Civil servants facing new challenges

There's been a lot of talk about ecosystems, Sometimes I worry that it is easier for administration to step outside of the ring. To be an outsider means you don't have to take a stand.

When you don't take a stand, you can stay inactive. When you don't have anything at stake, it doesn't matter how the game will end.

There is only one huge downside to all this. In Nordic countries the whole concept of welfare is built on taxation and the redistribution of Gov¨t refunds in order to keep everybody onboard.

Gatekeepers or naysayers

As the world gets automated and more and more people gather their living from bits and pieces, also the administration needs to play the same game. Civil servants play a significant role in designing  new solutions to rising challenges.

It is worthwhile to look at the services as investments, rather than costs. Only that way can we make sustainable decisions. As Mazzucato points out in her excellent book, Entrepreneurial State, it is often the government that gets to take care of certain issues that the market powers just don't see as potential gains. Public sector money is more patient, as they say in impact investing.

Taking care of societal problems in advance, before they even arise, is in the end much more effective than trying to fix things that are already broken. In gloom and doom financial times it is tempting to cut costs that are not an absolute must. How shortsighted that is!

Agile changemakers hit the wall

The Finnish society is steady and admired around the world. In this rule of law country we Finns are able to trust public sector. Each sector and office knows its duty and actually performs in quite lean processes. New phenomena, technological disruptions or a sudden flood of refugees have complicated things nastily. Solving problems call for collaboration of many a more offices than before and often the core issue seems to fall on a no man's land. The ability to make decisions is in jeopardy.

Passion to make things possible seems to explain best solutions in public sector. But often that will to change is put out with the fatal phrase "Impossible!"

New work is learning - exploring and experimenting! 

Civil servants can no longer see their work as a routine, be a part of machine. We need to become enablers! That calls for vision, ability to see the big picture and the common goal. If we fail in that, the only thing there really is to say is "No, that is impossible."

That happens also when we feel fear. Or if we feel that we really don't have a licence to act differently or explore in order to find the solution. Will the boss step in front of us when  something hits the fan?

Experiments are such a central tool because we no longer can tell in advance what will work. The boss who sees the goal out there - and wants to achieve it - will send out teams to experiment.

Civil servants are on the way to become explorers. Together we dare.

Proudly presenting: Experimental Finland

Long time, no see is an expression quite suitable here, I'd say. It seems that in order to blog in multiple languages one needs multiple audiences, too. Past year I've received constant pleas to blog in English, so let me (re)present myself :)

I came to Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in May 2016, invited to build a digital platform for co-creating and (crowd-) funding small scale experiments.

After 19 years of multiple mini careers under one employer, the Finnish Tax Administration (FTA), it was quite refreshing. Everything I had learned was now needed.

The most valuable asset being strong networks floating with wisdom and knowledge. Otherwise our small - no matter, how energetic a - team would have been facing practically a

Mission impossible 

Originally I was supposed to do the trick in 7 months. A promise had been made to deliver the platform by the end of 2016. So I started with reading the background research describing the challenges stopping innovations and experimental developing. Endless meetings were the pool of wisdom and equipped us with enough tools to design the hazy blueprint we wanted to breath into life. In October we held a two-day hackathon where three teams competed and were all rewarded for their ideation. Of the competition works an anonymous jury finally chose one team to build the platform with us.

Place to Experiment beta was ready to welcome its first experiments Mid January 2017. Then we had a few months of live development, getting ready to really go public with the platform.

Kokeilun paikka was launched in May 3rd 2017 by our Minister Ms. Anu Vehviläinen. The very next day, as part of Tulevaisuuden valtiopäivät, (English at the bottom of the page) Mr. Sipilä's Government convened for a plenary session in front of a live audience. There one of the practical tools for democracy presented to the Gov't by Ms. Vehviläinen was Place to Experiment. It was an honor to be launched in such a once-in-a-lifetime celebration for the centennial Republic of Finland.

Finland acknowledged internationally 

What has brought Finland international fame, is the systematic approach, as mentioned by the report of OECD: Systems Approaches to Public Sector Challenges. Over and over again, the following three elements are highlighted:

• Mentioning experiments in the Government program
• Team situated in the PMO 
• Digital platform to support the work

In practice, the Gov't key project of implementing experimental culture is lead by a small team working at the Prime Minister's Office. A lot of our work is making networks and outcomes visible, sharing information and making the change where old ways are piling up.

Psst, not for the first time!

Back in 2010 I got a task to assist in the work of GAO as they we're preparing an assignment for Obama Administration. Mr. Obama asked GAO to look into best practices in tax administration around the globe, and the Finnish Tax Card Online grabbed their attention. During numerous conference calls it became obvious that gathering taxation data from employers, lenders etc. and preparing the tax proposal for the customer was the big innovation. Tax Card Online was a tool to adjust taxes withheld to the final assessment. In addition, eServices provided a more efficient way to gather customer data thus enabling cost savings for the FTA.

More details in the following reports:
GAO Report to Congressional Requesters
US Senate, Hearing before the Committee on Finance


What next? I have been asked to present the Place to Experiment in Urban Futures Conference February in Vienna. The Austrians learned about our platform while in Oslo..

Can't wait to see what else AD 2018 will bring about. Let's share the journey, shall we?

New leadership!

 Lähde:
 KL: Simon Sinek NBForum 2015

Simon Sinek was in Finland (F: Link in Finnish) and was asked for some advice for our government. The situation is bad, but together you can pull through: just involve all the people.

My friend is educating herself more, in order to make her two degrees more compatible to the market. There are some remarkable theories, she shrieked, but they're all in vain, if the grassroot employer doesn't have them as a tool. 

This is how it all dawned on me.

As we were reaping the harvest this weekend, I offered to prepare some zucchini soup. For some reason ;) my mother in law was very articulate to guide me through the motions. Okay, she is a small woman, and the zucchinis were quite big.. Anyway, just split them in half and then half the other way. Okay? 

A few moments later I stand with my academic degree, pondering what Sinek had just said in my earphones, and there is this vast very curved up zucchini. Can I just cut the giant into three pieces so that I can use the knife more handily..? 

Flash of understanding!

THIS is why processes make organization dumber! That is why they drop the customer in between where it just ain't nobody's business to help her out.. 

The guidelines were specific. One who desires to do it the other way just has to have a bigger picture about what it is she or he is doing. Without the bigger picture (without courage to try something else?) the advice at hand is the only way to move on, till the doomsday. Guidelines without a licence to apply belong to assembly line only. And yes, by all means, do transfer that work to the robots!

A good leader inspires and gives hope, Sinek also said, and lets people solve their common problem together.

Later (F) someone asked where to get a leader like that.

It is not about the core knowledge of one particular leader, it is shared leadership. It is time to act, for these problems cannot be solved by one man.  Or one woman.

Get rid of the locks!

Civil society has arisen with the new government. Great ideas gather people together, but it seems to me that the Establishment is unable to find a way to involve the greatest asset it can dream to have working for it, along side: the people.

A lot has been done in ministries for the Change to happen. Co-creation and openness are in. Ministry networks evolve as civil servants reach out for each other.

But is the Establishment already too big to change? The ball is in the air, approaching with speed. Can we catch it??

In Finland there is will to join "the 5% movement" that our Prime Minister Sipilä declared as he published the new Gov't program. Civil servants, those who get along fine with their salary, started to look out for each other to join the campaign. So did the People. Their spokeswoman, Ms. Henni Ahvenlampi bombarded the Establishment in search for a way to involve.

No answer.

What happens to agility when Establishment really cements its ways to work, writes down responsibilities and procedures and cuts processes into pieces accordingly? It seems to me that anything outside of the Planned just falls in between. No catch.

If we really want the People to join in, we - the Government, the Establishment - need to open up the locks.

We have a growing problem of mould with houses that were once renovated against winds and moist.

There is no air inside. We suffocate.


Note: All links in Finnish

From openness to sustainability

My daughter is studying psychology and explains all our actions with different theories. Something like that got started last week on the Open Knowledge Festival.

On Wednesday Ministry of Finance arranged an open "hackathon" (F) for developing a country plan in order to join Open Government Partnership along with 70 other countries.

Open government, Open knowledge, Open data.. 

Opening data has been on agenda for a year now. Short-sightedly, I have settled for aiming to opening up government spending.

Last week I came across with broader views that obviously had been there for me to find. With a colleague from Isle of Man we discussed how to find and visualize the influence behind faceless enterprises. How to spot the power links in the world economy and what exactly is the thing that needs to be opened if we aim to find the real places of influence?

Customer journeys in one's own mother tongue

Data visualization came up in Visualizing Knowledge (F) seminar on Monday. Rob Waller linked literacy built on structured documents with the concept of customer journey.

On Thursday I got a sort of a wake up call on the real significance of mother tongue. I got acquainted with contract visualization already on Monday, in English. But it wasn't until M!ND researcher Stefania Passera gave the same speech in Finnish, my own mother tongue, that really got my own thinking going.

As the pieces gained their familiarity in Finnish I became able to apply the newly learned methods in the phenomena in my own work.

So this is what it means to really understand what the official actually wants of me!

Open data is not knowledge, interpretation creates understanding

In the end we got taught by a living legend. Hans Rosling so knows how to visualize "boring" data, how to interpret it and how to communicate the phenomena lurking behind millions of rows of raw data. If Bush can get it, so can you, he concluded :)

Opening data, knowledge and government means more.
Openness is the way to sustainability.

From beggars to better customer service

It's a winning ticket in lottery to be born in Finland (and stay in Finland). No need to scrape bank accounts in order to be able to pay one's taxes nor try to find a way to pay them. You don't even have that much to declare any more.

We've been able to arrange declaring as automatic as possible for the citizen. This is possible firstly with tax card (F) with which employers and other payers withhold tax on behalf of the citizen and pay him the net amount. In the end of each year, payers file annual notification (F) on the amounts paid to and for the citizen. This information is then printed in the citizen's tax return.

My cousin filed her tax return in Great Britain at about the same time, in the beginning of May. She needed to report all the six jobs, draw them from her personal filing system and report separately to HMRC. No data available from previous years. What the service did offer, was a few intelligent questions to rule out things not relevant in this customer segment. 

In Finland tax payer morale is exemplary. Last year we received a question from a customer on poker income. "I didn't know I needed to file it, can I still make it right this year?" asked a young guy admirably.

The latest example is Helsingin Sanomat Editor-in-Chief Riikka Venäläinen asking for help in reporting (Apua arjen pahiksille, F). We need better guidance in order to make it right! she rightfully demands.

From beggars to better customer service

In Italy tax authorities still attempt to effect attitudes: if you don't pay your taxes, you're a parasite: Parassita della Società, in YouTube. In Georgia, previously a Soviet state, tax administration needed to find the tax payers and their addresses in order to fill in their customer registry. The US, on the other hand, passed a law, FATCA, that demands that worldwide financial institutions file the information on behalf of US citizens - in case they didn't.

In comparison, our tax authorities are allowed to concentrate on designing better services to ensure maximum filing (where still needed). It is our aim to automate and streamline data gathering further so that it become less and less burdensome.

In our R&D efforts we try to find the most efficient and innovative ways to take care of what little reporting obligations there still remains.

This year I for one didn't even bother to open my tax return on paper. Everything I needed was in the web: receipts in my web bank or Amazon, self-aggregated reports in Google Docs etc.

Taxation in web bank?

In taxation the outcome is more or less an invoice. It is either debit or credit: you'll be granted a refund for excessive amount of taxes withheld according to your tax card or you are due an amount equaling underpayment. And the summary presents all the details of which the outcome consists of.

In this thinking tax return is my statement on the preliminary invoice. My demands for deductions adjust the calculation of the amount due.

If I were to decide, I'd send the tax invoice straight to my web bank - no more paper invoices, thank you very much! All the details needed in evaluation or corrections already await there. The most used attachments are certificates of the interests, summaries of stock exchange sales or dividends.

Would it be possible to adjust the amounts in taxation while in web bank? At least one could enter Tax Return Online while there, right?

Close the gaps on customer journey!

Riikka Venäläinen described what happens, when customer journey is not well planned. An excellent journey offers all the things needed but only the ones needed. Who else would know better what is needed than tax authorities?

Helsingin Sanomat is already answering the call to development by opening a blog (Virka-aika, in Finnish) Firstly, they want to gather citizen's experiences on poor customer experiences in public authorities. Secondly, they search for solutions collaboratively.

Tax administration says thank you and takes part in the project.

Happy 94th Independence Day, Finland!

This Independence Day also Google wanted to congratulate us.

Today Google.fi is blue and white. Nice!

My home country..
Thousands of Lakes - Pure Nature - Nightless Nights - Snow White Snow

Open data connects taxation with public spending

Knowledge is power, they say. In western countries we aim to control public decision making by making it transparent and opening it for discussion. The voters then have the power to change the decision makers they're unhappy with.

Doesn't the Arab Spring source from lack of that openness?

When we think of the complex causal connections within societies, it is obvious that the voting power is distributed unevenly. How do you care about something you don't understand?

Open data enables democracy

The recent development in ICT comes in handy. Open data makes, say, presenting government spending in a more conceivable way much easier than the dead-boring budget ledgers could ever achieve.

Apps4Finland is a competition that has really boosted innovation for a few years now. It has invited IT nerds to come up with stunning solutions of presenting data. But it is also advancing open government with invitations to open data.

My personal favorite is data visualization. Due to my background, here are a few examples that are closely related to taxation.

Taxes and other payments as a proportion of a working day

A day as an tax payer (F) describes with a watch, how your gross earnings would be divided into different payments. Click the watch for further information. Hovering the mouse above the watch takes you further in details.

First section of your earnings belongs to you, it is your net salary. Second section will cover your municipality tax and the third your state tax. The fourth sector is your share of pension fees and the fifth section will be spent on other minor fees.

Tax receipt shows how you finance the society

Tax receipt (F), on the other hand, shows you, based on your salary, how you will be financing public spending. The application is based on state budget and general information of tax percentages. Since the state budget is quite difficult with its bureaucratic wordings to apprehend, this is quite a nice way to get a hold of the bigger picture of government spending.

Yet another strong symbol of the Nordic openness and equality in Finland is that Tax Administration opens the so called public data on how individuals actually were taxed each year. Tax Administration publishes on its website information on
How the publication of data is carried out (F)
What is included in the public data (F)

Public data can be used to show how the tax laws apply to different tax payer groups. After the people have the information, they will be more able to analyze it and draw conclusions on their society, respectively. And we'll be one step closer to democracy.

Looking For A Meaningful Life

I found my Mitch Albom in Paris. His book 'Have A Little Faith' caught my eye at the airport on our way home from Lyon. It is one of those books you can't let go until you've read it. So I wanted to pick up more Alboms in my Christmas reading cart at Amazon.

Yesterday I finished 'Tuesdays With Morrie'. The story was wonderful. It seemed to have all the answers I was thinking about in my last blog.

We have two main challenges in our western worker's lives. The first is how to be a good human: a parent, child, spouse, friend, citizen. The second is how to be a good worker.

Problems arise when our priorities get mixed. It seems that we are rushing around looking for shortcuts to Fame and Fortune. In that race we pause at the altar of Mammon to sacrifice everything that really carries a meaning in our lives.

One aspect of that rat race was covered by columnist Jaakko Lyytinen who wrote (Helsingin Sanomat Dec 24, 2010, page D4) about his week without media. On his third day he pondered about slow movement, downshifting and degrowth. On the outcome of the information society he quoted Dr. Jussi T. Koski:

Complicating every day life makes us simple minded.

Dr. Koski explains this further: It happens, because our time is consumed in surviving by dealing with different types of messes and putting out fires in our ordinary lives instead of true learning or gaining sustainable growth as human beings (as we should, eh?).

Hence, our obsessive consumption of media (as in hunt for more knowledge to grow wiser?) seems to turn against our better judgement.

Another media coverage in Taloussanomat, (F) hit really hard with its title: "30-year-olds need dementia pills in order to work". The article talked about doping in work and the new standard of workers. Stock brokers with no fear, no need to sleep, knowledge workers boosting their brain with dementia pills, the new office cocaine.

..they're chasing the wrong things..

What is interesting, is that excessive media consumption can actually be explained with chemical reactions in our brains. According to researchers Irving Biederman and Edward A Vessel, every time we learn something new, this realization releases chemicals that make us feel a bliss. Isn't that what different drugs do, thus causing addiction?

Would that be the all-covering explanation to all the discontent we struggle with and neglect we cause one another? That we've changed everything enduring (that can only be built with time, slowly and gradually) in our lives to something drug-like, something that can and will take us high and fast (until we need a bigger dose).

A culture with a cry "I want everything and I want it right now! Move out of my way!"

..people walk aroung with a meaningless life..

And in that altar of Mammon we abandon our kids - and our soul. Taloussanomat (F) analyzed in another article that parents who take work at home actually steal precious time and attention from their children. Trying to attend to kids with only half of your heart never works.

The crime in it is that we're all they've got. Their self-esteem is built on our attention and interest in them. The mere thought rises a silent sob deep within me.

This is where I want to bring in my Albom.

In 'The Five People You Meet in Heaven' Albom haunts his reader by saying "All parents damage their children. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers". Fortunately, he also relieves the reader with his message of forgiveness.

Inspite all our past damages, we are blessed with possessing the key to our freedom. We just need to use it. We need to open the door that is stopping us. It is called letting go.

Mitch asks Morrie about getting used to his illness. "It's like going back to being a child again", Morrie says.

This theme of letting go and forgiving, others and - what is sometimes even harder - oneself, is strongly present in Albom's themes. If you were being deprived in your childhood, don't lose the rest of your life by letting your past hold you a captive. Dare to confront your fears and losses. Step outside your anger. Go after anything you've missed.

Be this wonderful person you now are, with your scars and deprivations and all.

Morrie's entire being becomes somehow victorious in front of death. In order to be able to go on to the very end, he finds the small pleasures of life anew.

"In the beginning of life we need others to survive. And at the end of life, you need others to survive. But here's the secret: in the between, we need others, as well", he reveals to Mitch. He dares to rely on Life, totally, like once before, as a child. He says,

The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.

"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things."

After all, you are in charge of the rest of your life, whether you're going to be happy or miserable. Once the one who hurt you is gone, there is nothing he or she can do about your feelings. It's up to you now. Only you can let go. The choice is yours.

"The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devoting yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."


Previously on related topics:
Who is Man 2.0?
Empower every man

Looking Back

It's time to close the books for the working year 2010. And it's good to take a look back, at the projects you've been busy with. Actually, you really should make a list of your accomplishments, because day in, day out in your every day routines seem to bury them.

And the only thing you seem to recollect is the aching feeling of being only halfway there, too many things unaccomplished..

How grand it is to be able to be satisfied with what you've done.

Just before Christmas I visited my friend in the middle of her mourning. What a different Christmas she got. It was only the night before that I got education on how to prepare a traditional Christmas course à la Häme. There was also a knitting at hand.

The very next morning my friend found her mother in eternal peace. Who on earth will finish the knitting for her now, my friend pondered in the middle of her sorrow.

I left with the knitting.
It is time to enjoy the company of our loved ones.
Tomorrow, God willing..

Creativity or productivity?

Whenever companies strive for higher productivity, they should look into value. Our traditional thinking focuses on opposites which is a kiss of death to all creativity, said Dr. Edward De Bono.

Last week's seminar (Media Trivium, 25th anniversary of commercial radio in Finland) was set at the Senate Square. As creative people crowded around in this beautiful atmosphere, a sudden thrill struck me. What is a civil servant doing here? What would I answer if some one, hunting for top productivity, should come to me in the afternoon, asking "Prove me what you achieved today".

The so called quarterly capitalism means no time for creativity. At its worst it means that a project of, say, 800 days can't afford one single day for developing its own work. Reasonable??

Dr. De Bono wore red socks, and I loved him the moment I saw him. He sat down, had a lovely set of pens to write and draw on old-fashioned slides. His words gave life to lines he drew, the words he wrote gave rhythm to the stories he told us. New horizons spread our consciousness.

Traditional western thinking squeezes us to look for only one solution, the ultimate right answer, the Truth. Every problem we seek solution for, tends to take us in opposite corners, just as enemies. Take heed, said Dr. De Bono!

In less than an hour this Nobel nominee (2005) pictured dozens of situations where abandoning the traditional thinking freed the solution seekers to see in new ways instead of the obvious. Certain mobile giant had spent millions of dollars in search of a solution where Dr De Bono and his lateral thinking elevated them in just one afternoon. But, the few thrills he threw us, showed that new thinking needs exercise.

All higher productivity seeking government offices would do well in practising their own thinking. We need desperately new tools for knowledge work. In addition we should be taught creative thinking. We need six thinking hats! Today's HBR article The Three Threats to Creativity focused on exactly the same topic.

Trend researcher Herman Konings reminded us about how short the time was for mobile phones to spread around the globe. Augmented reality is already here. What else awaits us just around the corner? - Makes me wonder, how taxes fit in in the future.

Mark Selby from Nokia led us, the new content designers, to our common topic. Radio connects audiences with advertisers; CRM in a studio has already revolutionized the means of engagement.

And, let us not forget the power of the radio! Sound without pictures means that we all illustrate a story of our own. Such a content is highly emotional and, thus, engaging.

Productivity in knowledge work?

Productivity in public sector is, in principle, justified. Everything financed with tax refunds must constantly be under critical viewing: can things be done more effectively, with less resources - perhaps even outsourced?

But. A big BUT. Time to stop to think!

The mechanistic models of measuring financial efficiency were based on scarcity in industrial production processes. The quicker you can get the product out of the line, the better. Do these laws apply in society, to people or knowledge workers?

Helsingin Sanomat (26 Aug 2010, page D1) featured an article about mental hospitals and their hard measures in treatment. However, an Imatra model came up: their statistics always looked better than elsewhere, their patients kept coming in but were also let out easier than elsewhere. Others were stunned: why do you what you do?

The answer is beautiful in its austerity.

Imatra looked at its health care system as a financial entity, like a zero-sum-game. If mental care closed their doors, ie. ceased treating patients with early symptoms, their life gets worse. Later those same patients are bound to need help, this time only more drastic and definitely more expensive measures.

The problem in sectoral management is, that all departments optimize their "sub-costs". Imatra, a blow away from bankruptcy at that time, resorted to the good old common sense. They reviewed total costs. When help is needed later in another section, child welfare, schools or social services, their costs exceed dramatically those of early stage intervention's. True leadership!

Researcher Ilkka Tuomi continues on same lines (HS 26 Sept 2010, page C14). Productivity laws that apply in mass production, can severely twist decision making in information society. Value is born in social networks from innovation and production of new meanings.

How do we speed up these processes? Think faster? I don't think so.

Leadership faces enormous challenges when organization's entities entail both physical products (tax returns), process developing (services, education, communications) and ICT (customer applications and office tools). Money is the scarce resource that they all are competing for. Without true leadership and solid vision sub-optimization is a real threat.

Organizations and decision making must be built on interaction. Sharing knowledge is essential. Collaborative tools and a new mindset enable Enterprise 2.0 and Society 2.0, accordingly.

Becoming a knowledge worker does call for a small revolution.

What then happens is nothing but magic, as Oscar Berg, a net friend of mine, beautifully put it: It's actually pretty simple.

Previously on new ways to work:
Work 2.0 comes with a revolution
Work 2.0 is collaborative
On the way to Information Society

Too big to fail?

Recent Fiscal Times introduced me with Pres. Reagan's former budget director David Stockman. This "enfant terrible" shocked in his time by admitting: “None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers’’.

Our public sector is now in the phase of building bigger and bigger entities of services. In doing so, I've come up with a similar thought.

Economy of scales may also carry a side effect. As things grow bigger, the number of those who can really understand what is going on grows smaller. Failures and misbehaviors do slip through, giving room to delusions of being too big to fail, so victorious nothing can harm us anymore.

In service chains covering the whole of society also their financies tend to complicate.

Open economy and eternal growth

In the times of regulation the economical ecosystem was (somewhat more) controllable. Now the whole world is an open economy, and a rapid growth or shift in consumption in one corner is bound to carry an effect somewhere else. Whoever tries to foresee the future developments judging by the numbers in recent history, truely needs to be quite a genious.

Stockman, like our ministry of finance a few years ago, Mr. Niinistö, calls for debt deflation, downsizing and a rise in national savings.

The principle is chrystal clear, let's just recall our studying years! If you gain 200 and have no assets to liquidate, 200 is what you can spend. After that, you are in the loan market. If you can prove a future revenue, you may discount that promise for a loan at the present. - I believe the whole world now knows, there is an end on that road of getting into debt..

Streamlining processes lowers expenditure

The Finnish way of cutting back public expenditure is to streamline processes. Up until now we've done that because of scarce human resources, a problem common to the aging western world, sometimes even for the benefit of our customer.

However, the next step must be unifying the common pools of data, gathering data only once at the source and sharing those data pools between government agencies. Some of that thinking you may read in my recent post.

The principle of open data (F) adds to transparency of government and optimizes the use of common data. Nowadays there are many government agencies whose funding is arranged solely on the revenues from distributing data. On government budgeting this means blurring image of the entity and complicated finances.

In practice, government agency A has budget means to buy data from B, also a government agency. B, however, is granted government funding for only part of its functions, so it needs to budget on revenue basis. This all results in a financial cobweb, sometimes impossible to audit trail.

In order to make things more reasonable and transparent, the core function of supplying the original data will be funded by the government. Distribution of that data between government agencies would become free of charge, or be done at cost pricing at the most.

We Finns do handle many areas already quite effectively. But I wonder how many brilliant solutions there are in many other areas, just waiting for us to find.

Disclaimer
These thoughts are mine and do not represent views of my employer, Finnish Tax Administration or the Finnish public sector, either.

Productivity: quantity or entity?

In some public sector strategies the aim is to improve the productivity but there is also anticipation of a new leadership.

In public sector offices instructions used to be signed by one man and then all the public and personnel obeyed. Budgeting was supposed to take these offices to a more business-like supervision.

Certain problems still prevailed. There seemed to be little or no connection between the annual actions and their budgeting; change management and project-like financing arose a problem time and time again. One thing is common in both private and public sector: sub-optimization.

Productivity is haute couture in the Aging Europe

Anja Alasilta blogged about result-based rewarding in emergency call centers (F). Quantities and rewarding seem to be an equation with few solutions in all public sector.

Productivity states that its measure should be, say, phone calls per call center worker. That rate will thus get improved only if "You just talk faster to the customer"?!

Tax Administration took the customer in the focus by early 2000's. Niche experts needed to broaden their horizons, and all of a sudden there was no point in counting bits and pieces. The real issue was to track the whole customer process. What happens to the quality of a tax return if our guidance is A, B or C?

We began to talk about the impact of our actions. Instead of viewing our own doings alone, we now search impressiveness in customer's process.

We talk about the new leadership as something that is insightful and participative for our personnel. We are looking for ways to support innovations and their dissemination. How do you do that?

What kind of organization would best support innovation?

Co-Creation: Marketing and R&D

I had the opportunity to hear how Nokia has been doing their co-creation. Jussi Mäkinen (@luovanto) gave a speech at a seminar on social media in marketing. Jussi is the marketing manager in charge of co-creation and launching of N900.

I especially liked a few points he brought up in his presentation.

I've talked (pardon, written) a lot about passion. So do Like Minds. The way I see it, these new social media "market squares" can be seen as tribes; communities that take form around one (or few) topics. They can be values, philosophies or ways to act. Most often, however, there is a core doing, something tangible that unites the people coming together.

But whatever that core is, most oftenly the brightest common nominator is passion.

Jussi brought up passion, too. In their search of the new, they came across high professionality, passion and freedom to create. On the other side, there are rigid hierarhcical structures of the official organization who has to cope with all kinds of regulations, even laws, restricting their R&D funcion.

Agility, to my understanding, is the main explanation to why unofficial structures are capable to come up with results and create faster than "the old school". How then does agility live inside our organizations? There's evidence that it doesn't.

There's talk about Facebook generation and High-Performance Teams and Radical Management. We need new kinds of structures to nurture these workers - creators - in their new ways of doing things. The same applies in the public sector!

Gone are the good old days of industrial management, eh?

Processes are universal

Developers in the 21st century are very privileged. With seats in the front row, we are equipped with apps and tech and knowledge our ancestors only dreamt of.

But what counts the most in our ability to create new, is our ability to apply and enrich what has already been done.

In ICT "that old" often seems to be an impediment. But the deep fulfillment in life comes from beating the difficulties, solving the problems and climbing over the mountains of obstacles.

Enough with the chitchat, what I wanted to share with you today, is a notion I'd call the fourth step in developing eServices.

Developing ICT-based services is like..

Me and my colleague developers and visionaries have often envied the "new" Eastern European countries. They had a fresh start, building everything from the scratch, being able to align everything at once, at least, so it seems. More mature ICT-countries suffer from the burden of the past. Our systems are partly old technique, and combining that old with something new and very different can be tough, costly - sometimes even impossible.

..building with blocks?

What I've learned, in my networks of different branches of the society, is to look at things like blocks or Legos, if you like, and then share the same blocks whenever possible. It seems to me that building something new can only start at the ground level - obviously! For the most efficient outcome, it also needs to be modular, done with blocks.

In public sector, my fear is that we're always trying to build something else.. something that "can't be built with these old blocks, so let's build a brand new something else" - only to find out that we can't get rid of that old one, either, because this new one needs bits and pieces of that old one. Or, that old one still carries a bit of the old process and the new one takes care of only part of the entity.

For higher productivity we would need solutions that truly make it possible to let go of something old. Otherwise our empire keeps eternally expanding.

Data as the smallest joint particle

When you can isolate data into the smallest mutual factor, you can look at any process as a flow of data. The real productivity can only be achieved with wisdom: sharing information, combining processes whenever possible and starting with the customer / citizen. A few great examples on this road to Real-Time Economy



are eInvoicing, Fully Integrated Accounting (F) and Unified Reporting Code.

eInvoicing takes all the information electronically, from system A to system B. It is the green way, the productive way and the most efficient way to work. And, thanks to development alongside SEPA, eInvoicing with its ISO20022 standard will also enable carrying that data of the financial transaction directly to accounting.

Fully Integrated Accounting can thus entail data from the eInvoicing, via an electronic accounting reference. Further on, data on actual payments and the different particles, split payments, of the total amount can also be verified by the bank.

Overlapping use of data needs..

Accounting, however, is only the halfway. Closing the books starts the marathon of a multitude of reporting. Businesses need to file in their tax returns, report to statistics, file their financial statement in the trade register, to name but a few. All those "sub-processes" demand skills and further calculations.

Now, with our previous thought of joint data as building blocks, Unified Reporting Code (F) has now split certain items of information into smaller fragments in a way that enables more automatic reporting in Finland.

..harmonization of concepts

Essential blocks are the steps toward more Real-Time Economy and higher productivity. What public sector needs to do and has now started to do, is unifying its core concepts. Definitions and meanings must be unified, in order to ICT to co-work, mingle and be integrated.

With meta data, relations and data models taken care of, a real ontology will one day enable semantic web and enormous savings in overlapping workload, vain searches and loss of information.

In the meanwhile - let's work together.

Designing services?!

Helsinki will soon be the World Design Capital - and the media is waking up.

Last spring our Director General asked me to write a summary on our eServices: "It's for Helsinki WDC application". I have to admit, it took a while before I, a civil servant, was able to connect the dots.

But I loved the idea: Designing services! (F)

I was able to find the similar thinking as did Pete Kercher, the ambassador of Design for All Europe in last Sunday's HS Editorial (F)

I mean strategic design, using design to change the direction of the entire economy. What's happened in Finland past two decades is not a miracle. It is successful design.

Strategic marketing (F) focuses on the customer and his experience, instead of the product or a service. Designing services means the same: excellent user experience is the result of a service that has been designed (successfully). If the user experience is not pleasant, the whole investment of marketing communications is a waste.

Kercher summarized the concept of "Design for All": It is design that acknowledges that people are different, it promotes social equality and connect people into the community.

Another pro, service designer Satu Miettinen wrote in HS editorial (F) about service design in the public sector:

Service design challenges designers to work with people, hence new methods are needed. -- In the public sector it means change both in service culture and administrative procedures.

Taxation of individuals is a Design Service at its best!

We have designed the whole process of gathering data for taxation: money and information flowing from customers to businesses and Tax Administration. Have you ever given it a thought? Me neither, at least not before our Director General got the request to support the WDC applicant.

You take your Tax card to your employer for your taxes to be withheld from your salary and payed on your behalf. The data is also reported for your Tax return. This applies to all other monetary transactions, as well: the bank reports your interests for your housing deductions, while listed companies are liable to report your dividends and taxes withheld from them and so on.

There's a lot of collaboration behind the scene, and it all results as your pre-filled Tax return. All you need to do is to check it and fill in the blanks (if there are any) - do it in the web, if you like!

Good gets noticed!

Tax Return Online got us to the eGovernment Awards -finals. But that's not all: from the small country of Finland we had two posts: City of Helsinki was presenting her design beauty.

Helsinki Service Map is a great collection of services, search and maps, now including Espoo and Vantaa, as well. It is also communication: the user interface allows feedback. What a wonderful way to connect people with their community!

Next step is bound to cross the borderline between municipalities and the state. This was alredy planned in SADe (F).

This all is good news to the Brand committee appointed by the Foreign Minister. There's no reason to hold back the smile, even if the Financial Times does concentrate on the more traditional design..

BTW, Helsinki proudly presents Lahti, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen alongside her as the WDC2012.

You can follow Helsinki and her WDC preparations in
web: World Design Capital Helsinki 2012
Twitter: @wdchelsinki2012
Facebook: WDC-fan page

Are you a brand?

I was lucky on my first working day. We were three innovators, inspiring each other.

It's like a ball game, all aiming to keep the ball up in the air.

But more than that: each and everyone has his shot with the ball! After a day like that, everybody leaves home fulfilled.

We discussed personal branding, the personality of an expert and competence and its relationship to the organization.

On the subject:
Löydy - brändää itsesi verkossa (F) Tuija Aalto ja Marylka Yoe Uusisaari
Personal Branding Done Right Mike Myatt
Johtaja, perusta blogi (F) Harto Pönkä

What is it that entitles someone to speak up in the social media? How do you earn the credit? Who is it that should present the organization, who is allowed to? Judging by what I've been reading, we Finns are only getting there, where the rest of the world largely already is. My experiences and thoughts come from the public sector.

But hey, the same applies to face to face, my colleague pointed out:

You need to earn the trust in each and every communication

And I say, we've witnessed it a thousand times that the mandate is handed out to a pet person who then does nothing. In order to success that person needs the competence, too. Too often power and competence do not prevail in same roles.

That's when the organization faces the moment of truth: how do you settle the conflict like that? You either change the mandate-- or you go on. It has been seen, that the actual work is taken to the person with the competence but the credit goes stubbornly to the one originally appointed to the job. I know no bigger dismotivation than a situation like that!

We are drafting a report on our preliminary trials (F) in social media. Finnish Tax Administration took the risk and went out to the most popular social media community, Suomi24.fi (F) with the promise to answer all the questions regarding filing of personal tax return. Another trial was attending a popular blogging community of a major paper, Aamulehti.fi (F)

Another topic in our discussions was the notion of communities: social media is definitely not another tool in the endless row of niceties for the top communication officers, not for others. The passport is validated with the right attitude and a suitable role.

It's like a market square! Our blog (F) was one stand; Suomi24 Q&A site(F) another. Thus the corporate site Vero.fi is the third, campaign site (F) fourth. - Together they all give Tax Administration its face.

We gave a disclosing party / feed back occasion to the participants. They were ordinary tax officers trying out something new. It was a joy to hear their comments: this was a new way to face the customer, it enriches the ordinary work plus they had the opportunity to develop new skills.

They want more!

I'd rather publish the advice to thousands in the web than repeat it over and over in the phone, one by one.

Most of all, Work 2.0 is collaborative it calls for a revolution in the minds of people. Along the way comes something new, Man 2.0

He is a brand, a living person with values. Those values guide his life, let him represent proudly his employer and yet meet with his customers in a humble manner. He can and wants to share his competence because there's a need for it out there. He's not like the ancient civil servant, saying, This is mine, hands off! He doesn't hide his knowledge.

Public sector is undergoing a revolution. Great many people cry out: let's stay out! We already have our website, that'll do!

What do you think, is it enough?
Is the expert also a brand? Are you?

Empower every man

Robin Hood's sales pitch seems to be the one of social media's, too.

But it also entails elements of one of the greatest truths: do unto others as you yourself would like to be treated. One missionary truth is, that one shouldn't help people to helplessness but to help themselves.

A few weeks ago I read an HBR article by Clayton M. Christensen.

“Look, I’ve got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel.” -- But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think—and then he reached what I felt was the correct decision on his own.

The great change we are experiencing has two sides. It can suck you into an endless hunt of more and more to yourself. On that road you're bound to be seducted to choosing wrong, against your better judgment. Or you can get a sort of glimpse what it's all about, and choose to want to help others.

Mr. Christensen writes that according to Frederick Herzberg the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements.

Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.

That's why this great teacher takes his students to some very basic questions. They don't seem to handle managing at all, or so it seems at the first glance. But come to think of it, a Man is an entity that cannot separate his private Self from his working Self.

Or at least, the behavior is a co-creation of motives and values: that's why these questions are, in fact, the only right ones!

First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career?

Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness?

Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail? Though the last question sounds lighthearted, it’s not.

I've loved this social media community that co-creates, shares and helps one another. Then there would seem to be the other kind, like in all life: those to whom everything is a great sales pitch on Me (Myself and I).

Someone once asked, Can humans truly act with altruistic motives? Or should even the rewarding feelings from an unselfish act be counted among selfishness. What do you think?

Who is Man 2.0?

A few months ago I was struggling with "evil minds", the scene and plotting on a level that reminded me of the French court.

Is this where Man has "risen" in 2010, I remember thinking. Then I bumped into the latest Robin Hood with Russell Crowe.

Rise and rise again..until lambs become lions

I opened the trailer (sorry, can't seem to find the one anymore) and completely fell in love with the words. They promised change. I wrote them down so that I would remember.

Empower every man and you'll gain strength.
Are you ready to be who you are?

There's a familiar echo in here. Is Robin Hood getting social in 2010?

Yesterday I had a nice *talk* with Scott Gould. We pondered what was keeping people from sharing and collaboration. Scott is about to blog about that.

We've lived an era of enormous wealth and greed. Wealth rips off man's humanity, claim the humanists, it's every man for himself. Even in this era of social media, they say, the majority of people is just screaming their name. It's all about me, myself and I.

My recent experiences give hope for humanity.

My friend started a fight for her Down sister, as her weaponry she has a blog (F), Twitter and Facebook. It's only her first week, but she's already raised a significant amount of support from her own network. Social media can make a difference.

Her question is, why don't the civil servants care. I have been worrying something quite alike: the civil servants seem to lack courage to be themselves, or think by themselves. In trying to make the Gov 2.0, the good old obedient attitude "Don't do anything unless you're told to" turns out to be the loser's garment.

Fortunately, people want to dive in when they become passionate about something.

Last night I watched Griff Rhys Jones in Sydney. There he heard an astonishing witness to the Sydneysidean concept of mateness. The ladies he met told him that they are ready to give up on materia in order to be able to spend time with their friends.

Then a young woman told what the level of that friendship really is. After her husband had got a cancer, their friends collected a half a million dollars so that he could travel to the States to get treated there. He got cured.

That is Man 2.0.
Caring. Putting others before oneself. Prioritizing the real thing. Life.