Thinking Digital: Part Three, Agile-ology

Hello!

This post is a special one in that it links Thinking Digital (#tdc15) with the actual topic for this blog, agile!

Whilst there were speakers at the event who brushed on agile and scrum methods, the head of the Government Digital Service held a joint presentation on how they've updated the entire government digital system to be a fully accessible interactive platform.

Russell Davies (@undermanager) is a self proclaimed GDS Jedi with a background in advertising agencies working for clients such as Nike, Apple and Honda, including that Honda advert.

He is currently Director of Strategy at the Government Digital Service - working out how a Digital Government integrates its products, services and marketing - thinking beyond government as a website and figuring out how we deliver Government As A Platform.

Davies starts with a simple statement, 'The strategy is delivery'. The product required was a platform for the Government Digital Service and with Gov.uk they built a platform for publishing that has over 12 million users every week. The platform built to confirm identity has 19,000 authentications per week alone.

As the civil service is under constant scrutiny the team must prove the value of the new digital services. Davies believes the team is already achieving this. With the creation of the digital marketplace of skills government vendors can be sourced more efficiently from local sources. Removing the London-centric bias of the civil service will take many years but by moving services to a neutral online location goes a long way to help this. The implementation of the new digital platform may cause some stress but it will save billions.

Now that they've justified the case to build to stakeholders the team have embraced an agile concept. ‘No innovation until everything works’. The Gov.uk website is boring, by choice. The team would rather have a fully functioning product that can achieve all basic functions required by the users is far more desirable than an impressive but heavily niched site. The Gov.uk team ensures full functionality of a feature before moving on to something else, essentially the function must be signed off as 'done done' by all stakeholders, something critical for a government website.

Ensuring that the new functions are supported is incredibly important, Davies brings up how many cash machines are having to have costly patches added to them as they cannot upgrade past the no-longer supported Windows XP. This is not acceptable for a state website and as a result they have developed core principles to ensure this kind of situation never befalls them.

In keeping with these principles the Government Digital Service has made the surprising choice to actually make all their code open source on GitHub, perfect if you decide you need to start your own country and require a complete digital service solution...

This openness is important in agile, becoming transparent and quick to act allows quick change and more honesty, something that can only improve perceptions of not only governments but business too.

The team behind Gov.uk strain to have user centric design, and whilst it may appear boring, boring is fantastic. Boring works, boring is simple and boring allows users to understand a system fully.

Ade Adewunmi works alongside Davies and is the driving force to push Government as a Platform. Adewunmi is central to GDS’s emergent strategy approach: that only by prototyping is it possible to create digital products and services in a way that matches the realities of delivery. And that just like digital services, strategies need to be iterated. She believes that the best way to get results is Revolution, not evolution.

Before we start worrying about revolutionaries in the heart of the digital government wanting to start a new world order, Ade refers to revolution in the way she aims to push new processes. Revolution describes the rapid culture change needed, rather than slowly move a tanker around to reach a destination, blow it up and use a nippy speedboat to get there!

That's not to say evolution has no place, as obviously agile as a method relies on the constant revision and improvement of a core, the evolutionary process helps test features and refine the culture however upheaval may be required to ensure buy in.

The Gov.uk team has:

• Delivered a lot
• Learned a lot
• Changed a lot

By focusing on the user journey the team has built a new system, it was rigid where it had to be and flexible where it allowed. The user's journey, from end to end was reviewed constantly by researchers who helped inform the development team what worked and what would not. By opening the system and ensuring open standards, the team had flexibility with an added consistency across each project. This was critical for a large scale, multi stakeholder service development.

This links on to the roadmap, by being completely open in practices with stakeholders the team has delivered everything required and everyone is aware of how. Stakeholders and usability are core to this, with the teams not allowed to move on to mobile apps or cool interesting features until the core system works fully.

Under Adewunmi there have been core open standards which have worked when:

• They are made clear and responsive
• Support us provided and the standards enforced

How does Adewunmi see the future? Government as a platform

The Government Digital Service will strive to ensure everything they build is a service or platform, not just a website.

As a parting piece of guidance Ade tells us to ask ourselves some questions whenever we build something;

• What are you building?
• Why?
• How can it be improved?

The story of the GDS is inspiring and shows what can be done with agile, whilst also offering practical advice to ensure you get the most from your agile projects. A fantastic talk by two great speakers, and an excellent session at Thinking Digital.

Thanks for reading!

AT