PP

The digital transformation of government and the public sector isn’t as easy as it looks. You would think that after 20 years or so, mainly on the outside looking in, and occasionally from the inside looking out, and a book or two to boot, I’d have worked that out by now. And of course I have.  It’s hard work, grinding through ‘hard boards” with passion and perseverance, to paraphrase Max Weber’s reflections “on politics.” Almost everything is harder in practice than it is in theory. Writing about stuff and offering occasionally helpful advice and, even more occasionally, clever insights from the sidelines is so much easier than doing the work. But in the last little while, my general enthusiasm, irretrievably amateur though it so often feels, has been tested by some insights about the day to day reality confronting the digital transformation “project” in government and the public sector, especially here in Australia. Like the recent session in which we were spruiking the rising influence of artificial intelligence and the likely impact on public services and citizen engagement of augment reality only to be told that, in one regional government office, the vast majority of the team didn’t have ‘smart’ phones or wifi enabled laptops. When they left the office, they were no longer connected. Unless they were happy to switch to their personal phones (and …

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