Disclaimer
Estimated read time: 3 minutes
OECD Digital Government Reviews are carried out using in-country interviews, organisational surveys, peer insights, dedicated frameworks (for governance, skills, service design and delivery, and data), and the comparative data drawn from the relevant parts of the OECD Digital Government Index. Those materials provide a reliable and holistic structure for considering the breadth of elements that support governments in achieving greater digital maturity.
Throughout this exercise I am imagining the sort of observations that an OECD Digital Government Review might make. To do this I am not in a position to draw on the extensive interviews, surveys and comparative data which the OECD team would access in carrying out a similar exercise. Another difference is that what is included below is not influenced by the diplomatic niceties that may from time to time be required. I am not going out of my way to be critical but I may be more direct than these papers usually are.
I recognise that I have not worked directly inside the UK government since 2018 and that these are my own observations. The scope of this is the UK but not a consideration of the devolved experience in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is also focused on the central government experience, even though many of these challenges must necessarily involve actors from other sectors (whether health, education, local, policing, etc). Some of these opinions might be better informed than others but all of them are my own, and my own only, so where I am drawing the wrong conclusion or making the wrong point I look forward to being corrected. Some of that might be subjectively wrong, some of it objectively so – in either event while these may be strong opinions, they are loosely held so please educate me, and share excellent examples where existing strategy and practice are demonstrably having a fantastic impact that I am unaware of and have overlooked.
Since I wrote this, the UK government has published two significant documents: the State of Digital Government Review and the Blueprint for Modern Digital Government. These reports, are naturally more authoritative in providing a detailed assessment and fleshing out elements of a roadmap. They benefit from extensive data collection, interviews, and analysis, offering a ‘proper’ and authoritative perspective on the state of digital government in the UK.
I am not going to revisit and revise my work here in light of these. We naturally cover similar ground but I think that’s OK. My reflections, brought together before I returned to work in government are a snapshot of my experiences and observations. They are not a formal review but an opinion piece helping me to reflect on what we might learn from the past.