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Subject: Re: [tgf] RE: TGF DELIVERABLES
Andy Thanks for your as usual very thoughtful contribution. If
I’ve understood all this we could confuse ourselves with complexity if we
are not careful. I don’t have a readymade answer to it but it confirms
my opinion that we should look to produce a generic model supported by a
number, say 3-4, of scenarios for typical government/public sector set ups,
which is what the List of Deliverables in the TC Charter infers. But that may
be easy to say and hard to produce…-) Clearly this whole subject is
something we will need to nail very early on in the next TC meeting. BTW we had a very similar discussion about government viz-a-viz public
sector when reviewing the ToR of the eGov Member Section and the accepted compromise
there was to talk about “all jurisdictions of government”
which is a phrase we might wish to use in the TC going forward.
Something for our Editors to ponder on and come forward with a draft Glossary
entry for TC approval. John From: Andy Hopkirk [mailto:andy.hopkirk@gmail.com]
Hi I concur with the notion that we get our language re scope
sorted out quickly: but....
How to resolve? Not sure really - these are stream of conciousness thoughts
for now.... I'm reminded of some recent comments attributed to John
Suffolk (UK gov CIO - kind of, given my comments just made) to the effect that
of the £b17 spend in (some or all of?) UK public sector, he as as CIO had
effective influence over only £b7 of it, i.e. significantly less
than 50% The remainder he had no control over and neither did
central gov because it was spent under devolved spending powers to bodies
who, in practice, could go their own way if they wanted to. So, you have to ask, what's the utility of the centre
deciding AoG or AoPS policy then? Could be a bit of waste of time, eh? The
'natural units of consideration' are just not AoG or AoPS at all... Of course one way out of this would be to remake the
scenario so that AoG and or AoPS are indeed meaningful natural units: hence the
suggestions recently detected that the "centre" will be
"mandating" again soon... Well, unless there is a revolutionary change to the pattern
of organisation of central gov depts and the rest of the devolved 'units' in
the wider public sector, I will predict that the success of this new round
of mandation will be exactly the same as that of the eGIF and many other
'mandations from the centre' we've seen in years past - it won't work. We'll end up instead at nonsense like 'mandatory guidelines'
being issued by Cabinet Office or similar, of which some will
just not take a blind bit of notice and do so without penalty - and rightly
so, if the accountability structures remain as they are now. One hope, therefore, for those in this 'one centre' of
their effecting the changes they want across the piece might run like this...
Beginning to sound familiar is this?... (1) = CSR outcome,
average 19% cut in budgets; (2) = procurement from pre-approved suppliers and
Gov Apps stores or similar 'company shops' on a preferred network = new PSN;
(3) = open data initiatives and being pilloried in the press/ online forums/
blogs etc. All quite cunning really, if accurate. So where does this leave us here....
Observational aside: This inter- .v. intra- distinction can
be questioned. Can they not be abstracted to a level where they are aspects of
the same thing? Consider this... In an inter-unit scenario, say A
<-> B, we think of A and B as two unique identities to be connected and
made interoperable. In an intra- scenario, say inside A, we'd think of two
parts (a) and (b) interoperating, say A(a) <-> A(b) etc. Abstractly,
exactly the same is happening in each case: some 'natural unit' A or B or A(a)
or A(b) is interoperating with some other 'natural unit'.
This leads me to consider the CST processes and artifacts to be,
I suggest, scale invariant, i.e. there is no longer any utility in
thinking inter- or intra- as far as the process and artifact
definitions go. Similarly there's no utility in getting hung up
on 'AoG' or 'sectors' or 'business areas' UNLESS these are well
justified terms (= are good 'natural units' to be thinking about). So.... To make the CST model truely scale invariant, and
thus applicable to any size and form of government/ public sector/ business
area/ sector etc,, we only need to refine the language in which it is expressed
to take it out of such context-specific terms and generalise it in terms
of some definition of natural units. Of course, when pitching/ applying it to a
specific government/ public sector/ business area/ sector, one would
instantiate the model in their natural unit terminology: but here we
are trying to work towards defining a standard, hence, I suggest, our
using a more abstract, context neutral language to describe the standard
will make it a better, more widely usable standard precisely because of its
context neutrality. The key insights will be in the general model the new
standard presents, not in thinking about examples of its instantiation in UK
central gov/ local gov, health, justice, Scotland, Isle of Man, the Russian
Federation, Moldova, Japan or New Zealand governments/ departments/ sectors or
whatever. Andy |
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