I’ve acquired a ton of new knowledge since moving from a policy to a digital role. The nugget I’ve found myself repeating most is this elegant and succinct taxonomy of digital capability.
“Depending on where you look, digital capability might mean one of four things. The ability to use a computer. The ability to tweet. The ability to do something requiring specific deep knowledge, like technical architecture, user research or front-end design. Or the ability to see how digital technology enables the transformation of an organisation to focus on user needs, and make that change happen.”
The digital community aside, civil servants in many departments are far from settled yet on what is meant by digital. The post of ‘digital officer’ is being advertised right now at one of the big departments as a job in a communications team. Too often in my previous policy experience, digital has been lazily characterised as ‘whizzy’.
But getting a common understanding of this taxonomy is vital. Pursuing perfection for each definition requires different skills, strategies, and organisational design. And obviously will lead to different outcomes. It’s much harder for government to pull together in one direction when the name of that direction is not yet commonly agreed and understood.
I’m later to the digital party than many. No doubt lots of effort has been put into getting this message across. But I have arrived before quite a few too, and can safely say the job is far from over.
Originally published on Medium.