Barriers to agile policy design and delivery
Only one in three Australian leaders in our survey agreed to any extent that digital technologies are fully embedded in policy making and service design.
Peter Alexander, acting CEO of Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency, contends that the framing of this statement conflates two distinct activities within the Australian Public Service.
He explains that agile and digital approaches are well embedded in service delivery, but “the problem we have is that policy design and development is still often done quite traditionally”.
“We still have agencies who’ll say they’re the policy agencies so they’ll come up with the policies, and then throw them over the fence for a delivery agency to deliver. The digital or IT guys don’t get involved until the end of the line,” he says.
“Whereas, of course, the best kind of digital delivery model is to get a team of delivery experts and policy experts and users of systems and customers all together and workshop and do an agile delivery method approach to the implementation of a policy in design and delivery. But that complete lifecycle, that engagement, is still rare.”
This was also reflected in responses to the statement we develop new policy and delivery solutions in parallel to increase the pace of development; just 57% of Australian leaders agreed to any extent – the lowest score of all nine nations (Fig 22).
Alexander says efforts are under way to address this and agile approaches are beginning to take root, but large, complex organisation like the civil service cannot behave like a startup.
“We’ve still got people who think that we can take a major legacy system that has an important role in government – like welfare payments or revenue or security in defence of the nation – and replace it with an app that some kids knocked out through an agile delivery process. But that’s just not the reality.”
Alexander adds that while a significant minority of senior executives have been involved in digital programmes, most have not, which stymies efforts to promote a more agile culture.
He says: “Most secretaries and CEOs are on board now but there’s still this layer of senior managers at deputy secretary or deputy CEO level who are doing things the way they’ve always done them and are the problem.”