Tag archives for Government
Is it Time for a Government of National Unity?
Parliament Square last night as the defeat of the EU Exit Withdrawal Agreement was announced (photo: James Kemp) In the UK we're living in divided times, so is it time we had a government of national unity? After last night's defeat of the government's proposed withdrawal agreement it may be time for something different. Labour have tabled a no confidence motion in the government. While it looks likely to fail. However, all it takes is a couple of Conservative or DUP MPs to abstain or rebel and our government will fall. We'll find out later today. Government of National Unity We last had a government of national unity from the early thirties until the end of the second world war. The government was formed of all parties, as was the loyal opposition. The original reason for forming the coalition was…
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Digital Transformation in Government
The purpose of government is to serve its citizens, it should do that as efficiently and effectively as possible. The extent to which any specific government serves its people should depend very much on the needs and wishes of those people. I very much doubt that many people in the UK would disagree with that statement. Almost everyone that I have ever worked with in the public sector holds the first sentence as a core belief. You cannot work effectively for long in public service if you don't. However we seem to have gone astray a little. I think that the reasons for this is rigidity of institutions, exacerbated by thirty years of ideology that the private sector is better than the public sector. The fad for outsourcing on long-term monopoly contracts stifles change. I've seen this first hand in more than one central…
Verify on Gov.UK – a user experience
Verify postcard (image: GDS / Crown Copyright) I had occasion to become a beta user for the Government Digital Service sponsored Verify service (previously known as IDA - Identity Assurance). I'd come across Verify before at work, I spent the first six months of 2014 as the product owner for a digital service that was looking at integrating Verify at a later stage. Right now there are only two accredited providers for Verify, although there are several others building their services for later stages. You have the choice of either Digidentity or Experian. Both of these have been through an accreditation process with GDS. I initially chose Digidentity because I'm in favour of competition and it was less recognisable to most people than Experian is. Digidentity I really liked the way that Digidentity looked, and they had a clear process…
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Guest Blog for Government Digital Service
I was asked to do a guest blog for GDS on my experience as a Service Manager on one of their early service assessments. You can see what I have been doing at work of late, including a screenshot from the passport online appointment booking service and the project's agile kanban board, which I stole the idea for from the Government Digital Service. So here it is - Learning from assessments Related articles Learning from assessments Government leads the way on Online Digital Services. Eh? What??
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Some thoughts on Public vs Private Pay Comparisons
News articles like this are very misleading. One might well report that police officers earn more than McDonalds employees, which is largely what it says. Neither public nor private sector are homogeneous, and there are few jobs that are directly comparable. In general most of the low-skill jobs in the public sector have been contracted out and now exist in the private sector. There are also generally higher levels of qualification in the public sector, meaning that that the balance of job weight is probably different from the private sector. The only way one can scientifically compare wages between the sectors would be to look at those jobs where there is a broad comparison and job weight can be taken into account. This survey doesn't do that, and all it does is falsely scapegoat public sector workers. For the record…