ACE PROJECTS
Better investigations through data
ACE has developed the data investigation and collaboration environment to enhance knowledge sharing across the security sector.
According to ACE’s annual report, it “created an innovation environment for the law enforcement community that can be used to explore future opportunities in multi-source data exploitation, as well as non-technical aspects such as personal compliance monitoring”.
Verification of Children Online
ACE was commissioned by GCHQ, and supported by DCMS and the Home Office, to run a cross-sector research project to provide insights to government on how children could be kept safer online. It brought together experts to stimulate innovation and collaboration, with a crosssector task force considering the hypothesis: “If platforms could verify which of their users were children, then as a society we would be better empowered to protect children from harm as they grow up online”. The project had two phases. For phase one, the taskforce met fortnightly for ten weeks to explore the issue. A range of promising solutions were identified for further exploration and trialling, alongside a scoring system for proposals. The task force delivered a phase-one report with ten recommendations to help find a workable, practical solution focused on preserving privacy that would make a real difference to how platforms recognise their child users. In the second phase, the taskforce considered the theoretical and practical aspects of age assurance by providing valuable research and proof of concepts to inform wider government initiatives. This work is now helping to inform policy decision makers considering how to tackle online harms.
is, what approach can we take that’s going to give us a different set of options? How do we open up as wide as possible to make sure we’ve got a broad range of companies coming forward to present opportunities and capabilities?”
After this meeting, the next move was to hold a call with 50 companies setting out the MCA’s requirements.
As this project progressed, the companies were given access to the MCA’s data through ACE’s development environment, and, after a four-week development period, 13 pitches were put to the MCA. Five were then developed into proof of concept tools for the agency – all within ACE’s 12-week project timeframe.
So what does ACE have that government needs? ACE’s model has been praised by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which said its co-creation model should be replicated across the UK government; Toby Jones says that officials in the Cabinet Office have discussed how best to learn from it in wider civil service reform efforts.
While he defines the values driving ACE as key civil service ones – impact, value, integrity, fair and open competition, opportunity, diversity – he also says that “inquisitiveness, collaboration and flexibility are additional qualities”.
“What we’re realising is the benefit of creating an environment that really allows those behaviours that we do see in the civil service – but at times struggle to harness and amplify – to become possible.”
Gardiner agrees that “there’s an opportunity for the civil service to really draw on those attributes and amplify them”.
She says that “core civil service values are incredibly important in all of the work that we do”. While working at pace “is certainly not unknown to the civil service”, ACE’s approach can be a real enabler.
Toby Jones adds: “I think that’s one of the exciting things about ACE: what can we do to learn from the cultural aspects so that this becomes a more systemic and endemic way of working across the public sector with the private sector. ACE is learning by doing, which actually is a pretty good mechanism to speed things up.”
So how could government departments learn from how ACE does things? “I think there is a lot of best practice here, which actually really helped to inform and drive that agenda as much where we are thinking about collaboration within the public sector,” Gardiner says.
“I think about this a lot,” Jones agrees. “The demand for this way of working is growing very quickly, as people learn from each other about what’s been achieved through using this model.”
But it is spreading the mindset, rather than turning ACE into a central function, that he says is the way forward.
“Do I think there’s a future where this
ACE becomes some uber-organisation? I don’t think that’s necessarily the right strategy,” Jones says. “What I think is really interesting is the learnings about our ways of working and our culture.”
Jones says one way to absorb the lessons of ACE is to focus on its watchwords: innovation (translating ideas to impact), collaboration (bringing people and organisations together around the problem), engagement (trusted relationships created to share the burden of problem solving), and pace (if there is something that needs to be done, get on with it).”
Jones acknowledges that some of these are long-standing public sector priorities, but are not always achieved. “We’re not always excellent at collaboration, either in the private sector or public sector alone. The public sector recognises the need for collaboration, but driving it from a leadership point of view means driving by example, and behaviours,” he says.
So how can this be done in other parts of government that do not have the space that ACE has? He says the key thing is to create the space for people to think and work at pace.
“I wouldn’t take the ACE model, but what I’d do is I’d form a blended team from across a government department: right from the most accountable senior officials through to those who are just joining and learning the ropes, and I’d bring experience from across sectors to some active problem solving that they need to address in their department,” he says. “And I’d coach them to work and behave in the way that we have, to show that it releases more value more quickly.
“From that, they will develop models that work for them… I would say that’s the way to scale this: to take those core behaviours and scale them and respect things like unified participation from different sectors. That’s where the magic lies.”
Jones, whose career has encompassed the public sector, an established multi-national and a start-up, knows this is possible because it was how he learned the approach, although he acknowledges that it does include some “pain of working with the machinery that we find ourselves dealing with”.
Gardiner says civil servants who work on projects with ACE report finding it “refreshing” to have the space to work differently. “I think it is something that can require some adjustment. There’s a certain amount of education – for want of a better word – that’s required about how things are going to work, how they’re going to feel, what’s required of the team that’s engaging ACE, and how they can make the most of that experience.
“It is different to how things often work in other situations, so there can be a bit of a learning curve there.”
All this sounds like manna for Dominic Cummings’s erstwhile efforts to bring in greater external expertise into the civil service, from weirdos and misfits among others. Jones says he understands the ACE model was flagged to the prime minister’s former top adviser as an example of what is possible within government, but ACE itself didn’t speak to the Brexit svengali before his pre-Christmas departure from No.10. But, Jones says, ACE “drew yet more energy from the demand for ‘do different’.”
It is still to be seen how the wider civil service reform plans being developed by Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove and permanent secretary Alex Chisholm formalise these lessons, but there is a clear willingness to look at how to change.
“We’re finding ACE is actually bringing to life those values and this way of working for many,” Jones says. “It’s uncomfortable, but very, very productive.”
ACE will be taking part in the Home Office’s Security and Policing event from 9-11 March. For details and to register to attend please visit: www.securityandpolicing.co.uk