Launching ‘Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age’
Digital has changed the way that billions of people live their lives. It has transformed the way that couples meet and friendship groups evolve. It has allowed millions to shift their place of employment during the pandemic. It has given nations new ways of going to war.
Governments have done their best to cope with this un-asked-for revolution. Sometimes they've adapted brilliantly, but more often they've struggled. Citizens deal with the consequences of that struggle on a daily basis with critical online services that don't work or are difficult to navigate. Leaders struggle with IT budgets that continue to expand, and fear the ever present danger of the ‘Government IT disaster'.
Governments struggle because there has been a significant shift that has occurred in the skills that they need. In the digital era effective services and policies can only be designed and delivered by teams that combine traditional public service skills with a raft of new skills. Whilst there have been many strong successes, developing and acquiring these new skills has proven an insurmountable problem for many government departments and agencies, as has been tragically exposed by the Covid-19 crisis.
A community of fellow travellers - including you?
‘Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age’ is a new, international community of professors, teachers and practitioners who are worried about the modern skills shortfall inside of too many governments. We have come together to develop both a friendly community, and a set of practical initiatives with a shared goal: to increase the supply of digital-era public service skills into governments.
Our primary mechanism for doing this is to give teachers, professors and decision-makers in universities world-class teaching materials, and a supportive community of peers.
If you are someone who wants your university or your government academy to do a better job of teaching vital digital era skills to current or future public service leaders, we'd absolutely love to have you on board. We're interested in meeting people who want to bring all parts of the public affairs curriculum into the digital era - Economics, Statistics, Policy Analysis and more. Our project is not just about having a 'digital module' in your wider programme.
There's no specific role of qualification required to be part of our community other than you should be directly or indirectly connected to the mission of teaching future public servants. This might have you at a university, professional school or government academy or an organization or entity we've not contemplated.
Perhaps the simplest single way of being involved is to sign up to our low-traffic email news list (see bottom of page), or follow us on Twitter. But if you read on, you'll see we're keen to engage people much more deeply too.
The Foundations: Digital Era Competencies
Every project about making the world a better place needs firm foundations. Ours are a set of eight Digital Era Competencies every public service leader or manager needs to have, regardless of where in the public sector they work.
We developed and agreed these Digital Era Competencies during a six month iterative process that involved faculty and practitioners from several countries. You can read about them and why they're helpful here.
Coming soon: An open access syllabus that you can teach
We are developing a masters-level full-semester syllabus that will be released as an open educational resource this autumn/fall. To be clear, we are not releasing a MOOC for direct use by students: we are releasing a set of teaching guides, designed around the needs of people like you. Read more here.
Want to get involved? Consider becoming a Contributor on the syllabus development.
We aspire to grow a community that both gives and takes - to have formal Contributors. To that end we're asking today for interest from people who may wish to assist with the development of parts of the new syllabus.
Useful activities we would appreciate include:
Reading draft teaching materials
Helping find or develop case studies, especially outside the English speaking world
Point us to existing teaching resources
Experiment using our teaching materials in your classes
If you're interested in helping out, please get in touch. We aspire towards being a highly inclusive, truly global community in which different backgrounds and different perspectives make our teaching materials more valuable for more people. We welcome community members of any nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion or ability.
We will also ensure that anyone who becomes a Contributor and whose work is included in our published materials is recognised in a clear and unambiguous manner.
Who are you supported by?
We have financial support from the Public Interest Technology University Network, for which we are very grateful. We have been incubated within the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School.
Lastly, almost everyone involved in the project so far has been contributing as a volunteer. We’re hugely thankful for the efforts of everyone in the founding group.
Image Credit: UX Indonesia