of the programmatic policies objectives could be “pondered’ and weighted with relation to a priority ranking of those objectives, once again potentially changing the reading key of the assessment.
Different alternative techniques and tools could be applied to perform this exercise, so please allow me to remind you that is not my purpose to provide a “magic model” applicable to each and every case, but mainly to stimulate the readers intellectually and encourage them to adjust these principles to their specific case.
Conclusions
What emerges from these considerations, is that, if this model comes only close to explaining how decision could be (or should be) taken in the context of “digital transformation” of public services, very probably it won’t be technology to drive the decision of adopting a specific architectural model, but the way technology can be used to implement the above-mentioned programmatic Policies objectives.
In such a context, it becomes easier to understand why Technology brands are often finding difficult adjusting their strategies to the needs of this “market”.
If you are an executive in the Hi-tech industry and try to differentiate from competition by adding unicity to your technological portfolio, you usually do it by leveraging on your main assets, being them your IP (Intellectual property), your “interpretation” of technology (the flavor, the mix of features that builds the “user experience” you envisioned for your customers), your ability to correctly placing your products at the right “price” in the marketplace (economics), or the level of quality and grade of stability achieved in your product portfolio (usually granted by the set of skills you have been able to aggregate in your organization, by attracting talents), etc.
But, when you are facing possible “customers” who are re-shaping the ranking of your values, by prioritizing social, political and “partisan” (support to local economy), aspects that you usually consider more as environmental constraints, either you become able to design new processes and strategically adjust your portfolio to those values (by adapting “your” use cases to match the “ones” targeted by the public institution), or you will find extremely difficult to be successful.
That’s probably one of the main reasons why smaller organizations and start-ups (focused on niche “solutions”) seem to be more “fit” than Tech giants in matching use cases designed on the operational and organizational models through which Public Authorities are traditionally operating.
For sure, these smaller players are more agile, adaptable, but also and foremost, they act “locally”, very often starting from a “system integration” background, which allows them to look at the customer’s use case (what really needs to be done, without the bells & whistles) with a different attitude.
In essence, they are able to focus on the use case at hand, instead of proposing a “one size fits all” interpretation of that use case, which too often does not match at all with the one “on the ground”.
The major drawback of this state of things, is a known issue in the discussion around “smart cities” and lays in the difficulty of scaling up these tailored “solutions” and leveraging on possible economies of scale to make these projects “industrialized” and replicable in other contexts.
Industrialization, replicability and facilitating economies of scale are the fields where, for the benefit of us all, some major ICT players seem to be finally steering their focus.
In fact, as an example, some of the big “Telco” Companies have started building “environments” in which they are actively partnering with these more agile, smaller but innovative organizations, providing them with “reusable” technological components, economical and technical support, guidance on matters like cyber-security, etc, in order to assure that their future solutions are accessible, sometime more visible, but in particular more affordable to public authorities engaged in digital transformation.
But these commendable efforts are not the rule and, in my humble, personal experience, too many Technology organizations have withdrawn from the arena, not being able to keep the promises of miracle profits to their shareholders, justifying these decisions with considerations on a market “not yet mature”, stating the obvious “Oh, you aren’t even ripe yet! I don’t need any sour grapes!“.
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