Video transcript: Data in the public sector – Part 3: Social licence and co-design

A transcript for part 3 of an interview with the Government Chief Privacy Officer about using data in the public sector.

Title: Data in the public sector – An interview with the Government Chief Privacy Officer – Part 3: Social licence and co-design

Karen Smith (Director, Research and Development, Office of the Auditor-General)

We spoke about this just at the very start of the conversation around social licence and how that

plays out. What does social licence mean?

Russell Cooke (Government Chief Privacy Officer)

So social licence really is a state where the citizens that we wish to seek information from, or provide services to, actually give us the permission to do these things. The worst thing you can do is put something into the field of play – a service, some sort of feature – but not have the permission, not have the understanding and the permission education with people you serve, who those services might be targeted to, to say, “This is a good thing to do; I allow you to do it.” So, really, social licence, you could argue it’s kind of a social contract. It’s really a relationship between, in this case, ourselves and the public we serve to say, “This is okay.”

The thing with social licence is that it’s always changing. People’s attitudes, public attitudes to what’s right, what’s fair, what’s just, where’s the privacy concerns or where are the ethical concerns or the rights concerns or moral concerns, are always changing. Public perception always changes. Events that we see in the media – not necessarily about Government, actually – the sort of entities that we know and have heard a lot on the news, all those things start to change the public attitude towards what’s okay and what’s not okay to do with my information, or to share or to derive from what I’ve provided you or others provided you.

And so the thing about social licence, it isn’t just given once and given forever. You’ve constantly got to go work a conversation with the public about, “We want to do these things. We want to create these benefits. We want to improve your lives. We want to create a fairer and more just society. We want to create a prosperous nation. Those are things that we really strive to achieve. But we can’t do it to you; we need to do it with you.” And so it’s really important that that social licence construct has to support an agreement that we have between us to do what we do. We’re still thinking of ways to innovate the way that we might engage our communities more effectively.

It’s something that, as we codesign, and genuine codesign – and I don’t mean codesign within agencies; I mean codesign with people – things such as our Service Innovation Lab where we’re bringing real people in. “Help me design this.” “What are your needs? What do I need to know about you? What can you provide me that you feel comfortable with if I’m offering you this service? What gives us both mutual benefit?” Those conversations, we’re starting to bring more of the people that we’re designing the services for into the table to design the services with them and for them, not just to them.

Karen

So I’ve heard the word ‘codesign’ – “If I’ve got ‘codesign’ on there, then I’m going to get it over the line.”

Russell

Yeah.

Karen

So how would I know by reading something that this is real true codesign and not just because it’s a good word to say right now?

Russell

Yeah, sure. I would expect to have some actual sound bites from an actual people in those cases. Because, when you do codesign, you’ve got to produce a whole bunch of information. You’ve got to produce sound bites of information. You might be just videos, post-it notes, pictures, all those sorts of things. Show me some of the evidence that that actually occurred. Because those codesign sessions aren’t just, “I’ll email you and it’s a codesign.” Actually, no, they’re done face-to-face; they’re done in workshops. Actually, they’re done with post-it notes on walls and pens and that sort of stuff.

Karen

So it’s not about, “Here, I’m going to write this report about the services I think you need. Here, read it, sign it off and let’s codesign.”

Russell

Yeah, that’s not codesign. No, that’s not codesign at all. Codesign’s generally face-to-face, collaborative, working with input and revisions and testing. But also I think it’s about that transparency thing we talked about before as well. I think you’ve got to be willing to put that stuff out online and receive that feedback and constantly have it being monitored. So codesign in its inception is really about getting us together and having evidence that says, “This is okay.” And, actually, essentially who’s just signed this off at the end of the day? Well, yeah, you could argue the chief executive needs to do it, whoever it is on that side. But, actually, you want the people you’re serving who are going to receive this service to sign it off. So I’d imagine that we should be doing more of that, so I’d be looking for some sort of evidence that we have had that.

Karen

If we’re doing more of that, for the privacy part of it, does that capture and cover a lot of the privacy issues?

Russell

That’s where you can test it out. That’s where you can test out, “Well, I’m trying to offer this but I think I need to know these things; do you think that’s right?” Well, if you’re bringing in people, they might say, “Actually, well, you don’t need to know that, because only one in every 10 cases or something do I need to share that information.” So they can actually tell you not just their level of comfort, but actually, they can give you an idea of what would actually be important for them in that circumstance.

So they’ll give you some pointers and then let you say, “Well, how much of it is personal information, how much is not personal information? How much do I know already and I have an ability to use, I can test that out? How much do other agencies have that I could say, ‘Well, I could get this information over here because they’d already captured it so I don’t have to ask you again, but I would need to create a sharing agreement to do that. Is that okay, the implications of that?’” So you could have that conversation. It’s a dialogue.

Karen

Does that make things happen quicker, do you think?

Russell

I think so, too. So the way I look at it is about safe innovation. If you rush to get things out there and you don’t do this codesign collaboration type of thing, I think one of the risks is you get it out there and people go, “That’s not good,” and you go back to reworking it from scratch again. The idea here is that you’re iterating, you’re building, you’re designing, you’re exploring, you’re testing limits, you’re getting the approvals all the way through that process. You don’t tend to have to go back to the beginning to restart the whole process. So some people might say it’s a bit organic or whatever it is, but, actually, I think the end result’s faster and of higher quality.

You’re less likely to wind up with a surprise at the end of it, less likely to wind up with something that doesn’t work for people at the end of it. You’re going to respect their rights, their needs, their wishes, and obtain that licence that we talked about. Because you’ve had those conversations all the way through.

Karen

When you think about your coach in the system, is that quite a different way from working as a government…?

Russell

As a concept?

Karen

Yeah, as a public sector. How’s that…

Russell

I suspect we probably already do it, but I think we’ve just codified it. We tried to use the coaching analogy because we found it’s just relatable; people understand it. I suspect we do – and I know in other areas we do have coaching roles. Other functional leads and other head professionals actually have coaching roles but maybe don’t describe it in that manner. I think it’s a thing that we’ve latched upon. It’s a model I like to see repeated, because I think everybody needs a coach. Individuals and teams need coaches; it’s just an inherent fact of growing and developing and nurturing our talent and our people. We talk about, in HR terms, about being coaches or personal development.

So what you’re coaching for comes down to the question: is it for privacy? Let’s pick other things. Is it for health and safety? Is it for technology knowledge? Is it for financial stuff? So who do you learn from? Who can guide you; who can support you; who can buddy with you? Who can say, “Tweak this bit; learn from these people as they play a team?” So, actually, everybody needs a coach; it’s just that we’ve codified in, in our sense. But I think the model just seems to work.

Karen

Because it seems like a different way that we might be going around to solve some of the big, wicked problems we might have that we were trying to wrestle with as a public sector. By having the people right there with us on that journey who the services are we’re trying to design…

Russell

I agree.

Karen

And we’re not doing it to them; they’re part of the process of trying to sort this.

Russell

Well, again, back to the sporting analogy. Every so often we change the rules of the game. But we want to bring the spectators along with us in those conversations because, actually, ultimately, we could change the rule of the game, but, if it affects the spectators’ enjoyment or the benefit they derive from that game or the value for money they might have from that game, they’re not going to come again. So, if they don’t come again, then you start to question about why you’re doing this anyway. So, actually, you go back to undo the rule.

So actually a very similar thing. So, actually, “If we’re doing this, let’s trial a couple of things and see if that works, get the feedback from the spectators” – or, in this case, citizens – “and let’s see how that works. If it’s good, then we can embed it and we can build upon it.” We’re not having to completely rewire the entire game from scratch every time we do that. So I think that’s really important. But coaches help facilitate those conversations. Coaches help guide those conversations. The other thing is that coaches need coaching themselves.

So the other thing that we look at is, where can we learn from? We don’t know everything; I would say we don’t. While we’re a coach, we’re not the expert of expert of experts. Nobody knows everything about everything. So, where we can learn from others in the system, we love it; we bring it on board. Where we can learn from others in a global sense, bring it on board. So, for us, coaches have to continually learn and adapt and learn their trade and keep learning their trade, so that’s the other important thing as well. And, if we don’t know, we’ll put our hand and go, “Well, we don’t know, but we can find out who does know, and we can bring them to the table. We learn; they learn; everybody learns.” It’s an important part of that coaching role.

So, yeah, we’d like to see more coaching in the system. Or, at least, more roles like ours in the system that describes themselves as coaches, because we think that that works for us.

Karen

To help lift up and…

Russell

Yeah. To help lift performance of the entire team, not just individuals. Individuals and teams.

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