Without risk there can be no innovation. But without innovation there is not no risk

It is fairly well understood - even embraced - in government today that without taking some risk there can be no innovation.

However it's important to keep in mind that the reverse of that statement is not true: without innovation there can be no risk.

Increasingly we're seeing government agencies take at least baby steps into supporting innovation processes and, to a lesser extent, behaviours among their staff - albeit within existing frameworks and constraints that were designed for stability rather than rapid change.

However there' still large and widespread pockets in government where innovation is seen as the enemy of good government. Where change is seen as an imposition on the 'natural order' and an external disruptive force that must be contested (actively or passively), rejected or endured until things return to normal.

What I don't see really grasped in government as yet is that rapid change is the new norm, that in a world where knowledge doubles every seven months and more data is collected each year than in the entire 20th century, that stability is now the riskiest proposition of all.

Yes change can be hard, uncomfortable and exhausting - but is this due to the process or actual change, or the deep-rooted culture, training and beliefs of those public servants who feel challenged, disempowered and exhausted?

We have selected and trained public servants for decades to love consistency and oppose rapid change, so even when they embrace change their subconscious impulses are to reject and resist - no wonder they find change confronting and tiring!

To change the relationship between the public service and innovation - paying lip service will not lead to the deep adaptations necessary to remake agencies as agile, change-ready innovative organisations.

Putting in place rigid (or even semi-elastic) processes and frameworks for innovation will deliver some peripheral benefits, particularly in non-core areas of agencies, but do not rapidly address the root issues agencies face with cultural resistance and inbuilt attitudes and behaviours that make change difficult to introduce, embed and retain.

Many senior public servants now speak about innovation, but their behaviours and attitudes do not match their words, and in many cases 'innovation' is now parroted as the mantra for the year, rather than being embedded in their hearts and minds.

I don't blame them for this, it is standard survival practice in any group for those in status positions to  retain their status by more enthusiastically adopting new fads and trends than those below them. The history of fashion - clothes, cars and toys - demonstrates that being a 'leader' (aka an early and enthusiastic adopter) brings status benefits in any group.

Even counter-cultural trends, think hipsters and contrarians, build status from the fashions of the day, by being the most enthusiastic at adopting the strongest anti-fashion position. In effect they are exalted for being 'an individual', defined as doing the reverse of whatever a fashion entails.

For innovation to become truly embedded in the public sector, for our government agencies to truly become agencies of change, agile and adaptable to a fast-paced world, we require far deeper culture change than the lip service and prototyping we see today.

Future public servants will need to find change a positive force, energizing and exciting - something they choose to engage with every day in order to continually improve how they serve governments and the public.

This cannot be achieved rapidly through a cautious, graduated process of slowly adopting innovative approaches, running a few ideas challenges or creating pockets of innovation (which I have previously called 'ghettos' which are carefully kept at armslength from the majority of agency staff and operations while agencies simultaneously hope they will infect the rest of the agency with their attitudes.

It can't be achieved while the public service retains and preserves the character, attitudes, culture and behaviours it expresses today. To me this also means it cannot be achieved with the majority of today's public sector leadership, who simply don't have the interest or capability to change themselves to embrace innovation and continual change as their core philosophy, in their hearts and minds.

Thus to achieve the real change necessary in the public sector, from 'change' being part of controlled, monitored, bounded projects to being core, business as usual, practice, behaviour and thinking,  there will need to be conflict, controversy, even 'blood in the corridors', where the old guard are largely replaced, rather than 'converted', taking stability mindsets with them.

Many public servants won't find this comfortable. Like most people they see themselves as capable of weathering any change, being adaptable and open to new ideas. Like most people (and I include myself in this), we are limited. We can only bend so far before we break or spring back to the core values we have embraced.

Change, at an individual or organisational level feels hard whenever it contradicts our beliefs, even when it is supported by evidence. The hardness reflect our subconscious fighting back, our mental defenses against a perspective or approach that is contrary to the beliefs we have constructed. We also have blind spots where we cannot see how our behaviour is limited - we see this regularly today in passive sexist and racism, in businesses that fail or are failing but can't see why (like Kodak and Australia Post). These blind spots are how our subconscious keeps us feeling safe, blinkers that hide unpleasant events or options from ourselves, warm safe bubbles got our minds, like offshore asylum seeker centres that allow us to place the pain and plight of unfortunate people out of our sight and thus out of our minds.

We will need public sector leaders who find innovative change less hard, maybe even easy, if we are to truly change agencies to better service a fast changing society. We need staff who have been normalized into an environment where continually change is the norm.

How we get there will involve tough decisions and risk - for without risk we cannot have real innovation.

However if you believe the reverse, that you can avoid risk by not innovating, you are, in my humble opinion, delusional. Stability within a fast changing society exposes organisations to even greater risks than does change.

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Digital skills now essential across most government communications roles

Back in 2009 I predicted that government communications professionals only had about 10 years to gain social media skills or become unemployable.

At the time I received quite a bit of scoffing and pushback from senior communications professionals in government. They believed that digital wouldn't grow very fast and would remain a minor component in agency communications. I was told that I was "overblowing the value of social to government" and that their non-digital skills would remain valued for decades into the future.

I reiterated my prediction in 2014 - giving government communications professionals only five more years and broadening the prediction to digital communications skills.

This time the pushback was a lot less, though I still received comments from a few communications specialists. They told me that digital would remain a specialist area and that there would continue to be places across government for professional communicators who neither touched nor understood digital channels.

Recently I've been speaking with several recruiters in the government communications space and they're telling me my prediction was wrong - the change has happened faster than I had predicted.

They've told me that senior communications roles that don't require an understanding of digital or how to integrate digital with traditional communications channels in strategic ways, are now rare.

While digital specialists are still often grouped together in a specific 'Online' or 'Digital' team as a vertical area in communications, an understanding of digital is essential across all government communications officers - whether senior or junior.

As such I'm now calling it on this prediction - I was right about digital becoming an essential skill for communicators, but wrong about the timeframe, being too conservative in how long it would take agencies to embed digital at the heart of their communications. Rather than ten years, it took seven.

This clears the field for me to make a few new predictions.

For example, how long until other government professionals need to have strong digital skills to remain employable. For example I give HR officers two years, policy officers five years at most.

I also expect to see the slow death of dedicated Digital or Online Communications teams. These teams were originally created because digital was 'foreign' to most communicators. These teams required specialist skills and knowledge and, when originally created, worked at a different tempo to traditional communications teams.

However as digital skills become both universally held and required, Digital communication teams become unwanted bottlenecks, as they are split serving every other Comms team in an agency.

Also these teams remain unusual in that they are organised around a channel (online or digital) rather than around a functional goal - such as Corporate, Campaign or Internal communications. We saw the death of 'Television' and 'Radio' teams decades ago (yes they really existed). Even 'Print Publications' teams have disappeared in many agencies.

Therefore I expect to see the number of Digital communication teams slowly fall over the next ten years. They will be reabsorbed back into functional communications teams who now all possess the skills and knowledge that formerly was the domain of a few. Some specialist 'digital' roles will remain, but these will be connected to function, not channel - such as Engagement, Production, Analytics and Design.

So what does this mean if you are a digital communications specialist in government?

In my view you will have two choices.

Either become a hyperspecialist in a particular area of digital, such as analytics, engagement or crisis management, where specialist skills and experience will continue to be valued. You may end up becoming a freelancer, consultant or contractor, providing your expertise on-demand to agencies and other organisations where needed, or retain a role at a larger agency with limited opportunities for growth without stepping beyond your specialisation.

Or broaden your skills to become a strategic communications generalist, who can work across all communications mediums with a high degree of expertise and skill. These are the people who will be promoted in agencies and attract the best contracting and consulting rates, but there will be fierce competition as communications professionals from backgrounds other than digital compete for the same roles.

Time will tell if my new predictions are accurate, or if these changes occur faster or slower than I expect. What you can be sure of is that the communications landscape will continue to change.

Building skill in new mediums and platforms will not be wasted effort. Whereas standing still in the face of rapid change is always a risky proposition.

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It's time to enter the Intranet & Digital Workplace Awards

I have just been alerted that Step Two's global Intranet & Digital Workplace Awards have just opened for nominations for 2016.

These awards have a long vintage and have recognised a stream of incredible work from companies, public sector agencies and not-for-profits for ten years, formerly with a specific focus on Intranets.

Even if you're not in a position to enter, it's worth checking out previous winners and nominees, who have demonstrated an incredible range of innovation and good practice in their intranet executions.

Nominations close on 10 June this year.

For more information (and to enter) visit www.steptwo.com.au/iia/enter/

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Code for Victoria is looking for nine innovative, inspired, collaborative individuals with digital experience to help transform Victorian government

If you're a talented programmer, designer or user experience lead looking to create change and have an impact on society, it's worth checking out the opportunity currently on offer with Code for Victoria.

The Code for Victoria Innovation Challenge is a new initiative between Code for Australia and the Victorian Government, funded through the Victorian Public Sector Innovation Fund. It brings together talented technologists and government change-makers to work on things that matter across Victorian government.

Three problems or challenges that lend themselves to innovation and open collaboration will be selected from nominations by public servants and agencies across the Victorian public service, based on their complexity, urgency and alignment to government priorities.

Each challenge will have a team of three Code for Australia Fellows (programmer, designer and user experience lead) embedded with the relevant agency to innovate and explore potential solutions for six months.

Code for Australia is now looking for nine talented people to take on these paid Fellowship positions.

If you're looking for an opportunity to expand your ability to influence and impact society, to work 'outside the box' on things that matter and to accelerate your technology career by working on a larger scale and high visibility challenge - apply now for one of these Fellowship positions.

And if you're a Victorian public servant with a problem or challenge that could benefit from an innovative and collaborative approach - nominate your challenge now.

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Senior public servants need counselling, not coddling if they fear to provide frank and fearless advice under the public's gaze

This week several of Australia’s highest ranking public servants, including the Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the head of the Australian Public Service Commission, publicly endorsed the position that Australia’s current Freedom of Information laws were restricting public servants from providing frank and fearless advice to government.

To put this in context, the initial comments from theSecretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet were made on the same day that the Department was hosting civic sector leaders to cocreate the development of actions for improving Australian government transparency.

As an attendee working on the Prime Minister’s Open Government Partnership commitment (read about the OGP day here), it was unsettling and disturbing to hear the Secretary effectively undermine the work of his own excellent team, as well as the Prime Minister’s personal initiative.

The argument from the Secretaries was that public servants are being cowed by public and media scrutiny of advice they provide, and therefore either delivered their advice on potential decisions to government via routes that could not be easily FOIed (such as verbally), or were failing to be as frank and fearless as they should be.

When I worked in the public service and various Freedom of Information Law changes were underway, I did hear other public servants talk about writing less down, to protect themselves, their agency and the government (generally in that order) from the eyes of the public.

Operationally the Secretaries may have a point, some current public servants may fear public disclosure of the advice and input they provide, whether due to fears of embarrassment should the advice be incomplete or poorly considered, or due to the wide, and sometimes extreme, scenarios explored when governments are considering decisions across a broad range of controversial topics.

However this is a poor argument - any fears of embarrassment, exposure or publicity that public servants have are a failure of public sector culture, not a failure of effective governance. There's no evidence that openness has restricted the ability of public servants to give frank and fearless advice - it's only a culture of fear and secrecy that appears to prompt self-censoring behaviours.

Equally claiming that requests from media for information under FOI are a nuisance makes me seriously question the commitment to good governance of any senior public servant making this claim.

In my view any senior public servant espousing that public servants need to be coddled and protected from scrutiny in order to provide the frank and fearless advice expected in their roles needs to be counselled, rather than supported in their cultural groupthink.

The public service works for Australia, serving citizens by way of parliament and has a contractual and moral obligation to provide the best advice it can to the government of the day.

There is no caveat in this obligation for ‘the best advice that doesn’t make a public servant feel embarrassed or uncomfortable’, nor is there a caveat for ‘being inconvenienced’.

Frank and fearless advice can, and should, be given in an open environment. 

The public service should, by default, make its advice public in order to both allow the public to understand the thinking behind why certain decisions are made, or not made, and to provide the scrutiny required to ensure that the public service’s advice to parliament is comprehensive and complete.

It is possible to place systems in place to reduce the FOI burden, something that departments appear to have repeatedly preferred not to do, in favour of making it as hard as possible to identify and request information in order to discourage citizens from daring to question their public sector ‘betters’. Taking an open by default approach, and redesigning systems appropriately, would likely significantly reduce the cost and time currently spent on keeping information unnecessarily hidden.

We live in a time when it is no longer possible for an organisation to hold all the wisdom needed in decision-making. Between limits to the expertise available within an organisation, the lack of time available to busy staff to research emerging innovation ideas, staff at any large organisation will find it hard to provide a comprehensive view of a situation or the available options without external assistance.

With less scrutiny of public sector advice there’s an even lower chance than now (with current restrictions on scrutiny) that the public service will be able to effectively advise government comprehensively, leading inevitably to worse policy outcome.

This is particularly the case when innovative solutions or on-the-ground insights are required.

Nor should frank and fearless advice be career limiting when made public, or for that matter when delivered privately. Shooting the messenger is a human trait and with limited public scrutiny it can be easier for politicians or senior public servants to punish public servants who, in being frank and fearless, step beyond what is considered within an agency or portfolio as ‘acceptable options’.

Concealing decision-making processes in the shadows can easily lead to good and well-evidenced options being buried by ideologues or those who feel these options may not support their public sector empire building.

Of course more openly providing frank and fearless advice can – and will – lead to greater public and media scrutiny. There will be more brickbats than bouquets and the public service will need resilient as it shifts its culture from a fear of embarrassment to embracing public debates that enrich government decision processes.

Given the comments by Secretaries and the leadership of the APSC, such a shift to a bias to open will require a reversal of their attitudes and the culture prevalent at that level.

This culture, a remnant of these individuals’ journeys through the public service over the last twenty to forty years, may have served Australia in the past, but has now become detrimental to an effective future for the Australian Public Service and for Australia as a nation.

It will do Australia no good to have the current crop of Secretaries appoint and promote public servants sharing their views. This will only perpetuate the cultural belief that frank and fearless advice can only be provided in the dark, hidden from the citizens on whose behalf it is being made.

So it appears that for Australia to make a clean break from the ‘protect and coddle public servants’ perspective, to embrace whole-of-society governance, where decisions are made in sunlight, significant guidance and culture change counselling is required for the leadership of Australia's public service.

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