Читать книгу Digital Government Excellence - Siim Sikkut - Страница 79

Of course, you first work with your own department. But we also worked nicely together with CIOs from all ministries to collect ideas and see what the things were that we would like to do together. We did a series of deep workshops to cocreate the strategy.

We also had an advisory board, where we had some ministries but also CIOs from municipalities represented. Politicians also had their coordination group, with some agency heads to talk about what needed to be done or moved forward.

I felt that if I would get everybody behind the strategy, then people do it themselves and I do not need to push. The strategy needs to be created together.

I always say that in an expert organization, if everybody knows where to go and if the target is clear, then people will deliver even if times are a little bit shaky sometimes. You also have to be honest and tell if things are not so good sometimes. But the key is in setting and explaining the goals.

A really useful thing was to go outside Finland to learn. Once I started, I soon went to the meeting of Nordic Government CIOs and then the European Union CIO network meeting. I also went to see some countries' colleagues directly just to understand what they were doing or what was going on in the world. I had worked in public sector only on consolidation of IT services in Finland; I did not know what was happening at the state level in other countries. I wanted to know what others were doing and pick up from them the good things. You also start to learn from good colleagues the things you should not do!

When I went to these international meetings, there was initially a mistrust in the team that I was doing it just for travels and wondering why was I not in Finland. I tried to show the value to the team by always going through in our monthly meetings what I had learned abroad: what were the other countries doing and how. It was a way to create trust that I was really trying to figure out what we were supposed to do and what are the good things to get done.