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.

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.

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.