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Breaking the cylinders of excellence
To deliver clearer, simpler, faster public services
Lindsay Holmwood
Head of Technology
@auxesis @DTO
dta.gov.au
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dta.gov.au
The problem
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dta.gov.au
1509*
* public federal government websites we know about
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dta.gov.au
People have no
“mental model”
of what government
wants them to do.
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dta.gov.au
“I just wing it to be honest. As I need it, I research it. Which is
probably not ideal. I need the big picture. I need to talk the big
picture and then how to help kids navigate particular areas.”
– School counsellor
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dta.gov.au
People design their
businesses to minimise
government bureaucracy.
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dta.gov.au
“I was talking to the guys in Japan in September saying
I’d be able to start (selling their label) by December [laughs].
This whole thing has been a case of scaling back my
expectations.”
– Clothes store owner
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dta.gov.au
People pay others to deal with
government for them.
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dta.gov.au
“If you can afford it, pay an expert to deal with the government. It’ll
bury you and distract you from your own business”
– Retired businessman
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dta.gov.au
People with experience
still have trouble.
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dta.gov.au
“My biggest frustration is being on hold with the immigration
department. I need to speak to them at least once a week.
Last Friday I was on hold for 1 hr 20 minutes.
My longest wait has been 2 hrs 30 minutes.”
– Internal immigration agent
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dta.gov.au
The challenge
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Do the hard work
to make it simple for users
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Understand the
who, what
when, where
of user interactions
with government
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dta.gov.au
Design
& Technology
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dta.gov.au
Clearer, simpler, faster services
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dta.gov.au
Digital
Transformation
Agency
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dta.gov.au
We're here to make government
services simpler, clearer and faster
for everyone
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dta.gov.au
1/
We collaborate with agencies to
transform services so that they
meet user needs
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dta.gov.au
2/
We create whole-of-government
platforms to support service
transformation
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3/
We develop policies and
standards to help government
transform services consistently
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dta.gov.au
What have we
done well?
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Delivery hubs in Sydney and Canberra
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dta.gov.au
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dta.gov.au
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dta.gov.au
A prototype of how
government services and
information could be
joined up
gov.au/alpha
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dta.gov.au
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dta.gov.au
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We publish and own our
performance stats
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dta.gov.au
Digital Service Standard
Setting the standard for delivering
services that are better for users,
and efficient for government
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cloud.gov.au
Creating a new platform to make
delivering and operating government
services easier
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July
cloud.gov.au
14 apps in production
50 apps in development
across transformation programme &
service delivery programme
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October
cloud.gov.au
47 apps in production
225 apps in development
across transformation programme &
service delivery programme
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What does
delivery look like?
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30
60
90
120
2015-10-29 2015-11-08 2015-11-16 2015-11-25
GOV.AU deploys over time
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AusDTO/gov-au-alpha
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dta.gov.au
Releases are a
non-event
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dta.gov.au
Process scaled
as we added contributors
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Contributions are
democratised
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15 contributors
Dev &
Ops &
Design &
Research &
Content &
Management
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dta.gov.au
The unit of delivery
is the team
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What did we learn?
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dta.gov.au
Government doesn’t move
at a single speed
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dta.gov.au
Government is designed to
be stable
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Myth:
Organisations must choose between
speed and reliability.
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Fact:
High-performing IT organisations
deploy 200x more frequently,
with 2,555x shorter lead times; they have
3x fewer failures and recover 24x faster.
– 2016 State of DevOps report
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The tension between
Deliver like a startup
vs
Be stable like a government
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dta.gov.au
Capability continuum
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“we’re agile, we do standups”
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“we do CD, we deploy continuously,
every 6 weeks”
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Cylinders of excellence
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“The future is already here —
it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
– Gibson
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dta.gov.au
Help identify and plug
capability gaps in teams
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dta.gov.au
Policy as a weapon
vs
Policy as a tool
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dta.gov.au
Read the policy yourself
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dta.gov.au
Find subject matter experts
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Document what works
and what doesn’t
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dta.gov.au
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Don’t transform delivery &
technology at the same time
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Make the
right thing
• Select high volume services
• User centred design
• Define and deploy the minimum viable product
• Integrate with back-end process
• Design for straight-through processing
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Ensure that it’s
done right
• Organise work in small teams (2 pizza size)
• Develop in-house capability across key roles
• Incremental and continuous deployment
• Time box delivery
• Continuous usability testing
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dta.gov.au
Stick with technologies
government knows
(Java & .NET)
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dta.gov.au
Change tech methodologies
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CD &
TDD &
BDD &
PaaS &
Microservices
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Transform how they use
those technologies
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Spring &
12-Factor Apps
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Security matters
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Prevention is a battle
you will always lose
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Detection is your
best defence
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Embed security people
on big services
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http://pivotal.io/security/cve-2016-0927
http://pivotal.io/security/cve-2016-0928
http://pivotal.io/security/cve-2016-4468
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Focus on basics
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Have a threat model
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Excel macros > APT
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MFA all the things
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Required reading:
https://speakerdeck.com/garethr/security-
monitoring-with-open-source-penetration-testing-
tools
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Tech often doesn’t last
more than 6 months
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Go and see
Understand team’s problems
Hypothesise what they need
Test hypotheses
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CI/CD
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Cheap SaaS ↩
Specific SaaS ↩
On-prem ↩
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Define clear interfaces:
bin/cibuild.sh
bin/cideploy.sh
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What should we do
differently?
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Front-load technical activities
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Strict interpretation of
the design and delivery guides
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Create a longer runway by
pulling tech forward
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Don’t turn down volume of design,
Turn up volume of tech
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Constantly iterate the service
standard assessment process
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assessment points
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Just waterfall with a
different name?
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Agile practices throughout
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Tighten focus in each stage
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If it hurts, do it more often
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assessment points
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Minimum viable documentation of practices,
then over-communicate
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We set a high bar.
But we need to
bring people up to speed
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Alien technology &
alien language to many
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Build primers
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What still puzzles us?
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Business cases with
fixed-cost deliverables
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Fixed cost delivery with agile
is a thing
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“best effort” doesn’t satisfy
regulatory requirements
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Government has
expectations of certainty
when you spend taxpayer money
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Procurement
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Complex, interrelated legislation
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Significant domain knowledge
required
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5 platforms
GOV.AU
Identity
Digital Marketplace
Performance Dashboard
cloud.gov.au
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Some teams pull back from
Continuous Deployment
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Continuous Delivery is though
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Extra set of hands for sign off
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Inside the DTA?
Escalate the commitment.
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Don’t put manual testing on the
critical path for delivery
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Push manual tests into
automated ones
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Have specialty skills on-hand
Accessibility &
Performance &
Security
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Difficulty seeing outside
the cylinder
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Discovery can get limited to
what can be directly controlled
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People expect to deal with
government as a whole, not with
separate agencies or departments
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Services should be available
end-to-end online
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Users’ interactions with
government should be as good as
those with modern businesses
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There’s huge failure demand when
users can’t get things done easily
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Government is just catching up
to everyone else
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The opportunity is immense
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Australia can become the best
in the world at delivering
clearer, simpler, faster
public services.
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Thank you!
❤ the talk? Let @auxesis & @DTO know!