Where have all the senior public servants disappeared to?

I've been attending a number of networking and other business events in the last month across Canberra, and have noticed that amongst all the CEOs, CTOs, Financial Directors and similar, that there's been no senior public servants in attendance.

While there was a good turn-out of public servants at one event I've attended, the Life beyond Lanyards launch last week, these were mid-level or lower.

So I'm beginning to wonder about how much actual cross-fertilization is going on between senior public servants and the private sector, how much senior public servants are getting 'out there' to meet and interact meaningfully with business owners.

Of course this is one person's impression over a short time period at a limited number of events, but when I think back over the last ten years, it's rare for senior public servants to spend much time with their colleagues in the corporate sector.

Definitely there's arranged events, speaking at conferences, attending lunch seminars and the like, but as soon as their part is done, senior public servants tend to race back to the office rather than shoot the breeze with their private sector equivalents, to discuss broader issues and topics.

Of course they have good reason - senior public servants are incredibly busy meeting their commitments to Ministers, managing their organisations and keeping work flowing through approvals and initiating work programs.

The culture of Australia's public service, for the most part, involves dedicated and hard work in service of the government of the day, in order to serve the citizens of the country.

However I think that sometimes working on their business is as important as working in their business. This is something that good corporate executives and small business people alike learn - that networking to form relationships, that consulting and learning from colleagues across other industries, is a key to improving their own organisations and achieving success.

This is a key ingredient in innovation - associating with people from many walks of life, rather than simply with one's one public sector colleagues.

Successive Australian governments have recognised the value of this cross-fertilisation, and the APS has also fostered bringing private sector people into senior government roles as a way to foster a broadening of attitudes, rather than the 'groupthink' that can emerge from any group of people with similar backgrounds, career paths, values and experience.

This has had mixed success in my view, many people with extensive private sector but without public sector experience don't last that long in SES roles, due to the level of difference in approach and views.

The current fledgling program of seconding senior public servants into the private sector is another attempt at achieving the same end - bringing a broader set of viewpoints and experience (as well as larger and more complex networks) back into the public sector, thereby improving the effectiveness of policy design and delivery and fostering innovation.

I hope this works well - but I don't believe either of the above are the full solution to this wicked problem.

What we need is for senior public servants to be mandated and supported to recognise that building deep relationships across and understanding of the sectors they serve is a valid and important part of dedicated public service.

This means delegating more tasks and approval authority downwards to leave senior public servants with time, and the mandate, to spend less time checking grammar and more time associating with groups and individuals outside of government.

Who knows, it could even help foster the external credibility of government.

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Does Canberra already face a shortage of experienced government ICT executives?

The Mandarin reports that six significant federal agencies are currently seeking permanent Chief Information Officers, while both the ACT government and the Federal government's Digital Transition Office recently resorted to overseas hires to fill senior leadership roles requiring strong digital backgrounds.

Does this signify a shortage of senior digital and ICT talent in Australia (or at least of talent willing to work for government)?

Or is it merely a timing issue, representing a temporary hiccup in the supply of appropriately skilled executives?

While I'm sure the current shortage will be managed, it is worth considering in the light of Australia's declining number of ICT graduates, which represents a future challenge for both government and the private sector in attracting the best talent for future ICT and digital roles.

While increasingly Australia is off-shoring ICT work, or is able to buy in foreign digital services and talent, this disguises a deeper concern - that there may not be sufficient ICT and digitally trained and experienced locals in the future able to step into senior strategic roles.

If many entry and mid-level programming and digital positions are outsourced to overseas specialists, Australia won't be providing enough locals with appropriate career paths towards senior roles to support the talent development we need as a nation.

Now this isn't a new issue, the ICT industry has been shouting about it from the rooftops for at least the last three years.

However the ICT industry doesn't have the lobbying power in Canberra of other groups, from doctors to miners, and with most of Australia's senior politicians being digital immigrants at best, there's limited recognition of the scale of the issue or what positive steps can be taken to address it.

As society grows increasingly digital, the lack of strategic talent available for business and government is likely to become a significant drag on our economy and governance capability, placing us at a relative disadvantage against countries with a good talent pipeline and positive digital policies.

So while agencies are searching for those senior ICT executives they need today, they should consider how they can future-proof their talent pipelines into the future.

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If you want to see the impact of poor user interface design, look no further than Canberra's parking meters

User interface design (or UX design) has been a buzz term for several years in government, with agencies spending significant money on ensuring their services and processes are easy for the broadest range of citizens to access and complete.

This is a good thing too - It makes good economic, reputational and even health sense to make it easy and fast for citizens to interact with government, reducing mistakes, stress and negative impressions.

Complex and difficult to user interfaces have higher error rates, resulting in frustrated and sometimes out-of-pocket citizens, extra costs for government and often a loss of trust and respect in the service outcomes and agencies responsible.

Anyone who still doesn't understand the value to both government and citizens need go no further to witness the issues poor interfaces and processes cause than Canberra's parking lots, where the current crop of parking meters are creating all kinds of problems for citizens.

For example the current parking meters in the Wilson-run car park on London Circuit follow a process that is both complex and invasive for customers, greatly increasing the time required to conduct one of the simplest tasks a citizen has to perform, renting a parking spot.

Firstly the machines have an unnecessarily complex interface, with six buttons, several unmarked, one each red and green and the other four all yellow. Little stickers have been manually attached to several of the buttons to explain their functions, although several of the yellow buttons are used for multiple purposes at different stages of purchasing a ticket and different times of day. Most have two name tags, one at top, one at bottom. Some of these tags were faded and hard to read, so would presumably need to be replaced regularly, adding unnecessary effort to the process of maintaining the machines and increasing the risk of errors by parkers.

The many buttons on Wilson parking machines in Canberra

Secondly the process to pay for a parking spot isn't as well explained or as easy as it could be. The machine first asks for a person's payment method (coins or card) and then requires entry of the car's license plate via a touch screen (so why buttons you may also ask).

Now, I don't know about everyone, but many people I know, including myself, haven't memorised our car license plates. It's never used as a form of personal identification and only rarely are people required to use it, usually when organising to service their car (and after the first service, normally a mobile number or name is sufficient for a mechanic). 

There's no benefit to the user to providing this license plate information - only to Wilsons, who I presume use it to prevent people ticket sharing if they leave a spot early, so they can profiteer by re-renting an already paid-up parking spot (which could be considered unethical profiteering, but is one of the techniques used to maximise profits in car parks).

Enter License Plate to begin (the second screen, so not the beginning!)

There's also no signage in the car park, at the entrance or at the machine, to indicate to someone entering the car park, or waiting in line to buy a ticket, that they need to have this information at their fingertips. A parker new to the car park only finds out they need to have memorised their license plate when they reach this specific screen in the process - and they can't proceed any further without entering it.

The number and placement of machines in the car park can mean up to about a 50m walk back to your car to check, meaning a 100m round trip to retrieve this information. If there's a queue for tickets, common at peak times, this can make the ticket purchase process a 15 minute or longer process - intensely frustrating for busy professionals on their way to a meeting (speaking from personal experience).

Once past this screen the process was a little simpler, if followed precisely. The screen told me which yellow buttons to press (although I had to recognise that 'Select Earlybird' meant press the button which was marked as both 'Card' and 'E/Bird'), it took my coins quickly and efficiently dispensed my ticket.

Unfortunately the process wasn't as seamless for people ahead of me in the line who were using credit cards. Often the machine took three or more goes to recognise the card as valid and, once it had, it took on average 135 seconds to approve each transaction (I timed this). 

For credit card users, if you knew your license plate number (as regulars would learn to do), the entire process took approximately 3.5 to 4 minutes to complete, most of it spent choosing the right yellow buttons and waiting for credit card approval. At this rate each machine could service 15-20 people per hour. Cutting a minute off the credit card approval process would allow the machine to service 25-30 people per hour, This is up to a 100% increase in speed, resulting in less stressed customers, better patronage and more revenue for the car park.

Most of Canberra's public car parks have ACT government parking machines. These are different to Wilson's and have a slightly better interface - although they don't allow coin payments. 

Having used them frequently I'm not as able to look at them with unfamiliar eyes, however they provide better onscreen instructions to step people through the necessary steps, although I've witnessed people struggling to understand the '+' and '-' buttons for increasing or decreasing the parking time, with many people just paying the full amount rather than selecting a time period.

These machines don't require a license number, and don't have unnecessary buttons, so the overall impression is of a simpler process.

However these machines suffer from a similar issue to the Wilson machines for the credit card approval process, which takes a relatively long time for card approvals. While I appreciate this might be due to dialing into the bank each time, it does mean that at peak times there can be a long line of people standing and waiting for their turn, resulting in more stressed customers and potentially reductions in revenue.

I've also witnessed situations where there's insufficient room to queue safely for these machines, with people required to wait in a queue that snakes into the roads within the car park, where they and cars must dodge each other. This presents an increased risk of an accident, where a pedestrian is harmed by a car attempting to find a car spot, potentially increasing the legal risks to the ACT government.

Now these ACT government car parks do allow people to pay for their parking online, removing the queuing and waiting at the car park, when people may be rushed for time. This option is not well explained on the machines in the car parks, which is a shame as it could cut queues as people waiting could simply go online to pay. 

Incidentally I find this a very handy trick at Hoyts to avoid some of the really long queues for movies - despite their ridiculous surcharge on online purchases, when nudge theory suggests they should charge less for online purchases (including from the Candy Bar) to prompt greater take-up and reduce physical queues and staff time.

However I've heard and read many reports of people who have found online payment for car parking a frustrating process as, once parked, parking inspectors often give tickets to people who aren't displaying a parking ticket. This has even received media coverage. 

As a result I've not tried this process and likely won't try it until the ACT government makes it clear (on parking meters and via it's own media channels) that the online option is working correctly.

This issue seems to be purely a training and change management one, with parking inspectors needing some adjustment of their behaviour through training and support to ensure they check the online system before issuing tickets.

Tens of thousands of public servants use Canberra's parking machines regularly, and have likely noticed issues and possibly even expressed frustration with the user interface and process. Many would have adjusted their own behaviours to deal with the foibles of the systems - arriving a few minutes earlier to allow for credit card purchase approval time, memorised their license plate number and learnt the right sequence of button presses to achieve the outcome they need daily.

All of them should consider the user interface and process, reflecting on their own experience. How could it be made simpler and easier, particularly for parkers who don't use the parking every day?

Then take that thinking and reflect on the user interfaces and processes they create and administer within government. How could they be made simpler and easier for citizens and for public servants, while reducing the error rate and cost to government?

What is the impact of any poor design within their own systems - both to citizens and government? And what value could be delivered, and behaviours adjusted positively, by improving the user interface design?

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We could resolve the electoral donations dilemma with a little digital thinking

One of the significant news stories in Australia this week is the revelation that Bill Shorten failed to correctly disclose a $40,000 electoral donation in a timely manner - breaching parliamentary requirements.

This is far from the first time a politician has done this, with repeated errors in declaring donations an ongoing issue for both major parties in Australian politics, and even affecting several minor parties and independents.

This has been called a crisis of trust, and one result has been calls for full public funding of elections - an approach that has been tried to some degree in a few other jurisdictions around the world.

Where full or near-full public funding has been attempted it has faced both legal controversies and difficulties in finding a formula that effectively funds established parties without closing the door on new electoral entrants or unfairly benefiting incumbent governments.

Australia already has partial public funding for elections, paid on a per vote basis. At the last election in September 2013 a total of $58.1 million was paid out, on the basis of $2.49 per first preference vote for candidates receiving at least 4% of the primary vote.

This 'flat rate' isn't necessarily a perfect solution either - it doesn't take into account the size of some of Australia's electorates (from Wentworth at 30 square km to Durack at 1,587,758 square km), or the significant differences in the number of voters per electorate (from 62,917 in Lingiari to Fraser with 143,564 voters). It is also open to manipulation by governments or major parties, as the amount per vote, or the threshold for payment, can be altered through legislation passed by a majority in both houses of parliament.

There's also other flaws with Australia's electoral donations laws, with donations often declared publicly through the Australian Electoral Commission 12 months or more after they are donated - often well after the election that the donors may be seeking to influence - leaving voters unable to consider the donations in the context of how they choose to vote.

Electoral donations are also often an area of contention for Australian state, territory and local governments, with varying laws in each jurisdiction, often modified by governments to suit their electoral needs. In particular NSW recently had over 10 Liberal MPs resign the party and several resign parliament due to irregularities as to who they received donations from, or roughly 25% of sitting members in their previous Liberal government.

There's also been cases of parties moving money between states or to and from their federal parties in order to evade stricter electoral declaration rules, and other kinds of shenanigans with the system between funds donated to individual politicians and to their parties.

It seems to me that a little digital thinking could resolve a large proportion of the issues with Australia's donation system, both ensuring donations are recorded and allocated appropriately and declared rapidly to the public.

Why not build a central donations website for collecting and declaring electoral donations for all parties.

The site, potentially called the Australian Electoral Donations System  (or AEDS for those who love acronyms), could provide a single electronic gateway for individuals of any political belief to donate funds from their bank account, credit card, paypal or other account to the candidate(s) and party(ies) of their choice. Every donation could be electronically transferred to the correct recipient and declared in real time as the electronic transfer occurs.

The AEDS could support both personal and corporate donations, including cash donations at events and gold coin donations, through becoming the official way of issuing tax receipts for all donations, making it unacceptable to simply hand candidates 'brown bags' of undeclared cash (a form of donation that is already illegal but hard to trace).

For easy event management, attendee management and an auction component could be built into the AEDS and a mobile app or web service used for recording donations (and attendance) at electoral events - mitigating the current issues with tracking and identifying donations through vehicles like Joe Hockey's 'North Shore Forum'.

It would become far easier for the public to see who has donated what to which parties - on a near-real-time basis, and the Australian Electoral Commission would be able to detect issues much faster - particularly where declared party income and expenditures don't match up. The AEDS may also help the Tax office to track the movement of funds and following up to verify that individuals and organisations are reporting their earnings and expenditures correctly, and even support police in identifying criminal activities linked to donations.

Done right this central donations website could even turn a profit - by taking a percentage of every donation towards its operating costs. Given that $10 million or more is given each year in donations to the federal parties (and that's only counting donations over the current $12,500 donation level), a 10% processing charge for using the AEDS could more than cover the ongoing costs of the service. This could be potentially a much lower charge when considering all the smaller donations (from $2 to $12,499) made at federal level and all of the donations to state and local politicians and parties.

The AEDS could be set-up as a start-up and run as an independent body - or even become a listed entity on the stock market (possibly expanding into offering similar electoral donations systems for other nations).

At worst case, the AEDS could be run under the auspices (or with board oversight) of the Australian Electoral Commission - though given their struggles to update their own technology I doubt the organisation has appropriate management to operate such a significant system.

Of course it would be a crazy entrepreneur to set up such a system without agreement and legislation by government, so the first step must be taken by parliament to recognise that the current electoral donation system is destroying trust and damaging the legitimacy of government - creating a strong perception, if not a reality, that our politicians are, if not for sale, at least for rent by the largest donors - be they corporations or organised crime.

Would our parliament countenance such a move?

I hope so. Removing the difficulty of managing electoral donations from parties, and the embarrassment politicians face when someone in their office forgets or incorrectly declares a donation, or they accidentally take money from an illegal donor, this type of independently-run electoral donation system would both make the lives of politicians easier and reduce their stress levels, while potentially lengthening their careers.

I've thought a great deal about how this system could work, and the problems it may face, so if anyone in government wants to discuss the idea further, drop me a line.

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No it's a not appropriate to load test on your citizens in production - particularly when it's a critical service

The last week has seen a range of major issues for the Australian Government's new MyTax service.

As reported across both traditional and social media, people using MyTax to file their tax returns have experienced shut-outs, had the process freeze when they were almost complete and had it fail to autofill their pre-saved details.

MyTax is an online version of the eTax software which had been the primary way for people to digitally complete their tax returns for the last fifteen years. eTax improved year on year and had enormous take-up. In all respects it was a major success for the ATO.

This is the first year the Australian Tax Office has deployed the MyTax system and integrated it with MyGov. While the intention was, and is, good - to give Australians a single way to validate themselves with multiple government agencies - the implementation in this case hasn't withstood the real world.

This isn't a unique experience and it isn't limited to government. We've seen it with certain banking services, with retailers (particularly on a certain contrived Australian online shopping day each year), with A-grade games (such as SimCity) and with a range of other online services such as Apple maps.

In fact this issue is relatively rare, in comparison to the private sector, in government, with the last major issue of this type internationally being with healthcare.gov in the US, and the last I recall in Australia being with the MySchools site launch.

This type of issue will happen from time to time. Unforeseen bugs or network issues, denial of service attacks or other environmental issues can bring down even the most robust service, particularly at launch.

In every one of these cases there's a backlash from customers - and in every one of these cases the organisation responsible is judged based on how they manage and recover from the disaster.

In the MyTax case, while the ATO were probably aware of the risks, and may even have learnt some lessons from several of the issues highlighted above, it appears they're still struggling to manage and recover from the situation.

When asked about the siituation the CIO of the ATO, Jane King, wrote, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, that "Capacity planning and testing was completed as part of the rolling out of the new digital design, however due to the complexity of our environment, production is always the real test."

I read this as her saying that while they did conduct testing, they were actually relying on real citizens, at real tax time, to fully evaluate how the MyTax system would perform.

Just as the UTS professor John Leaney, quoted in the SMH article above, says - this type of statement just isn't good enough.

"We're not in the 1950s; we're not even in 1990s, we've learnt a lot and from what we've learnt we apply the techniques for proper capacity modelling," Leaney said. "There should have been much better testing; it's not something you should learn the hard way on a major government system."

The ATO needs to do better at risk planning around situations like this. It needs to test capability properly and not hide behind the 'too many users' defense.

Government agencies need to carefully watch and learn from this experience - and learn the right lessons.

The first lesson is to conduct appropriate capacity testing. Look at the ABS's implementation of eCensus and the level of testing and resilience it put in place the first time eCensus was used in 2006. The ABS gave a great presentation on the topic, which I attended, which highlighted the risk mitigation steps they'd taken - from capacity testing through to multiple redundant systems and real-time monitoring with developers on standby and fallback manual systems in place.

The second lesson is to not release major systems at a time when they are going to come under a huge load. Release a new tax system in February or March, or after tax time in October, giving time to shakeout the production system and address issues before it hits peak load.

The third lesson is to avoid releasing major systems. Instead release smaller, but useful, services and progressively integrate them into a major new service, testing each carefully as they go. This is how Facebook totally replaced its back-end without any disruption to people's use of the service - modularly upgrading aspects of the service until it was completely done.

The final lesson is to plan your recovery before your system fails. Design a failover plan for what happens if the system doesn't work for people, a manual solution if required. The ATO should direct anyone with issues to a hotline where they can complete their tax return over the phone, or via screen sharing, so no-one is left waiting for days or in a position of financial distress due to not receiving a tax return fast.

I feel for the ATO (particularly their ICT team) and don't blame them for the issues they're having with MyTax, however I do hold the agency responsible for how the ATO recovers from this disaster.

They need to stop defending their implementation of MyTax and focus on ways to meet citizen needs - even outside the MyTax system - to ensure that the 'tax returns get through'.

Otherwise this issue could turn into another Apple maps-style disaster, or even worse, as there's no 'competitor' to the ATO that citizens can turn to to complete their tax returns. At least, not yet...

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