Competency 8 of 8 - Affordances

“A digital-era public service leader understands the current and evolving affordances of digital technologies and can assess how they can be used to improve public outcomes."

Background to this competency

Every year brings a wave of new ideas and new concepts into the digital space. From 'Smart Cities', to 'Government as a Platform', from 'GPT-3' to 'Mesh networks' the new tools and buzzwords never stop coming.

Whilst some innovations are of immense and lasting significance, others turn out to be relatively unimportant.

Governments have a difficult relationship with new technologies, sometimes being tempted by the lure of emergent technologies that have yet to be de-risked, other times clinging to long-obsolete technologies on the grounds that they are 'safe'.

Now that technologies determine the success or failure of almost all government projects, making good decisions about which ones to use is a fundamental skill.

Public leaders are also increasingly held accountable for the technology choices made on their watch. It is therefore no longer acceptable for leaders to delegate such critical decisions to a cadre of experts that they lean upon, but who they cannot understand.

Meaning of this competency

Public service leaders need to:

  • Use appropriate decision-making frameworks to map out technology choices, and make the right decisions

  • Understand the risk of assuming that a particular technology is the right one to solve a particular problem, prior to having done any detailed analysis of that problem.

  • Be able to critically assess and identify opportunities where technologies can cheaply and sustainably solve long standing problems.

  • Understand the lifecycle of technologies, including early stage risk and the long term sustaining costs.

  • Be able to talk to technical experts eye to eye, and with a certain amount of critical understanding.

Why was this competency developed and agreed?

Our list of eight Digital-Era Competencies is designed to sit alongside current, existing competencies often taught in schools of public administration or public policy. All eight of our competencies therefore represent capabilities that are either not being taught to current and future public servants or that require some updating to succeed in the digital era.

This competency was added because the number of choices about which technologies to use (or not use) are only going to increase over time. Public service leaders who have historically delegated these choices entirely to subordinate experts have found that delegation without comprehension increases project risk, and can rebound in career limiting ways. We therefore feel it is important to stress that there is a 'new minimum' of knowledge about technologies which is simply higher and more demanding than previously (whilst stopping short of saying that leaders need to be 'technology experts').

Reading Suggestion

Affordances - Victor Kaptelinin

The Fast-Follower Strategy for Technology in Government - David Eaves and Ben McGuire

Mergel, I. (2016). Agile innovation management in government: A research agenda. Government Information Quarterly, 33(3), 516-523.