Hvorfor offentlig IT bliver så dyrt og dårligt

Hvis man gerne vil vide hvorfor offentlige IT-projekter bliver så dyre og dårlige, så kan man starte med at læse her. Det er sund fornuft at have en institution som Datatilsynet, men hvis udgangspunktet er not-invented-her syndrom som f.eks. udtalelsen "Allerede det forhold, at medarbejdernes login sker uden digital signatur, gør, at den er vi ikke med på", som nævnt i artiklen, så umuliggør man en fleksibel adgang til at prøve med ny teknologi i de offentlige IT-systemer. Farvel til de utallige fordele vi andre høster på Facebook, Twitter o.l.. De kommer aldrig i spil i offentlig sammenhæng.
Det bliver et enormt problem, i et land hvor den offentlige sektor er så stor. Hvis vi skal have vækst og velstand i Danmark, så er vi nødt til at finde ud af at bruge IT så godt som muligt, og så hurtigt som muligt, pg så er det en katastrofe at halvdelen af vores økonomi simpelthen har annuleret innovation på den måde.
De der gider lege med på den form for defensivt kravrytteri tager sig godt betalt for det, og når de defensive kravlister får lov at vokse uden begrænsninger, jamen, så bliver det dem og ikke anvendelighed eller nye funktionsmåder, der kommer til at bestemme de webtjenester vi får.

Det bizarre her er at lovgivningen - og Datatilsynet - ikke skelner mellem data, som der er tale om her - elevplaner - og så de virkelige kernedata i systemet, vores skattedata osv. Hvis man fryser alle vores mellemværender med staten på Fort Knox-niveau, så lukker man ned for en masse kreativitet ude i kanten. Tænk nu hvis man tog det lige så sikkerhedsbevidste syn på sagen, at man skal arbejde på at undgå at risici for noget så harmløst som elevplaner eskalerer til alvorligere områder.

My list of Ersatz takeaways

So a week ago some of us met to talk about things and eat marshmallows at Holmen, here's my list of takeaways, a summary of sorts.

I tried to organize the schedule into a friday oriented around people and a saturday oriented around stuff, or a slightly different take, a Friday around how what we do is received, and a Saturday oriented around how it is made. We didn't stick to this plan in a strict way, but it worked out well as an organising principle.

Friday

We kicked off with a provocation from Timme Bisgaard Munk - on lazyness, self-interest, and competition, and how it works against some of the common co-creation and sharing ideas we all rely on. It's a welcome provocation, well put too by Timme, but the argument one has had against provocateurs like Nicholas Carr remains: And yet, it's there. Wikipedia exists. Along the way we talked about lazyness, the future of learning, and I had what I consider an interesting idea for how the world of knowing is changing: The cost of trying has gone drastically down. The cost of knowing has stayed the same - experimenting is free in the digital realm, but the cognitive cost of mastering the old reference material is pretty much the same. You're not reading any faster, your biology does not allow for that, but we've been able to replace an awful lot of reading with cheap and fast doing, instead. I'd like to investigate that theory in relation to Marksaved.

Moving on to more hopeful ground, Nadja Pass gave a nice introduction to the hopes behind Borgerlyst, and for me the high point of that was actually a nice discussion I had with Ernst Poulsen and Emme about the plight of local news (and Ernst's enthusiasm for fixing that). Hope to hear more about that in a future KCast.

Morten Gade told us about the "democracy problem" of the largest Danish coop, FDB, after which we moved outside to eat and continue the conversation - and talk about more democracy problems, this time in a public housing setting, from Kristoffer Rønde Møller.
To me a high point of the day was when Kristoffer blurted out - having told us about how hard it is to persuade immigrants to take in interest in the governance of the buildings they live in - "I just don't think you get to these problems in your world", meaning approximately that most of the web technology we make simply doesn't get this close to really hard problems, like overcoming language barriers and cultural barriers on the scale Kristoffer runs into in the environment he works in.

My best bet is, that he is absolutely right. Most of us work in relatively safe domains where the users are more similar to us than we like to admit. Most of us probably - to much to high a degree - design for people like ourselves.
This is good news, of course. It means there's tons of ideas still to be had, and still to be brought to life.

To end out the day, Caroline Beck shared with us some sensible and wide ranging suggestions for urban planning principles. We even got a nice poster of them - get your digital copy here (PDF).

Saturday

We kicked off with a slight program change, Igor Schwarzmann and Peter Bihr ran down a nice list of the new playful interactions with the city, that are propping up, from foursquare to stickybits and from foodies to... well, there was a lot of stuff. And then we kicked into doer gear, with a nice visual-thinking workshop from Lotte and Sten, my personal choice bit was both firming up a nice way to work and coming up with a nice symbol for doing stuff, an exclamation point, with an iteration swoosh - kinda like the logo from The Incredibles, but with an ! instead of the i. I'll start using that, possibly I need that on a T-shirt as well. I am deeply envious of visual people.

Henrik Føhns came by and gave is an impression of the Singularity University. Mark Wubben gave a really nice presentation with some good dogma rules for fast hacking. I particularly liked that the presentation was based in part on a botched attempt at fast prototyping, and not just cheerleading for "fast is good".
I would like to suggest also the following work principle, not in Mark's slides - but maybe implied: If you don't know how to solve your problem, take away resources - maybe you're just confused by your options, not by the problem.

We saw some demos, from an application specific use of the stickybits/tinyurl principle via soundscape designers for kids and Find maden to Jane's concert scarecrow for short people.

And then we closed out the talking portion of the day by hearing about an interesting project that Riem and Marie are doing, about identifying different "inventive personas" (<- my term) and how they fit into a "proper", commercial invention process. I found the work crisp and memorable.

- I was really happy with the overall level of conversation and participation, this was a very flat 1:1 type of event, and we probably couldn't have done that if we'd filled the venue to capacity, so in the final analysis, I was quite happy with the whisper marketing too, I thought it brough a great crowd together.

I don't know how much of the presentation material I'll be able to get and make available, but if you're interested, leave a note here, or on the Ning network.

Fiasko har et nyt ansigt ved navn Domenech

Guderne skal vide at det ikke var på banen, men Frankrig har alligevel givet os VMs mest mindeværdige øjeblikke, nemlig de mange skud af træner Domenech i undergangskampen mod Sydafrika. Domenech vidste jo godt, det meste af kampen, at spillet var ude og fiaskoen total. Alligevel var der ikke andet at gøre end at blive stående, og leve med at kameraet naturligvis syntes at det mest spændende ved kampen var ham. Fysisk stod fiaskoen godt til ham. Det grånende gribbeblik, på en gang intenst og apatisk - det var intenst, men tydeligvis optaget af noget andet end at gøre en forskel for spillerne på banen.
På et eller andet tidspunkt har fanden taget ved ham, og når der alligevel intet var at redde kunne han lige så godt føre sine kamplystne fejltagelser til ende, og bl.a. nægte at give hånd til vinderen efter kampen.
Det er grusomt at skulle stå der og tage imod latteren og nedværdigelsen i 70 minutter (regnet fra det sydafrikanske mål), uden at kunne gå og endda uden rigtig at kunne foretage sig noget fysisk. Holdet skal jo ledes, og man skal holde sig i det tekniske område omkring udskiftningsbænken. Domenech nærmest udfordrede den billige opmærksomhed i hans nederlag. Til tider forsøgte han at nidstirre kameraet, og dermed alle os, der sad og så ham gå ned.
Jeg tog mig i at forestille mig Domenechs figur genopfundet i et Bunuelsk vrangbillede af burgøjserlivets høflighedsformer. Det er afsløringsmareridtet, ført ud i livet. Demaskeret som fiasko, og så uden at kunne forlade scenen, man må bare stå der og tage imod latteren.

Ersatz, AKA Noboot is next weekend, and you should attend

Our mini-conference to replace the absent Reboot is coming together at the last minute. It's next weekend, the weather is steadily improving and the program is beginning to take shape. You should come too. Find out more here and sign up here.