Editor’s Letter

Doing things differently with data

Over the last three months the hue and cry around the size of the state, new ways of working, the need for more specialists and buzzwords like ‘performance’ and ‘accountability’ have reached a new crescendo. As they struggle to cope with complex and frightening geopolitical convulsions on the international stage, and seek to inject fresh momentum into a stubbornly unresponsive economy, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic – egged on by sympathetic sections of the mainstream press – have had an easy target in a supposedly ‘unwieldy’ and ‘change-resistant’ public sector.

In this highly charged environment it’s more important than ever for civil servants to assert with pride the core, traditional values of their calling – impartial, critical, evidence-based thinking – but it’s also vital for them to consider and where appropriate embrace (as generations of the best have done in the past) the many new ideas and approaches that can deliver better services, better support and better value for money for fellow citizens. As in the first two editions of the Heywood Quarterly I am confident you will find inspiration within these pages, notably on the role that technology, data, and (yes) artificial intelligence can play in producing these better outcomes.

Management consultants have for years been lauding the opportunity to exploit what they call ‘big data’, encouraging corporate clients to embark on expensive transformation programmes aimed at unearthing ‘what companies didn’t know they know’ from customer and other information, and turning those datasets into new sources of distinctiveness and profitability. Much more easily and more cheaply said, incidentally, than actually done.

Authors in this issue come at the data topic from a variety of constructive angles, with relevance both to policymakers and to those public servants in the business of ‘delivery’. The articles by Doug Gurr, Professor Sir Ian Diamond and Michael Padfield, for instance, will be of particularly keen interest to policymakers. As Director of the Natural History Museum (and more recently interim Chair of the Competition and Markets Authority), Doug Gurr has first-hand experience of the huge datasets sitting in departmental arms-length bodies, and of the potentially vast economic, scientific and social value that has yet to be exploited. Excited as he is by this opportunity, he’s also worried that our Open Data policy has been opening the door too wide to users outside the UK, thereby short-changing UK taxpayers who made the original investment. He challenges government departments and senior civil servants not just to figure out what data they are unwittingly sitting on, but to get involved in the debate about who benefits.

Professor Sir Ian Diamond is National Statistician of the UK Government Statistical Service and sits atop an organisation that provides a wealth of data to those in government. In what we hope will be the first of a series looking at significant statistical trends, he explains how and why there have recently been major declines in the number of births in England and Wales, as well as changes in the timing of childbirth. “What’s undeniable”, he comments, “is that all these changes have implications for policy across government, whether it is identifying the appropriate mix of housing to be built, planning our health and education systems or forecasting the future shape of the labour force”.

Data is the raw material of AI, of course, and according to Michael Padfield “the future is a policy profession empowered by AI, not replaced by it”. Michael’s article sets out very clearly some of the early AI tools that the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI), an innovative team in the Department for Science, lnnovation and Technology, is building for civil servants in the areas of strategy, democracy and delivery. The promise of AI here could be an enthralling one for public servants – an end to the tedious days of ploughing through hundreds of lengthy documents or mountains of consultation responses.

Doug, Ian and Michael deal with big policy issues, to be sure, but James Plunkett’s stimulating review of Richard Pope’s book Platformland focuses squarely on the digitisation of information to deliver ‘next-generation’ public services. James provides a generally encouraging commentary on the development of the Government Digital Service, notably the One Login initiative, and lays out Pope’s ideas on digital anatomy and his ‘particularly compelling’ thinking on data, not least how to escape endless arguments about data sharing between departments.

Taking a big step backwards from the front line, the Blavatnik School in Oxford has been working hard to develop the new Index for Public Administration, a data-rich source of comparative analysis that allows users to measure the relative performance of 120 civil services around the world. Gus O’Donnell and Kathy Hall describe the high-level results – Singapore is the big winner – and assess how the UK is doing against its international peers. The answer is good in some areas, less good in others (including, interestingly, ‘use of data’ and ‘digital services’).

This edition of the Heywood Quarterly may be ‘data rich’ but it’s not just pure data. David Halpern, founder of the world’s first ‘nudge’ unit, looks at the considerable impact behavioural science has had in recent years on both successful policymaking and delivery, and makes the case that it’s more important than ever for experimental, human approaches to be ‘hard wired’ into government thinking.

Last but not least in the line up I commend Alex Thomas’ entertaining and thoughtful assessment of the impact of the much-loved Yes, Minister series on outside perceptions of Whitehall. The programme has given many of us hours of pure joy, but Alex argues that for a serious student of the UK Civil Service “its tropes have obscured more than illuminated”. It’s time for Sir Humphrey to retire.

Finally, look out in this edition for some interesting reflections on, and ways in which civil servants can support, the government’s five central Missions. The Heywood Quarterly hopes to throw a bigger spotlight on Missions in future editions and would love to hear from readers who are pioneering new ways of working across departments and (in a turbulent, crisis-driven world) succeeding in keeping their eye on the longer term.

Tim Dickson, Editor in Chief.