But does anyone recognise how much of this ties to the expectations, behaviours and systems of the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and No 10?
'Reform' is an easy mantra when its for others to bear - but sadly often displacement activity to forestall a good hard look in the mirror.
It's not impossible to simultaneously hold the thoughts 'the CS has lots of smart/talented/dedicated individuals' and 'the CS has a culture that insulates senior leaders from perceived risk + healthy challenge'
Iโve argued that the Civil Serviceโs problems are best framed as structural + cultural, rather than about individuals.
Cultures are made up of norms that are sustained by language and behaviours.
So what norms does the CS need to tackle to be more effective?
A first stab ๐งต
At the same time, a totally unreformative approach would fail to address long standing weaknesses in CS's 'default' modes, structures and incentives - that embed risk aversion and overweight the influence of a small number at the top of the CS tree.
Identifying and solving the *right* problems is fundamentally it.
An accurate understanding of the problems that matter most is the bedrock of real improvement.
It can be v. challenging to do this at the scale of the NHS, but ultimately its the only thing truly *worth* doing.
Patient records and the NHS App are in the news again. Me and @MattStibbs wrote down some thoughts. TLDR: the perfect architectural approach wonโt solve for fundamental environmental challenges that need addressing. https://t.co/QkOqICQbuj
Excited to be organising and running another of these super events this weekend! I never get bored of seeing what people come up with in just a weekend! #nhshd27
@thomasforth Twitter, on the other hand...
I guess there are many kinds of 'great thing' out there.
Hospitals, for example. Wouldn't let him near one of those.
@thomasforth The vagueness of 'great thing' obscures a lot here...
Engineering mind, 'extremely hardcore' work ethic and bags of capital probably helps for 'frontier' tech applications with few inherently socially complex dimensions or dynamics...
@hdarshane@skdh@Grady_Booch The premise of 'prediction' in the context of a linguistic exchange narrows its scope in a way that IMO breaks the analogy with human reasoning.
We may be limited to saying one thing at a time, but we choose from infinite possibilities. LLMs don't/can't. Something is missing.
@rachelcoldicutt Also general performativity of social media, behaviours of their peers / 'role models', general sense of public exposure...
Feel like a lot of the worst behaviours (inc. my own) are about how people feel they are or could be seen (when in truth no one really cares).
@wizardbiscuits @warhammer Know many Kill Team 1.0 players still having plenty of fun with this version.
KT is now a skirmish system (and quite a good one).
Meanwhile 40K now has Combat Patrol + Boarding Actions to fill the 'onboarding' role KT once fulfilled.
Can't see much actual reason to be mad.
@jo3hill@IPPR@InstituteGC Partly b'cuz problem is framed as mere 'adoption' - rather than dept getting clear on purpose, problems, user needs, strategy/policy/operational alignment and *right* tech approach in that (often complicated) context.
Hard cultural yards for any dept - most think tanks clueless.
@garyseconomics@podsavetheuk You're doing great on the 'why', mate - keep going! I just think you should search for a 'how' partner, because that may just help you win the argument.