John Suffolk

Should we teach politicians the basics of business analysis and problem solving? As we enter an election period lots of “ideas” and “policies” being mooted… oh dear

In the UK we are fast approaching an election period and political parties are coming up with lofty ideas and policies to tempt the electorate to vote for them. It doesn’t seem that long since the last election, and from what I can see, policy thinking does not appear to have moved forward. Same old same old… But what is missing, again, is any sense of what problem the political party is trying to solve and what value the policy will create for the country and its citizens.

Let’s be clear policy pontificating has little to do with reality, it’s merely there to say “look at me I am a complete [please enter your own description]”.

I sense no vision being developed or articulated for the UK. What will, or should, the UK look like, feel like, behave like, perform like in ten and twenty years time? And then from this how will we get there – the strategy. What policies, what laws, what incentives/disincentives and of course what problems need to be solved.

Turning to problem analysis, those of you with a classical training in business will understand my point. Every political party has had its, how can I say, “challenged policies” where for the greatest brains on the planet no one had certainty what problem they were trying to solve and the value it would create. The previous administration had the ID cards: it’s for security, no it is for access to public services; no it is not, it is for students, no it is not, it is for actually all of the above. The current administration had the changes to the NHS, moving a large wad of cash to the frontline and removing all political involvement in the governance  of the UK’s biggest public sector beast, and the value created to the tax-payer for this monumental shift, err dunno. What I do know is that I still cannot get an appointment with my GP, but I could probably go and get fertility treatment.

Parliament is no better. When do you actually hear a Minister or an opposition member asking the questions “what problem(s) are we trying to solve”, “what constraints are we having to work to”, “what are the best options to solve the problem(s) in the shortest timeframe for lowest cost and lowest risk”. Without this basic business analysis approach no wonder we spin our wheels addressing things that add no value, and at worse, spend money on doomed initiatives.

As for Parliamentary oversight committees they are fabulous for grandstanding but not much else. Civil servants are trained to give away as little as possible, not to engage in a conversation, claim things have moved on since the audit report, and if you ever get into difficult, just say you will write to the committee chair person – a maximum of 2 hours of pain, job done, career intact.

So in essence we end up with a situation where incoming Governments have a raft of policies that do not seem to solve a problem that anyone is interested in, a Parliament that doesn’t have the skill to effectively challenge the Government and an oversight regime that is ineffective. We should not be surprised that single issue politics engage the electorate (think UKIP) and the mainstream parties continue to scrabble around for sound bites to differentiate their position from the other main parties.

So what should we do? I will give it some thought and come up with some lofty ideas…

The closure of Microsoft’s TwC Group – a wrong move at the wrong time. Sometimes different isn’t better

 I am saddened to see that changes to the trustworthy computing group within Microsoft. I have dealt with them for many years, first within the UK Government as the Government CIO and now at Huawei. Scott Charney and the team (some who have, over time, gone to pastures new) have developed a world class reputation for excellence in security.

They have been at the forefront of methodologies such as SDL, worked tirelessly to expand other technology vendor and user’s knowledge whilst at the same time dramatically improving the security quality of the Microsoft products.

I can see no real advantage to Microsoft changing this setup.  I do not buy the “imbed within the product team argument” because that was already the process and model at Microsoft. What this change does is to take away the focal point for security and instead scatter responsibility. It says to me the new CEO has no or little interest in security. If that is the case then he can kiss goodbye to his cloud first strategy.

My advice, be brave, put it back together again, rather than destroy, reinvigorate the success story and continue to drive TwC to be a strong foundation on which Microsoft products and services are built.