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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“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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People design their
businesses to minimise
government bureaucracy.
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“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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People pay others to deal with
government for them.
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“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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People with experience
still have trouble.
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“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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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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Design
& Technology
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Clearer, simpler, faster services
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Digital
Transformation
Agency
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We're here to make government
services simpler, clearer and faster
for everyone
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1/
We collaborate with agencies to
transform services so that they
meet user needs
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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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What have we
done well?
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Delivery hubs in Sydney and Canberra
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A prototype of how
government services and
information could be
joined up
gov.au/alpha
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We publish and own our
performance stats
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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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Releases are a
non-event
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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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The unit of delivery
is the team
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What did we learn?
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Government doesn’t move
at a single speed
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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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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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Help identify and plug
capability gaps in teams
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Policy as a weapon
vs
Policy as a tool
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Read the policy yourself
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Find subject matter experts
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Document what works
and what doesn’t
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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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Stick with technologies
government knows
(Java & .NET)
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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