It is the well-worn watchword that has come to define this sector. But PublicTechnology’s editor wonders whether it has lost its impact and its import, and how it did so?
Every Friday, PublicTechnology’s daily newsletter features reflections on the major issues of the past week from editor Sam Trendall. The last two editions (published below as a single piece) have focused on what ‘transformation’ has come to mean, and whether the term is still fit for purpose.
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We recently published a piece featuring comments from the UK’s newly appointed top civil servant, Antonia Romeo, who told her 500,000-plus colleagues that government must “continue to modernise and innovate”.
While the article, and the sentiments it reflects, are well worth our reporting, they do represent something of a dog-bites-man story.
By which I mean: it would be considerably more surprising – and surely more newsworthy – if Romeo thought that government should, as a matter of urgency, stop modernising and innovating.
It strikes me that this example is symptomatic of a rather thorny challenge facing advocates of transformation: the word itself.
And other words like it – including the likes of ‘modernisation’ and ‘innovation’, as well as ‘reform’, ‘reset’, and even ‘revolution’.
These words speak to deep, profound and, often, violent change. They should seem out of place on a video call with the finance department, or on a flip chart in a meeting room.
Perhaps the problem is that they no longer do.
There is an incredibly difficult – perhaps even impossible – balance to strike in how digital and data leaders communicate about their work. Using words like those listed above may seem necessary in order to best convey the scale of ambition – and the challenge faced in realising it.
By being invoked so often – and, often, so glibly – the idea of sweeping and revolutionary change may have been devalued
But, as noted in recent government guidance for councils preparing for mergers, if technology plans are “communicated in a way that feels overly direct… staff can feel overwhelmed, anxious or disengaged, especially those who do not work in digital”.
Conversely, when grandiose language becomes too commonplace, it can lose its power and see its impact deadened. This is particularly dangerous in matters of cyber, where government staff frequently need reminding that something as workaday as sending an email could present a major national security risk.
By being invoked so often – and, often, so glibly – the idea of sweeping and revolutionary change may have been devalued. But, perhaps, there is also something else diminishing people’s belief in all this transformation.
Which is a total lack of transformation. Or even, it frequently seems, even minor alteration.
Let’s look at some more of our stories from the week or so.
Report finds delays and funding issues with major government tech programme. Department struggles to extricate itself from relationship with big tech – while other department promises to be welcoming to SMEs.
Minister resigns. Minister appointed.
More big tech firms win big deals – creating big controversy. All while citizens complain of the impact of malfunctioning services on their lives and their bank accounts.
Stop me if you’ve heard these ones before. Many, many times before.
And, every time stories like these are heard anew, it can make all the surrounding talk concerning transformation seem a little disingenuous.
This is not to say that nothing is changing – and for the better too. Digital and data teams throughout the public sector, and their colleagues on the frontline, are making progress every day in delivering better services and improved workplaces. Or sometimes, if we’re honest, just doing an incredible job of maintaining the same high levels of support with greatly reduced resources.
But, clearly, there are things that are very difficult to change.
In seven days’ time – let’s face it: in seven years’ time – people like me will still be reporting on project delays, on legacy tech, on big firms winning big deals, on ministers setting a bold vision their successor will be asked to realise, and on citizens getting the short end of some shoddy services.
Perhaps, rather than talking so much about long-term transformation, high-profile digital advocates – and the journalists who cover their work – should spend more time discussing small, achievable, and impactful changes that can be made in the near-term.
No-one lines up for their first Parkrun as part of a plan to win the Olympic marathon, or downloads a language app with expectations of a new career as an interpreter.
But, with a little patience and a lot of incremental gains, some may get there.
In the meantime, while it may seem like a comparatively trivial issue, the words we use to describe the journey are important.
Even leaving aside the possibility of digital tools bringing business and public bodies in scope of global conflict, close to home we now live in a world where new technology is being cast by the state as a future means of levelling the playing field for disadvantaged school pupils – while also representing one of the biggest current causes of harm to children. (Not to mention causing plenty of headaches for the adults who look after them.)
These discussions, and the language we use to have them, have never been more important, nor more difficult to navigate.
Sam Trendall is editor of PublicTechnology
