Digital Government Excellence. Siim Sikkut

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СКАЧАТЬ if everybody knows where to go and if the target is clear, then people will deliver even if times are a little bit shaky sometimes. You also have to be honest and tell if things are not so good sometimes. But the key is in setting and explaining the goals.

      A really useful thing was to go outside Finland to learn. Once I started, I soon went to the meeting of Nordic Government CIOs and then the European Union CIO network meeting. I also went to see some countries' colleagues directly just to understand what they were doing or what was going on in the world. I had worked in public sector only on consolidation of IT services in Finland; I did not know what was happening at the state level in other countries. I wanted to know what others were doing and pick up from them the good things. You also start to learn from good colleagues the things you should not do!

      When I went to these international meetings, there was initially a mistrust in the team that I was doing it just for travels and wondering why was I not in Finland. I tried to show the value to the team by always going through in our monthly meetings what I had learned abroad: what were the other countries doing and how. It was a way to create trust that I was really trying to figure out what we were supposed to do and what are the good things to get done.

What Mechanisms Did You Have for Coordination and Leading across the Public Sector?

      First of all, we had a governance structure with different government bodies where we were able to express what we wanted or to jointly agree on which steps we needed to take. What worked best was doing workshops together with all other CIOs from ministries and local governments to create a path together. Then everybody already had bought into the idea because they had been creating the decisions themselves. Our method often was that we split into different groups, each working on the same problem, and then we voted in the end within the whole group on which solution was the best to put to work.

      The tool has also been the legislation. We know that when people think that their own solution is the best solution, they do not want to change or give it up—legislation can force them to do that. There also can be a carrot with money, of course. For X-Road implementation, 60 percent of the funding we spent went to agencies and municipalities to use the suomi.fi tools. Even if legislation is in place and an obligation is set, money still helps to really get them to do the work they need to do.

      We did get more legislation done in my time. When I left, we already had ten laws in place. One of my learnings is that if you create a project of wider change, such as bringing in digital identity, you should start with the legislation at the same time as you start with the ideas. Then the legislation supports the implementation of the change.

A very important piece was the information management law that was adopted in 2019, which is the law about how government needs to handle and manage information in a qualified, secure, and trustworthy way. But it also has clauses that give a role and mandate to the Ministry of Finance in the digital government steering role. For example, new software projects now need to pass our team's quality check. The team can check them for financials, interoperability, security, the use of common tools, how information management is done. We can use it to push for better and more digitalization, but also to ensure that information gets shared more between the agencies for better services.

      We got more levers once we started to deliver, and once we were taken seriously. When we delivered suomi.fi services in time, within scope, and actually for less money than planned—that gave the confidence that what we tell and we promise, we deliver.

Doing Workshops Is a Fine Idea, but It Does Not Have to Lead to Buy-In—How Did You Achieve That?

      It depends on how you structure these discussions. When we discussed strategy work in the meetings, we sometimes used outsiders for facilitation, but mainly we ran the sessions ourselves. It was either me or some of our team's experts. We worked out beforehand how we wanted to run the workshop, what we wanted to have as the outcome, the time lines, and methods. So, these discussions were very well prepared.

      That is also why those who joined the workshops loved them. Whenever we got the feedback, it showed that participants thought the strategy sessions were the best ones. People got straight to work because everything was prepared beforehand. There was no general discussion only, but working on boards, getting to results, voting on the best ideas, moving on to work on those best ideas.

      That is how I have always worked. My earlier boss in the private sector always said: “We do not take or get any consultants; we have Maija!” I am not a consultant but have gotten a lot of practice on cocreation, looking, and understanding together with others the pitfalls or possibilities.

How Did You Choose Your Priority or Where to Focus?

      I did not follow any concrete criteria. It more comes back to what I believed was best for Finland. From that perspective, I always tried to see how we can influence Finland more.

      I also tried to look how to get things done more effectively moneywise. I was always saying that I would rather save money and put it to grandma's daycare than putting it somewhere where it does not deliver anything. We tried to do cost-effective things to deliver what was sensible with the money we had. In my department, I also said that let us have money unspent or leftover at the end of the year, and hope that it would be used wisely elsewhere in the state, rather than use it for something we do not really need.

      It comes from my private sector background where I had to cut costs every year some 10 or 15 percent, and that was a tough job. At home, you also do not waste money at the end of the year. So, it is common sense not to waste money.

Besides Trying to Figure Out the Strategy, What Other Steps Did You Start With in Your First Hundred Days?

      I went to all kinds of meetings and other stakeholders, to know the persons there, hear their expectations and if any kind of targets had been given to us. That was a conscious step to start building a network but also to figure out our strategy.

      I knew that primarily I had to look into what changes to do in the organization, because it was not delivering. I started in mid-March and made the proposal on how to change the setup at the beginning of June. I had the changes in place by the beginning of the next year.

My first task was to see what we did, what skills we had. I had an interview with everyone in the team, asking them for their opinion on what we should do differently and what was good. What he or she would do in my job. During those three months, I had the discussion for thirty minutes with each person working for me, going through structured questions that they had gotten beforehand so that they were able to prepare.

      I reformed our team into three units or areas. This way people knew better what they were supposed to do and deliver. One part was digitalization, another part was policy and data and law, third was delivering services by supporting Valtori, security, and so on.

      I had first only the six-month period in office, which ended at the end of August. I had to wait to be appointed to the actual term in the office in order to fully implement the team changes. This period was quite horrible, in fact. Some people did not want me to be their boss; they did not like my proposal for the new organization. Some of them even went around trying to lobby against me. But in order to deliver I needed to change the organizational structure.

How Did You See That Change Through Then with Your Team?

      It helped that I came in with new ways of working. For example, I heard that my direct reports were telling their units partially different stories compared to what had been agreed on or discussed in the management team of the department. I then СКАЧАТЬ