13 September 2024 | The 22nd edition of The Apolitical View by Apolitical CEO and Co-Founder Robyn Scott. Subscribe to the newsletter

In this week's edition:

  • The slow work of building skills and capability
  • Apolitical in America
  • Stick-y end to a spy whale’s career

Until recently I lived very near the Grenfell Tower in West London. Even government leaders outside of the UK might remember that in June 2017 the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of flats caught fire, killing 72 people and shaming the UK’s corporate and public sectors. Substandard cladding made the building a fire hazard and once on fire it burned for more than 24 hours. More recently, and also close to my heart, there was a similarly devastating fire in downtown Johannesburg (where I have also lived) in September 2023. 77 people died in that blaze.

Of the many takeaways from the long-awaited Grenfell inquiry report, out last week, two things in particular stood out to me. The first is that the problem was less a lack of regulation and more a lack of prioritisation of issues — and the enforcement of existing regulations. The second was how much of a difference better public sector capacity and capability could have made. Some of this capacity and capability building is hard. Hiring more people, and the right people, is expensive and takes time. The same is true of introducing specialist training (a College of Fire and Rescue was one of the report's recommendations).

But elements of it are comparably easy, or at least inexpensive. For example, creating a culture of ownership, widespread critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and the confidence and tools to speak to those in power and articulate the case for action when it’s needed. Smart capability building can foster this culture and develop these skills in almost any team and any individual, strengthening institutional capacity overall. But the work of skills and culture is slow and unsexy, and is usually sacrificed at the altar of emergencies and the metaphorical fires that many government employees fight daily.

This only changes when leaders make time and allocate funding for investing in their teams. It’s often about training and smart ways of working. But it can also sometimes be ‘people infrastructure’. For example, when the war broke out in Ukraine one senior government leader in a high income country told me his government was appalled to realise there was no way to figure out who amongst their several hundred thousand government employees spoke Ukrainian. No such database existed.

Former UK deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara put out a challenge this week on how public institutions can learn from public inquiries, and the role of organisational self-reflection. I hope it happens. Doing the unsexy work of capability building will help get the basics right and avoid harder-to-foresee disasters. It’s also a necessary foundation for governments to deal with the sexier stuff, which often comes with unforeseeable disasters of its own… Quantum computing, space exploitation, synthetic biology, to name a few. (More on this in another edition of The View soon).

US and Canadian readers might be interested to learn that last week we welcomed Cori Zarek to the team. Former Deputy Director of US Digital Services in the White House, Cori is joining the Apolitical team as our new Vice President of North America, helping us build on our existing work in the region on AI, climate and more. Cori has spent the last decade helping governments use technology to better deliver services to the public and implement their biggest policy challenges. She’s also served as Executive Director at Georgetown University’s Beeck Center and chaired Code for America’s annual summit. Cori brings an extraordinary wealth of expertise and experience to our mission and we couldn’t be more excited to have her on board. Robyn Scott

Apolitical CEO & Co-Founder

In our diary

22-23 September | The UN Summit of the Future takes place later this month in New York. Check out our Long-term Governance and Futures Thinking community of practice if this is a topic you’re interested in.

26 September | How to Drive Gender Equality in Government We've got some fantastic speakers including Amílcar Sanatan from the office of the Prime Minister in Trinidad and Tobago, Lisa Williams from the OECD and Karen Shippey from the Western Cape Government in South Africa joining us for this event.

Recommendations

Our new course AI Fundamentals for Public Servants: Opportunities, Risks and Strategies is getting excellent feedback. Powered by content from Stanford Online as part of the Government AI Campus programme, the course includes in-depth learning, academic knowledge and valuable insights from Stanford University Faculty and thought leaders to help public servants and policymakers understand the opportunities and impact of AI in government.

And finally...

Fans of Hvaldimir, the beluga whale believed to have a side hustle as a working spy, will be relieved to hear that it appears his untimely death was not caused by humans. The pale whale was spotted in Norwegian waters five years ago wearing a GoPro camera attached to a harness labelled "Equipment of St Petersburg.” This week, a police autopsy in Norway confirmed that a stick lodged in Hvaldimir’s throat was responsible for his demise.

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