An summary of some recent post on the UK E-Democracy network

May 31, 2008

In government circles we have long been expected to follow Prince 2 project management principles and define what we were expecting to achieve before we set out. In central government ‘gateway reviews’ are supposed to be de facto prior to spending the bulk of the project monies. Then at the end, some sort of post-project review is supposed to be carried out to present the success or otherwise and any lessons learned etc…

I think perhaps first of all we need to know what the great British public expect of e-Democracy or even Democracy and attempt to champion that.

As with everything e-, there is an assumption that it will be used, is cheaper and better.

Where is the evidence? OK, I can contact my local councillor by email, it doesn’t mean that the answer is any better than if I’d waited to a response to a voicemail or letter, they’ll still be waiting on a response from a council worker. What it might mean is that I’ve jumped the queue on the person without access to email.

As I’ve stated before there is great potential for improving services, including the democratic ones but fundamentally it’s the process behind it, and it has to recognise that some will never be able to use it and that shouldn’t reduce their chances of being heard.

Rather than assumptions, I’d like to see more evidence from this country (cultures and systems vary, along with connectivity). This includes more ‘measured’ pilots.

What I do think is missing is any review (post-implementation review, lessons learned etc) that might guide those still trying to steer the little e-ships.

If X could say we did Y and it didn’t work, so try Z. If we had clear case studies that weren’t value laden…etc

Trying to coax councillors into believing that e- is worth it is hard. Trying to get their electorate to accept the expenditure is equally hard. It can only be supported by successful pilots.

I suspected at the end of the e-Government Unit that much documentation would vapourise, so saved what I wanted for research purposes then. The post BVPI157 review appears to have been: “well done, you all did it, cheers, goodbye!

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Systems thinking, control charts and philosophy

May 30, 2008

Spent an interesting few hours on the 29th May at a meeting of the ‘north of england transformation network’ meeting in Brighouse, West Yorkshire – www.net2.org.uk – thanks for the invite, folks!

Bizarrely, the talk by Dr Mark Wilcox entitled ‘Predicting performance – our debt to Shewhart’ was a fascinating journey through the sources of thought in both Shewart and Deming and brought up Heraclitus who I mentioned in an earlier item. Mark was relating the link with the philosophical school of Pragmatism, popular in the USA in the early 20th century, along with A.N.Whitehead. It appears that both Shewhart and Deming had read C.I.Lewis’s book ‘Mind and the World Order‘ on multiple occasions. Since Shewart was originator of the control chart, which is a fundamental aspect of systems thinking, hearing the part various other authors helped to play in its development demonstrated to me how it all came together and was still developing.

I also tested out my theory, that dissatisfaction would make a suitable metric for customer service in local government despite my inability to express it as a variation, without any serious disputes with some of the other attendees.

Perhaps some things are becoming clearer to me, if they weren’t before?

  • Those seeking to improve services before, since and during the e-government era, continue to do so!
  • Whilst seeing better ways of doing things, they might have failed to join up in a crusade against the promoters of targets (in practice) but are able to be joined up quite nicely around the theory.

Why I’m taken with this is that the promoters of lean thought argue for the sorting out of processes initially with the customer involved, then we do the IT stuff!

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Initial feedback to Great E-mancipator survey 1/2008

May 20, 2008

How the service channels are being recorded currently

Above is a chart representing the answers to questions to the first four questions of my survey by the 20 respondents so far. (But, as Dave Briggs on the E-Democracy discussion group has found out, many interested people behind local government firewalls may not be permitted to view the survey, or might not have even got the email!)

There was a great deal of qualitative comment about NI14, the possible use of ‘satisfaction’ as a measure and related matters and few of those responding so far appear to have got a solution to doing NI14, as I suspect is a majority case.

This is all providing material for my papers and dissertation, so thank you all! Hopefully, this may indicate a way forward to developing multi-channel public services that the public appreciate.

 

 

 

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Targets, metrics and dissatisfaction

May 17, 2008

I have recently held an email converstaion with an experienced government auditor who stated that -

Business process improvement methodologies (Lean, Six Sigma) are heavily reliant on metrics / measures. 

Unfortunately, the data councils collect for their performance indicators is usually not adequate not robust enough for meaningful improvement initiatives. This is because:

·        it is reported to the government and to regulators and this leads to ‘gaming’ behaviours

·        it is centrally imposed and does not aid local management

·        the data is manipulated and averaged so the ‘voice of the process’ cannot be seen

 
There is little understanding of the theory of variation and its importance in process improvement. Most councils’ performance compare 2 or 3 points in a chart and conclude that things are getting better or getting worse – this is flawed as you are probably aware.

My response was that during my literature review I came to a conclusion that fits nicely with lean but not well with PI’s, KPI’s etc that disatisfaction was the true ‘measure’. This was because the very personal nature of responses to things on a rikert scale are subjective, as is satisfaction as a whole, but if one can get people to tick a box that they are dissatisfied and explain why they are, you are gaining the ‘voice’ response rather than the ‘exit’ one employed in Hirschman in his development of game theory around East German politics. I’ve no proof that this is true. but the work that rol have done with GovMetric in using a slightly broader brush of satisfied/neither/dissatisfied should provide some guidance (and I am in touch with them, although my council is currently not a user of anything).

My proposal, which is really of no benefit as a government metric, unless one counts the numbers and compare them with the whole, does tend to get around some of the issues mentioned. It can also help assist channel migration in the context that the same reporting factor needs to be used across all channels and identify any particular failures in channels i.e. ‘phone system failures, too complex web site, stroppy reception etc.

 

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Posted by greatemancipator

Channel migration

May 12, 2008

David

That’s part of what I’m trying to find out but I believe that without metrics and feedback we don’t know how its working or how successfully!

So far, I’ve had about twenty great responses to the survey, which I’ll summarise in due course. However, more responses are really welcome, even if its only to give me some idea of what ISN’T being done!

Mick

 

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