I like 71% of the country cast my vote on the Brexit/Bremain debate, a democratic and one chance opportunity for the country to have its say on the EU after 40 years of membership.
Suggest I don't get into the result any more than to say that no matter which way you voted the UK is a bastion of democracy that is envied the world over so the result is the result and we have to accept it and move on. Some areas like Scotland and Northern Ireland have avenues through which they can move on but back into the EU, if leaving the UK is right for them then they should vote and follow the will of the democratic views of the people. I have no issues with that, clearly would sadden me that I'd end up supporting the worst national football team that would be left in the UK........go Wales #Euro2016 !
Ah hell, as they'd say in a legal drama programme 'my learned friend has opened the door so I should be free to walk through it". OK so now I've opened up the debate I guess I have a few observations. Here you go:
Firstly I was not surprised at all with the vote to leave. I think that the campaigns driven from London with London centric views catastrophically failed to realise the negative feelings towards the EU outside of London in England. The north/south divide well and truly in action, it's a somewhat disappointing reality that our 600+ MPs still fail to recognise that the UK is bigger than London and that from an English perspective everything north of Watford isn't just an irritant. In the lead up to the vote I spoke with a lot of people from a lot of northern areas and the sentiments were really clear, we want to make our own rules in our own country and we want to stop mass and uncontrolled immigration that is expanding the welfare state. Now that last sentence could be debated for weeks in a closed room of opposing views but that feeling is what the Bremain camp completely missed. People felt like that and the rhetoric, half truths and mis-information that Bremain pitched did nothing to change those perspectives. As these perspectives led people to vote leave then the Bremain camp failed to do their job. In fact, they failed catastrophically and to be honest each of the Bremain camp leadership should look in the mirror and consider if they should resign as they can't do their job. If politics became about openness, honesty and truth I suspect Bremain would have won.
Secondly people voted from a personal perspective, between the ages of 18 & 65 you have two personas, one as the private individual (well as private as you can be with social media) and one as your professional work life persona. Again in talking to people they saw the vote as a vote with the private individual persona and not their professional work life persona, not many felt their work life persona should influence their decision. It's interesting a I wonder how deeply people considered this. The decision to Brexit perhaps impacts people's work life persona more than their private persona, changes in access to the EU could possibly change how your job works and certainly how mobile you can be across Europe. In extreme circumstances people might see their job move from the UK to the EU....or perhaps their job disappears completely. What ever happens leaving the EU will probably impact at least 75% of people somehow in how they execute or consider their professional life.
Thirdly, and finally starting to bring this back to a Digital and Agile topic, were the rules on the vote clear and should they have been defined better? Take the idea of the "Definition of Done" from #AgileDevelopment, we draft as part of the task definition in Jira (other tools are available clearly 😉) a clear guideline of what constitutes the task being complete so that the developers, scrum masters, product owners and any other stakeholders accepts when a task is complete. Now consider the retrospective petition that has been submitted to the government signed by around 4m people last time I checked stating the result should be made null as less than 75% of people voted and the result showed no side (Brexit or Bremain) achieved a minimum 60% of the votes cast. My first view of the petition was one of sour grapes..."I backed the losing campaign and I don't like the result so I will add in rules after the fact so I don't have to abide by the outcome". Really does not show us as a democratic country and I do feel a little embarrassed to be seeing this type of move. That said, and this is where I feel torn, I think the suggestion of the rules make a lot of sense, if turnout is low and there isn't an overwhelming majority is it really the full will of the people? Probably isn't but set the rules up before the game please! You can't claim that England should be awarded a 1-0 win against Iceland as it would be much more appropriate to assess the amount of people in the crowd at the game instead of the goals scored !
Now finally, and linked to the volume of votes cast, why oh why in 2016 do I have to write a vote on paper, place it in a box secured with a zip lock and then have an army of people count the paper. I work in Digital Transformation, I take old systems and evolve them whilst building new things Digitally. I'm a Digital Immigrant that has allowed his DNA to mutate towards that of a Digital Native and yet I'm asked to use a pencil and paper to cast a vote. I honestly truly and utterly lose the will to live. I'm sure some may see this as a quaint quirk of a society that still has its roots in a class system with politics lead by people that simply (think they) know better than the normal folk. I see a gallery of people in the house of Lords blocking evolution in our country whilst enjoying an afternoon nap (on expenses we pay via our taxes). I see a massive expense and investment in people for an election that means running a national vote is an expensive one off every now and again.
Right so focus on the digital voting. People can't guarantee to be in the place to vote, people aren't inclined to vote via post because we live in a digital world. We do everything via digital ingress, we have tablets, mobiles, laptops, desktops, smart TVs, smart watches, smart fridges. Soon I'm pretty sure Google will have an AI that will simply message you and say "based on your browsing history we suggest that you vote Brexit but maybe take a trip to the Red Light district in Amsterdam within 2-years before article 50 concludes". I'm sorry the existing system is archaic and ignorant of technology
I talked to my Dad, I asked him about his first vote in the late 50's/early 60's and you know what scared the life out of me? Nothing has changed, nothing! Now I'll accept that my Dad doesn't remember like he used to but even if his recollection is only 75% right it's the most legacy of all legacy operations. In fact it is possibly the only thing I could argue is sat in an extreme operational space. We talk about Digital Natives not ever having to know about a world before the Digital World, my daughter asked me how they used to do the voting when I was young and I said the same way as now. She looked at me with the pre-teenager scrunched up quizzical face and said "Why"? Answer - because Digital Transformation is blocked by people that don't get the need for change and invite, invent or create blockers to deny change. Welcome to the Digital Ignorants again.
What is my vision then, quite honestly it's not entirely ground breaking or something never seen before but the shift between the current mode of operation and the vision can be measured in light years.
1. We should all have a digital identity, come on UK government get the IDA programme sorted
2. You have an app or URL that leads you to the site for voting
3. You securely authenticate with a multiple factor (ideally biometric to your device, your device to the voting site then you enter a password or PIN).
4. You vote within the site that is secured heavily (physically and logically ).......yes it can be perfectly secure
5. Your vote is immediately registered and you get to see the current voting for your ward, region and national areas. Real time updateto. Dashboard statistics are displayed showing vote turnout and if the threshold hmet to call the vote as acceptable (vote turnout, votes under digital review for accuracy, anything else you set in the Definition of Done)
7. Push messages sent to those that haven't voted urging them to vote now.
8. You can't force everyone to adopt this way, I get that. So do offer them the ability to come to a poling station but for the sanity of us Digital people have them vote on tablets following a very similar approach to that above. Have the polling station awash with Digital Signage showing dashboards and up to the minute views on voting.
What I want to see is the polls to be closed at 12pm and the results to be announced at 12:30am. Now that is digital.
Give me some funding and I'll build you a prototype!
Before I get the challenge let's answer it. "You can't use IT s it's open to being hacked". Not if it's down right it's not and honestly, you don't think an army of people manually handling and counting pieces of paper isn't asking for trouble and errors ! The technology and security exists, MoD uses it, UK borders uses it, the government uses it so adopt it. Quite honestly the cloud is sue sure enough to host it.
Be #DigitalSpeed by 2020 ...... please!
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