Category: Commentary

Marissa Mayer wasn’t hired to do the safe thing. She was picked to be bold, and so far, she has failed.

I remember having an Armchair CEO session regarding what Yahoo! should do.

While I wouldn’t claim our speculations would have borne any more fruit, at least they would have been interesting. Which Yahoo! hasn’t been in any sense.

Could I do it better? I’d do it better for less money

The headline of the BelTel screams injustice and inequality but illustrates poor understanding of how the economy works.

The scandal is that three organisations (two universities and one ALB (arms-length body) receive a third of all grant aid from Invest Northern Ireland.

NI Screen
One of the peculiarities of the Northern Ireland system is that Northern Ireland Screen, the film and television development agency in Northern Ireland, is funded via Invest Northern Ireland. They are given a chunk of cash each year which they use to pay their staff, maintain their offices (which are not expansive or salubrious), organise trade missions and provide development and production support to aspiring film makers and existing developments and productions – including Game of Thrones, City of Ember, Your Highness, Grabbers, The Keith Lemon Movie and a host of others. NI Screen doesn’t have a membership structure and while it’s true they get extra cash from the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, the bulk of their economic development work is funded via Invest Northern Ireland. So, if they didn’t get this money then these productions might not have happened (and I’m only upset I didn’t get to meet Natalie Portman, Lena Headey or Emilia Clarke). So, come on, Margaret Canning, wind your neck in about that cash. They don’t actually get the money for themselves.

The Universities
This isn’t the first time the BelTel has levelled an eye at the Universities and their funding and economic affairs and with the same ham-fisted approach. Universities do receive a chunk of cash from the Department of Employment and Learning but that’s pretty much to offset the restricted fees structure in place. The money from Invest Northern Ireland is slightly different. It’s made up of hundreds of Innovation Vouchers and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships as well as (probably) a bit of business support for University spin-outs who are attempting to create jobs and prosperity. It just looks like a big number because it’s over three years but it’s too easy to look at the universities as individual entities and not as a knowledge provider for the entire Northern Ireland economy.

Areas outside of Belfast
Prior to 2011, there was a facilitation to help companies set up outside of Belfast but this was cut for a number of reasons. I think a big reason was to do with the businesses themselves. Setting up in the middle of nowhere is not what most companies want. They want to be where the critical mass of people are, where the best facilities are, where there is good transport, decent infrastructure and some sort of social hub. Belfast has 50% of the creative sector housed within it’s satrapy and this isn’t by design. This is because companies want to be there. The population of greater Belfast is a third of the entire population of Northern Ireland. Two thirds are located in the east of the province. This is why Belfast scores nearly twice as much investment from Invest Northern Ireland as the next nearest region. It’s where the companies are. Like it or not, Invest Northern Ireland doesn’t just hand money out to anyone who walks in the door (well….) but you need to apply, show you have match funding, and meet other scrutiny that we, the people, demand they do. Incredibly rural areas are not going to get the same level of investment and a single company located in the region with a large workforce can easily account for all of the Invest Northern Ireland spend for the whole region.

The data presented here is meaningless.

Of course, the Belfast Telegraph are just reading the output from Detail Data (a NICVA project) and it’s a shame there wasn’t any deep analysis of the data performed. It’s easy to report bias and headlines without applying appropriate context.

I hate this advertisement.

I hate the way it takes a dream and deconstructs it with fear and encourages the dreamer to settle for the most banal of conveniences.

Shame on you, Sainsburys.

According to Wikipedia, Innovation is a new idea, more effective device or process.

I would go further and say that “casual innovation” is the root of the private sector. It’s everything from a boffin and her new material science process to a long-term unemployed fortysomething getting the idea to act as an agent for his labourer friends.

In the private sector, innovation is both the spark and the fuel. It’s what makes people start businesses and it’s what keeps businesses alive. There are precious few businesses who stop innovating as they age – it cold be in process, in business development or in marketing – but they all do something. If they don’t, they are in constant risk of being surpassed and replaced by another business who can do it better, cheaper or make customers happier. If a customer isn’t happy with the product, the price, the delivery or the service, then they move on. And its risky because if a new innovation isn’t popular, it could torpedo the company.

I went for a haircut this week and my usual barber was closed for holidays. Impatient as I was, I wasn’t going to wait with a massive mop of unruly hair for another week especially after making the journey down. So I went looking for another barber. The first I discounted because while the barber was functional, I had’t returned there due to a problem in the delivery and service. I went down a side street and found a new barber and once seated the barber asked me who my “usual” barber was. Upon hearing my reply, they asked what they needed to do to secure my future business. To be honest, the fact they had the initiative to ask was enough for me to consider them. And, the icing on the cake, it was a good haircut.

It’s not quite the same in the public sector.

If a public service or product isn’t great, we can’t choose a different government. You can’t shop around for a better deal. Even where government services are privatised, a poor product or service experience doesn’t mean you can change supplier. You’re already tied into a multi-year contract with the supplier. You don’t get a choice – so whether you’re unhappy with your tax office or your bin collection or your educational curriculum – you’re too far removed from the contract to be effective in changing anything. Short of literally moving countries, there’s usually no way a customer can change their government services (and usually even an election has no effect).

This breeds a natural complacency and complacency is the Achilles Heel of Innovation. Worse still – it’s possible to have a culture of conservative inaction, of risk-avoidance and, potentially worse than that, wilful ignorance and paranoia.

It’s incumbent of public sector service owners to defeat these notions, however. We cannot change our government easily, so public servants who are wilfully ignorant or paranoid in their defensiveness are an oxymoron by definition. If anything, the relative stability of government should free departments to be more innovative. They don’t have to worry about who’s paying the bills and they don’t have to worry about making salary. They don’t need to worry that their innovation could alienate past customers.

I am encouraged by the MVP/Agile approach I’ve seen with some GDS services but there needs to be constant iteration of services. There needs to be service improvement especially in ‘taxes’ that we cannot avoid paying.

The public sector must understand that innovation isn’t always about leaps, it’s not always about cost-saving and it’s not always obvious. It’s entirely likely that innovation in the Healthcare system will actually end up costing us more as more people use it. We have a massive issue with people not availing of the services we do have (cancer screening for instance). Finding new ways to save lives will not reduce costs (though it may extend the useful life of a taxpayer). We can work on reducing the cost of delivery per customer using digital services in many cases but the role of a public service or product is to get used more. The best we can hope for is that more people use it and then the cost of development and maintenance can be borne by many more people (reducing the cost per customer).

This year I taxed my car online which, after having to deal with humans in a queue, was an absolute relief. The problem I’m having right now is that the MVP hasn’t progressed and changing the bank account means cancelling a direct debit and starting a new one. And that, I was advised, came with a small risk that my car may not be taxed for a period. That’s kinda unacceptable in this day and age.

It’s necessary for public services to evolve. It’s necessary for them to “update” their services. We can’t afford to force our customers (citizens) to only use web browsers that are in decline. We can’t afford to force them to use Internet Explorer and Firefox. We have to assume that our customer may only have access to a smartphone and a slow, data-capped, 3G connection. We’re building services for people with fat broadband pipes on desktop PCs running monolithic Windows. By definition, the customers of the future will be mobile.

Re-think who the typical customer is. There will be customers of the public sector who don’t use “online” services but these are a vanishingly small percentage and it’s entirely likely their reasons lead to a need for bigger interventions.

For as long as I’ve been aware, there has always been a sense of pride associated with German Engineering. The German auto industry is certainly the most dominant – Volkswagen owns Porsche, Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Ducati, SEAT, Skoda, Ducati (motorcycles) and MAN (lorries).

The recent scandals about the “diesel dupe” by Volkswagen are not only damaging to the manufacturers environmental record but represents a company culture that cannot be ignored.

The revelations mean that Volkswagen cars may be producing forty (40) times the pollution they claim. People who own these cars may not have bought them for their environmental record but still have marvelled at the lower road tax at the same time as enjoying the pricing and the performance. But it would seem that was all a lie.

Diesels are already falling out of favour due to the toxicity of their fumes (the government can admit to being wrong about that) but this signals a death knell for the diesel industry.

Someone, a budget controller, signed off on producing software that would control emissions when subjected to test conditions. Then a team of engineers designed the software and accompanying hardware designed to defeat the tests. And not one of them thought to blow the whistle.

That is the very definition of toxic culture.

Apple shows you their interest by where they ship features first.

The first time I noticed this was back in the nineties when Apple produced the “toilet seat” iBooks. They were the first laptops that shipped with built-in WiFi. Looking backwards at the iMac line (and the introduction of USB) confirmed the consumer bias. It was “better” for Apple to introduce these features in new hardware that would have new consumer interest and therefore spur adoption.

You only then have to look at the features introduced to iOS over the years to see where the drive is – from multi-touch to biometric fingerprint sensors. It’s clear their attention has been on IOS to push the platform to new heights.

And most recently the Watch. Apple have added Force-touch and full biometrics to their latest consumer device. They’ve added Force touch to the MacBooks and We will see some of these technologies making their way to the Phone and iPad but it’s unlikely that we’ll see any of them make it to the Mac proper.

We will have to rely on logging into our Macs with plain old passwords, like savages.