Transform 16: A Digital Transformation Story – Monica Ritz
Two days of Transform 17 starts in Canberra tomorrow with a sold out day of workshops followed by a full day of talks focused on the ongoing transformation of government services.
As our last warmup, we have one more presentation from Transform 16 to get you in the mood. Monica Ritz from South Australia’s Office for Digital Government gave a terrific talk about spending time on secondment with the (then) Digital Transformation Office before taking ideas and processes back to her State department. Here’s how we summarise it in Wrap magazine.
A Digital Transformation Story
Monica Ritz SA Office for Digital Government
Key points
Six weeks secondment with the DTO changed everything, including a true understanding of agile and of user-centred design.
Government knows processes, policies, legislations but they never use the services so how do they know what their users need?
The SA government is implementing the Digital Service Standards on a tight timeframe and it will be difficult.
DTO is showing that agile is a culture, not a methodology tacked on.
“Agile is a culture and not scrums and stand-up.”
Takeaways
The people who face the problem hold the key to the answers and we need to develop empathy and it’s got to be the whole team.
Resolve a problem, don’t just present a solution. Resolution requires understanding the problem.
An example: women prisoners were not applying for bail and it was thought the form was the problem. It turned out the form wasn’t the problem – the women had their own reasons for not wanting to apply for bail.
The mantras we’re hearing: continuous improvement, taking feedback, user research, multidisciplinary teams, agile and user-centred approach – they all involve big changes for SA government.
Transparency and teamwork go together – make everything open.
Caveats
You have to show the benefits of transformation. Metrics become important.
You have to be able to fail, not to celebrate your failures but to learn from them.
The biggest challenge is getting staff to not just acknowledge but truly understand user-centred design.
Authority and support has to come from the top down.
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