Hello, welcome. 👋🏽👋🏻👋🏾

While the UK has been in lockdown, the Public Digital team has been finding daily joy in nature. As our affiliate Emily Webber suggested, we’ve added ‘a bit of humanness’ to our Slack group. If you can, step outside.

Amy
@amymcnichol

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Ways of working

🇨🇦  Two great posts from the Canadian Digital Service. 4.4 million people have downloaded Canada’s COVID alert app (see latest data) and more than 2,900 people have used it to alert people close to them about their COVID exposure.

1. Kate Wilhelm explains How we designed content for the app by adding “just enough detail” through a superb map analogy: “Some maps show the whole world and other maps show only the subway system in your city” – choose what’s relevant and useful it carefully.
2. Related: Sean Boots wrote this neat summary of “Working in the open” firsts for the app.

🆔 Caribou Digital’s post Trends shaping the future of Digital Identification brings together the observations and thoughts from experts who are leading work on digital ID across 4 continents. General consensus: build trust frameworks rather than rely on specific systems because “you can accommodate innovations in systems and technology without being limited to what’s currently available.”  

💭 Local Welcome, who aim to ‘unite communities through cooking and eating together’, published 5 things we did before hiring a tech lead. It’s brilliantly honest about the assumptions and mistakes they made as a new charity back in 2018 (“it was hard-wired into us that we needed a coder”). Spoiler: still no tech lead – hiring in 2021.  

📋 The UK’s Institute for Government’s recent report laid out recommendations to build on the government’s digital successes (there have been many) and learn from the failures of the first phase of the pandemic. Most notable recommendation? “Understand where technology can support its aims, rather than starting with the technology itself.” No surprises, but significant all the same.

⚰️ Here’s a useful resource for digital teams to point stakeholders towards. Civic Tech Graveyard is a bunch of real-life case studies from around the world detailing why we should not do something. You can add your own ‘failed’ project. 

🔁 Plus, a reminder from Marty Cagan on the need to keep every member of a multidisciplinary team involved in both discovery and delivery work.
 

😍 Your eyes will enjoy these 😍

State of technology

🚗 In Code, on wheels, electric vehicles expert Philippe Chain looks at the importance of software in the car revolution. The race to invent a car operating system is on! Tesla – which is “functioning as a pure software company” – is likely to get there first unless legacy carmakers quickly reinvent themselves. The post is part of the ‘Reinventing the car’ series from Monday Note which begins here: The car, reinvented. From scratch.

📍 Great post about how OpenStreetMap likely began as a pub conversation between students but has now become “an invaluable, strategic, voluntarily-maintained data asset that the wealthiest companies in the world – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft – can’t afford to replicate.” Tagline: ‘the billion dollar dataset next door’ – the author’s not wrong. Interesting discussion around the culture clash too: “none of these companies are essential to OSM, it could work perfectly well without them.” 

✅  Thought-provoking post on ethics, equity and and technology from Asad Rahman one of our friends over at EdTech Hub. TL;DR Twitter summary. Reminded me of Doteveryone’s Consequence scanning tool.

🇵🇰  In September, Pakistan’s government issued a ban on all dating apps due to the spread of ‘immoral content’. (Tinder had 440,000 downloads within the year). Last month, the Pakistan Telecom Authority blocked access to TikTok, which had 20 million active monthly users in the country. This piece from Coda looks at the renewed push by Pakistan’s top court to police digital spaces and limit the influence of social media. Critics say the sweeping sets of rules “curb free expression and stifle criticism of the government and military.”

Digital government

News from Public Digital

⭐ We can help ⭐
We have many years of experience helping teams and their wider orgs reorganise, innovate and deliver quickly so they can look forward with more confidence. Drop ben@public.digital a line if you’d like some support.

Written by Public Digital team members

• Building digital organisations, creating great teams and enabling transformation, by Chris Fleming for NHS Providers
• Is the UK's NHS Covid-19 app too private? quotes Tom Loosemore

On the Public Digital blog

• 3 common challenges of delivering digital social protection, by Jenni Henderson (Jenni is studying Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and spent the summer with Public Digital’s International development team)
• 7 reflections on California’s report into its unemployment benefits system, by Anna Hirschfeld
• Every tool needs a team, by James Stewart
• The sad tale of Britain’s Government Digital Service, appeared in the print edition of The Economist and was published on their site. Quotes from Mike Bracken 

Events

• 10 December (webinar) – Tech Work in Government: What *else* do you need to know? Speakers from United States Digital Service, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, White House Office of Science Technology Policy, National Archives, and the private and social sectors.