[kictanet] go.ke "Digital Duo"... Some Gov.UK. plans

[S.M. Muraya]

*@PresidentKE ... The "Digital Duo" is working hard on delivering
electricity but  subsidies for "URBAN" power connections are no more. *

*More electricity, more connectivity, more online content exposing fraud,
increasing intelligence to improve service delivery in every ward.*

*More transparency needed to **build up and contract, decent local talent. *


http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450401508/Interview-Kevin-Cunnington-director-general-Government-Digital-Service

*Interview: Kevin Cunnington, director general, Government Digital Service *

Bryan Glick | Editor in chief

21 Oct 2016 16:45

*The government’s new digital chief talks about his plans for the future
and the challenges of transforming public services*

On the wall behind Kevin Cunnington, a poster proclaims: “The challenge is
service transformation. Not website redesign.”

[image: Inline image 1]

The Government Digital Service (GDS), of which Cunnington became director
general in a controversial appointment over the summer of 2016
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450301575/DWP-director-Kevin-Cunnington-set-to-take-over-as-new-head-of-Government-Digital-Service>,
has long been fond of its motivational posters. On either side of its new
chief are two others – “Show the thing” and “Be bold”, they state.

In many respects, those three statements represent the three ages of GDS.
Under its inaugural leader, Mike Bracken, it was all about “showing the
thing” – a plan to redevelop 20 high-profile government transactions as new
digital services
<http://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Computer-Weekly-Editors-Blog/Would-GDS-like-to-airbrush-rural-payments-out-of-its-digital-exemplar-history>,
thereby demonstrating the potential of “digital” to improve public services.

Bracken left in September 2015
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500251662/Interview-Government-digital-chief-Mike-Bracken-why-I-quit>,
with some Whitehall departments seething at what they saw as an attempt by
the centre to dictate to them, embodied in Bracken being unafraid,
sometimes aggressively, to tackle entrenched interests – the “mandarin-led
lands” as he called them.

His supporters will say such an approach was absolutely necessary, and
fully endorsed by his boss, then Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude
<http://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Computer-Weekly-Editors-Blog/Even-GDS-creator-Francis-Maude-is-worried-about-future-of-GDS>,
himself happy to bang a few heads together to bring about change.

Bracken’s successor, Stephen Foreshew-Cain
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450301616/Stephen-Foreshew-Cain-confirms-he-is-leaving-GDS>,
brought a more conciliatory approach – “We’ve got your back,” he would say.

One of his closest lieutenants, Janet Hughes, coined the phrase “Be bold”
in a blog post
<https://medium.com/public-innovators-network/what-if-boldness-were-an-explicit-value-of-the-civil-service-3df6a3d2d008#.n5soidigg>
exhorting
the civil service to be braver and take more risks – with a clear subtext
that “bold” implied “digital”. Hughes followed Foreshew-Cain out of the door
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450302605/GDS-loses-another-senior-exec-with-departure-of-Govuk-Verifys-Janet-Hughes>
soon
after Cunnington took over.

Now, if there’s one, lingering criticism of GDS that Cunnington needs to
address, it’s the perception that it’s nothing more than a bunch of website
developers with little understanding of the complexity of big government IT.

He came into the role having led the business transformation function for
the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240235159/CIO-interview-Kevin-Cunnington-director-general-of-digital-transformation-DWP>.
His GDS tenure, therefore, will stand or fall on his ability to genuinely
transform how public services are delivered.

“Our mission statement is transforming the relationship between citizen and
state, and that sounds good,” he told journalists in his first meeting with
the press since taking over.

Cunnington’s aim is to focus GDS around what it can achieve by the end of
this Parliament in 2020.

“What I’m trying to create is a narrative where the Cabinet Office minister
[Ben Gummer] can say to people that Britain will be very different in 2020
because we’ll be a much more digital government,” he said at the meeting.

“What could the prime minister say in 2020 about how UK life or the
interaction between a UK citizen and the state would have transformed that
relationship?”

*“Our mission statement is transforming the relationship between citizen
and state”*
*Kevin Cunnington, GDS*

He says the core focus for GDS remains around the three major programmes
that attracted a £450m budget award
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500258241/GDS-aims-for-35bn-savings-using-its-450m-budget>
in
the spending round in November 2015.

The new chief’s initial task is producing a new plan for GDS – dubbed the
government digital transformation strategy
<http://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Computer-Weekly-Editors-Blog/The-all-new-GDS-under-Kevin-Cunnington-starts-here>.
The question everyone around the Whitehall digital community is asking is,
how different will it be to what has gone before? In terms of what GDS is
expected to deliver, the answer, according to Cunnington, is not very.

These are: Common Technology Services (CTS), a programme to roll out new
technology for civil servants and support the exit of the many big
outsourcing deals due to expire by 2020; government as a platform
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500273435/Single-departmental-plans-affirm-commitment-to-GaaP>,
developing common services for use across Whitehall, in particular for
payments
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500255549/GDS-payments-platform-Govuk-Pay-to-start-taking-real-payments>
 and status notifications
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450301079/Govuk-Notify-notifications-system-starts-to-be-used-for-live-digital-services>;
and Gov.uk Verify, the identity assurance service
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450296664/Govuk-Verify-to-go-live-24-May-2016>
that
is proving to be complex and controversial.

*We need to do more*

“All of those big three programmes have business cases associated with
them,” says Cunnington.

“I’m not planning on stopping anything we’re doing today. We said pretty
clearly that the stuff we’ve been doing has been right. But as part of
recognising GDS is transforming government, we need to do a bit more – so
we do more, not less, going forward.”

“More” means the sometimes nebulous concept of transformation. “Getting
into the transformation game [is something] that we still need to set some
targets for – that’s all part of the plan to be developed,” says Cunnington.

“We’re working up to it. We started in a sensible place, which was to
design services and get the hang of that. When you look at it, almost every
department has a whole raft of citizen-facing services live already or
becoming live that genuinely make a difference. Some of the stuff is really
making a difference," he says.

“The reason why we’re not seeing lots of these services go live is because
they’re quite hard and it takes a long time. That’s part of where
government is getting good enough to have a go at some of these things with
GDS’s help. But we won’t see lots of massive transformation programmes
starting soon and finishing quickly because they are hard things to do.”

GDS has existed for six years to reach this point, so Cunnington only has
three years left to effect the scale of transformation by 2020 that his
boss Gummer
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450303856/Government-must-be-servant-of-the-people-says-Ben-Gummer>,
and prime minister May
<http://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Computer-Weekly-Editors-Blog/How-digital-will-Theresa-Mays-government-be>,
are apparently expecting. That’s no simple task.

Furthermore, he reveals there is already a list of additional major
transformation programmes that departments are considering that may start
by 2020 but will not deliver until the next parliamentary cycle.

And don’t forget – the civil service has to administer leaving the European
Union (EU) while all this is going on.

*A national approach*

So while the “what” for GDS is challenging enough, it’s the “how” that
seems to be where Cunnington hopes to make the most immediate impact.

An early priority is to make GDS more of a nationwide operation
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450401445/GDS-goes-nationwide-to-ease-relations-with-government-departments>
–
it has often been accused of being too London-centric, especially for big
departments with much of their work taking place in the regions.

Cunnington plans to open four locations for his digital academy – a civil
servant training initiative he launched in the Department of Work and
Pensions (DWP) and brought with him to GDS
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450304317/GDS-takes-over-DWP-Digital-Academy-and-gets-national-presence>.
He’s also taking GDS on a UK roadshow to talk to departmental staff outside
London.

“The real work is going on in [places such as] Leeds and Manchester, as
well as London. We need to be part of that,” he says.

“The example I use is where DWP now runs a whole set of disability
benefits. It would be incredibly helpful if DWP had selected and consensual
access to some of [those people’s] medical data.

“Right now, NHS Digital and DWP are having that conversation in Leeds and
we’re not in the conversation. Why wouldn’t GDS be in a conversation like
that? If we’re going to be, we’ve got to be in Leeds – we can’t do that
from here.”

*Relations with departments*

The rationale for a national approach touches on the thorny topic of GDS’s
relations with those big government departments.

It’s common knowledge that there have been significant tensions, with
departments
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450301278/Revealed-The-battle-for-GDS-how-Whitehall-mandarins-are-trying-to-carve-up-digital-strategy>
unhappy
to be told what to do by the centre. Big departments such as DWP and HM
Revenue & Customs (HMRC) have lobbied against GDS
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450301278/Revealed-The-battle-for-GDS-how-Whitehall-mandarins-are-trying-to-carve-up-digital-strategy>,
wanting to take back powers and budget from the central operation, and
bypassing some of GDS’s controls over their digital projects.

Coming from a departmental background himself, Cunnington acknowledges that
some departments’ relationship with GDS has been “adversarial” at times.
But he insists the situation is nothing like the way it has been widely
perceived.

When asked by Computer Weekly how he intends to change that relationship,
he says simply: “We’ll just play nicely.”

He immediately acknowledges that such an answer “sounds a bit trite”, but
admits that GDS needs to spend more time listening and being “more
discursive”.

“There’s no need for departments or GDS to take these adversarial
positions. Most of us have the same view of where we need to get to and the
same kind of plan to get there. So part of it is that we need to spend more
time talking to each other,” he says.

“I think GDS having a national footprint will really help because we’ll be
in the conversations from the get-go. Most of us get on perfectly well.
Love and peace is there, really. Love is in the air.”

However, he later says that he wants GDS to be “much more involved in the
minutiae of the work that departments are doing” – an idea that seems
anathema to some outside GDS. Cunnington insists not.

“In truth, they quite like us. We’ve got some good people. You [can] use
the word adversarial, but we don’t spend most of our time fighting with
each other in the civil service,” he says.

“Oddly enough, we get on quite well with each other, and it’s just a case
of keeping that going. I’m pretty sure departments do not object to GDS
helping them with their difficult problems,” he says.

*Spending controls*

One particular area of contention for departments is GDS’s spending controls
<https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/agile-delivery/spend-controls-check-if-you-need-approval-to-spend-money-on-a-service>
–
rules laid down under former Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude that
meant departments needed GDS approval for any IT contracts worth more than
£100m, or digital services worth more than £100,000.

Having been on the receiving end of such controls, Cunnington says they
need to change.

“In the past, GDS legitimately had to police some things that were going
on. If you go back to the original spend controls when they were set,
permanent secretaries will tell you that it was quite useful having GDS
saying no to some of their plans, because their plans weren’t as well
formed as they could have been, based on the fact they didn’t have the
experience to put them together,” he says.

“But nowadays we are more comfortable that departments have created their
own capability. It’s about having a proper grown-up discussion around
roadmaps in the future. We’ll get much more comfortable, so the
relationship is changing.”

In particular, the £100,000 limit on digital projects is likely to be
increased.

“£100,000 now for a digital programme is just too low. So we’re looking at
two things. One is, what is the right level of control? The controls
themselves have been a bit of a proxy for saying, ‘are you doing the right
work?’ They tend to go a little bit adversarial if you’re using financial
controls to get people to a design you’re comfortable with,” he says.

“We’ve taken a different approach now and are sitting down with departments
every month to review their six-month, one-year, five-year plans and say
are we all going in the same, right direction. From GDS’s perspective, if
we are prepared to be a lot more collaborative about the use of controls,
it’s just really a change of approach.”

That new approach is being piloted with three departments already
<http://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Public-Sector-IT/GDS-of-the-future-changes-to-IT-spending-controls>
–
Cunnington cites DWP, Home Office and Ministry of Justice (MoJ) – to help
determine where to set the levels of control going forward.

“Thresholds are more likely to be a sensible discussion about money, rather
than one size fits all, because we know that big departments spend a lot of
money on technology and programmes, but some of the smaller departments
spend less. It’s not a one-size-fits-all model going forward, but we
haven’t decided yet exactly where to set them,” he says.

*Gov.uk Verify*

Another area of contention is around Gov.uk Verify, the identity assurance
service that is meant to become the default way in which citizens
interacting with government online prove they are who they say they are.

Roll-out of Verify has been slow
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450295372/Govuk-Verify-misses-April-go-live-target>,
with technical issues to overcome and challenges around sourcing sufficient
data to be able to assure everyone’s identity on application.

Currently, barely 70% of people
<https://www.gov.uk/performance/govuk-verify> using the service are able to
verify their identity, and only 35% of visits
<https://www.gov.uk/performance/govuk-verify> to the service result in a
completed transaction.

HMRC has been particularly reluctant to use Verify
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500247745/HMRC-denies-reports-of-Verify-causing-users-problems>,
and is developing its own alternative for the digital tax accounts
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500260634/HMRC-launches-digital-personal-tax-accounts>
service.
DWP was initially reluctant to adopt Verify, but is using it in the new digital
version of Universal Credit
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500260299/National-roll-out-of-Universal-Credit-digital-service-to-begin-in-May-2016>,
although that system is in very limited use as part of trials. The NHS is
cautious too
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500279751/Govuk-Verify-not-secure-enough-for-the-NHS-says-HSCIC>
.

Cunnington, however, says he is “very bullish” about Verify, while
acknowledging that GDS’s advisory board of external experts told him to
prioritise “sorting out Verify” and getting it adopted at scale.

*“You have to expect [GDS] to change as we learn what's been working well
and what needs to happen differently”*
*Kevin Cunnington, GDS*

He says that GDS is “internally looking at all the things we now need to do
to make Verify a success”, with that review concluding at the end of
November 2016.

We are actively working with the departments on their internal roadmaps for
how they adopt Verify. There are some big potential uses of Verify – NHS
would be one and the DVLA and MoJ could do more. DWP does quite a lot. It’s
just a case of putting a proper plan together that frees up some of the
learnings we’ve had over the past year or so,” he says.

On HMRC, he says the issue is simple. HMRC requires a lower level of
assurance than Verify currently offers – DWP, by comparison, needs a high
level of assurance because it pays money out to people. HMRC, however,
receives payments, so is less worried about potentially onerous identity
checks.

“The HMRC issue isn’t an issue. HMRC has a different means of verifying
people that it has had for a while. We are talking to HMRC about how we
could merge these things eventually, but HMRC isn’t against it. It is all
for it, but it’s just the wrong hammer for the wrong nail,” he says,
adding: “We are looking at potentially lowering the level of authorisation
required so HMRC can use it.”

Meanwhile, HMRC continues with its own development, which involves adding
extra features to the existing Government Gateway identity portal.

Gateway also supports assurance of companies – something Verify is not
designed to do. Computer Weekly did not have time to ask about Verify Basic
Accounts, a cut-down service developed previously to address the same issue
– little has been said publicly about this alternative since trials
concluded a year ago
<https://identityassurance.blog.gov.uk/2015/10/09/basic-identity-accounts-trial-an-update-2/>
.

Cunnington was, however, keen to discuss the potential for Verify to be
used beyond government, highlighting talks with banks
<http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500247996/Government-preparing-to-let-private-sector-companies-use-its-Verify-identity-scheme>
and
online gambling companies about using the service for identity checks.

“We are actively looking at whether we can change our business model for
Verify. Candidly, a number of banks have said to us they’re in the business
of identifying people for money laundering regulations – they could see
themselves moving to Verify rather than continuing to do that for
themselves,” he says.

It’s the same for gamblers as well – gambling organisations have the same
legal requirement to know their customer, which could be solved using
Verify.”

*Ambitious targets*

With ambitious targets for 2020 ahead, Cunnington has to get up and running
quickly – but let’s not forget he has been in the job for less than two
months.

He faced the personal challenge of stepping into the shoes of a popular
leader in Stephen Foreshew-Cain, as well as the fact that Cunnington came
from a department in DWP whose senior executives are known to have been
antagonistic towards GDS.

“People are giving me a chance to prove whether I’m good or not. To be
honest, if people applauded when I walked in I’d have been surprised,” he
says.

“They don’t really know me, so they’re giving me a chance. I get the sense
that people are warming to me. I think they’re pleased with the plan.”

GDS staffers will be relieved to hear that Cunnington expects the team to
be the same size by 2020 as it is now – around 650 people – but with a
burst of recruitment in between to take the team temporarily to 800 as
extra bodies are needed for current projects before they go live and settle
down.

He also says that – contrary to widespread rumours – GDS is not cutting
back on doing software development
<http://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Computer-Weekly-Editors-Blog/GDS-Will-the-strategy-still-be-delivery>
.

But the devil is in the detail. His strategy is still being written, and
many people are keen to see the detail therein. Certainly, changes are
ahead.

“GDS was set up to be disruptive – revolution not evolution. What I’m
saying to people is we should celebrate that and we should celebrate all
the good work that we’ve done,” says Cunnington.

“But also, we need to recognise that GDS is, in and of itself, a
transformation programme. So you have to expect it to change as we learn
what’s been working well and what needs to happen differently.”
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20170128/4d089218/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 234163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20170128/4d089218/attachment.png>