Breaking the cylinders of excellence (for YOW! Nights)

Nobody interacts with government because they want to - they interact with government because they have to, and most people come away from online interactions feeling more confused than when they started.

That's why the Digital Transformation Office (now the Digital Transformation Agency) was created in 2015 – to change the way government delivers services, by relentlessly focusing all delivery activities on user needs, and modernising technical delivery methods.

In this talk we'll learn about the problems with the traditional approach to digital service delivery in government, the cultural and structural barriers to changing service delivery in government, and how Open Source platforms, APIs, and Continuous Delivery enable the DTA to help government deliver simpler, clearer, faster public services.

Transcript

1. Breaking the cylinders of excellence To deliver clearer, simpler, faster public services Lindsay Holmwood Head of Technology @auxesis @DTO dta.gov.au
2. dta.gov.au The problem
3. dta.gov.au 1509* * public federal government websites we know about
4. dta.gov.au People have no “mental model” of what government wants them to do.
5. 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
6. dta.gov.au People design their businesses to minimise government bureaucracy.
7. 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
8. dta.gov.au People pay others to deal with government for them.
9. 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
10. dta.gov.au People with experience still have trouble.
11. 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
13. dta.gov.au The challenge
14. dta.gov.au Do the hard work to make it simple for users
15. dta.gov.au Understand the who, what when, where of user interactions with government
16. dta.gov.au Design & Technology
17. dta.gov.au Clearer, simpler, faster services
18. dta.gov.au Digital Transformation Agency
19. dta.gov.au We're here to make government services simpler, clearer and faster for everyone
20. dta.gov.au 1/ We collaborate with agencies to transform services so that they meet user needs
21. dta.gov.au 2/ We create whole-of-government platforms to support service transformation
22. dta.gov.au 3/ We develop policies and standards to help government transform services consistently
23. dta.gov.au What have we done well?
24. Delivery hubs in Sydney and Canberra
25. dta.gov.au
26. dta.gov.au
27. dta.gov.au A prototype of how government services and information could be joined up gov.au/alpha
28. dta.gov.au
29. dta.gov.au
30. dta.gov.au We publish and own our performance stats
31. dta.gov.au
32. dta.gov.au
33. dta.gov.au Digital Service Standard Setting the standard for delivering services that are better for users, and efficient for government
35. cloud.gov.au Creating a new platform to make delivering and operating government services easier
36. July cloud.gov.au 14 apps in production 50 apps in development across transformation programme & service delivery programme
37. October cloud.gov.au 47 apps in production 225 apps in development across transformation programme & service delivery programme
38. What does delivery look like?
39. 30 60 90 120 2015-10-29 2015-11-08 2015-11-16 2015-11-25 GOV.AU deploys over time
42. AusDTO/gov-au-alpha
43. dta.gov.au Releases are a non-event
44. dta.gov.au Process scaled as we added contributors
45. dta.gov.au Contributions are democratised
46. 15 contributors Dev & Ops & Design & Research & Content & Management
47. dta.gov.au The unit of delivery is the team
49. dta.gov.au What did we learn?
50. dta.gov.au Government doesn’t move at a single speed
51. dta.gov.au Government is designed to be stable
52. Myth: 
 Organisations must choose between speed and reliability.
53. 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
54. dta.gov.au The tension between Deliver like a startup vs Be stable like a government
55. dta.gov.au Capability continuum
56. dta.gov.au “we’re agile, we do standups”
57. dta.gov.au “we do CD, we deploy continuously, every 6 weeks”
58. dta.gov.au Cylinders of excellence
59. dta.gov.au “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” – Gibson
60. dta.gov.au Help identify and plug capability gaps in teams
61. dta.gov.au Policy as a weapon vs Policy as a tool
62. dta.gov.au Read the policy yourself
63. dta.gov.au Find subject matter experts
64. dta.gov.au Document what works and what doesn’t
65. dta.gov.au
66. dta.gov.au Don’t transform delivery & technology at the same time
67. dta.gov.au 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
68. dta.gov.au 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
69. dta.gov.au Stick with technologies government knows (Java & .NET)
70. dta.gov.au Change tech methodologies
71. dta.gov.au CD & TDD & BDD & PaaS & Microservices
72. dta.gov.au Transform how they use those technologies
73. dta.gov.au Spring & 12-Factor Apps
74. dta.gov.au
75. dta.gov.au Security matters
77. dta.gov.au Prevention is a battle you will always lose
78. dta.gov.au Detection is your best defence
81. dta.gov.au Embed security people on big services
82. http://pivotal.io/security/cve-2016-0927 http://pivotal.io/security/cve-2016-0928 http://pivotal.io/security/cve-2016-4468
83. dta.gov.au Focus on basics
84. dta.gov.au Have a threat model
85. dta.gov.au Excel macros > APT
86. dta.gov.au MFA all the things
87. dta.gov.au Required reading: https://speakerdeck.com/garethr/security- monitoring-with-open-source-penetration-testing- tools
88. dta.gov.au
89. dta.gov.au Tech often doesn’t last more than 6 months
90. dta.gov.au Go and see Understand team’s problems Hypothesise what they need Test hypotheses
91. dta.gov.au CI/CD
92. dta.gov.au Cheap SaaS ↩ Specific SaaS ↩ On-prem ↩
93. dta.gov.au Define clear interfaces: bin/cibuild.sh bin/cideploy.sh
94. dta.gov.au
95. dta.gov.au What should we do differently?
96. dta.gov.au Front-load technical activities
99. dta.gov.au Strict interpretation of the design and delivery guides
100. dta.gov.au Create a longer runway by pulling tech forward
101. dta.gov.au Don’t turn down volume of design, Turn up volume of tech
102. dta.gov.au Constantly iterate the service standard assessment process
104. assessment points
105. dta.gov.au Just waterfall with a different name?
106. dta.gov.au Agile practices throughout
107. dta.gov.au Tighten focus in each stage
108. dta.gov.au If it hurts, do it more often
109. assessment points
110. dta.gov.au Minimum viable documentation of practices, then over-communicate
111. dta.gov.au We set a high bar. But we need to bring people up to speed
112. dta.gov.au Alien technology & alien language to many
113. dta.gov.au Build primers
115. dta.gov.au
116. dta.gov.au What still puzzles us?
117. dta.gov.au Business cases with fixed-cost deliverables
118. dta.gov.au Fixed cost delivery with agile is a thing
119. dta.gov.au “best effort” doesn’t satisfy regulatory requirements
120. dta.gov.au Government has expectations of certainty when you spend taxpayer money
121. dta.gov.au
122. dta.gov.au Procurement
123. dta.gov.au Complex, interrelated legislation
124. dta.gov.au Significant domain knowledge required
125. dta.gov.au 5 platforms GOV.AU Identity Digital Marketplace Performance Dashboard cloud.gov.au
126. dta.gov.au
127. dta.gov.au
128. dta.gov.au Some teams pull back from Continuous Deployment
129. dta.gov.au Continuous Delivery is though
130. dta.gov.au Extra set of hands for sign off
131. dta.gov.au Inside the DTA? Escalate the commitment.
132. dta.gov.au Don’t put manual testing on the critical path for delivery
133. dta.gov.au Push manual tests into automated ones
134. dta.gov.au Have specialty skills on-hand Accessibility & Performance & Security
135. dta.gov.au
136. dta.gov.au Difficulty seeing outside the cylinder
137. dta.gov.au Discovery can get limited to what can be directly controlled
138. dta.gov.au People expect to deal with government as a whole, not with separate agencies or departments
139. dta.gov.au Services should be available end-to-end online
140. dta.gov.au Users’ interactions with government should be as good as those with modern businesses
141. dta.gov.au There’s huge failure demand when users can’t get things done easily
142. dta.gov.au Government is just catching up to everyone else
143. dta.gov.au The opportunity is immense
144. dta.gov.au Australia can become the best in the world at delivering clearer, simpler, faster public services.
145. dta.gov.au Thank you! ❤ the talk? Let @auxesis & @DTO know!