Digital Government Excellence. Siim Sikkut
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by the line “Since you asked us to challenge you… .”
I also always said that it was important to have fun at work. We started doing the team's own strategy meetings as overnight stays or retreats so that we would also have fun and dance or party a bit. Because people had so much fun after a day of hard working, they were always waiting for the next time.
How Did You Rebuild Your Team? What Were the Competences You Were Looking For?
I had initially about thirty persons, mostly long-term civil servants. They were often more used to making studies than delivering things. The expectation from outside was that even with the X-Road money, there would be no outcome. We were not seen as an influencer or deliverers.
For X-Road delivery, we recruited about ten more persons temporarily, and we looked for a little bit new type of staff member with good delivery skills. Then ten more persons with new competences came to deliver the 2019 government program, to work on AI, and so on. When I joined, I had in my department only one lawyer and we had already two or three laws to take care of. So that needed to change. When I left, we had about ten lawyers. We also got in some people who were looking at new things such as AI, the information policy, and so on.
We changed our way of working so that we reorganized the agencies under the ministry to deliver things. We at the ministry focused on strategy, political work, money, laws. However, if you are starting new initiatives such as mobile ID, you also have to be able to figure out the high-level technical solutions to understand how it combines together with other things in the architecture. These sorts of things we kept in our own hands, so some sort of technical understanding we also still had to have, even with agencies taking care of delivery.
How Did You Find People for the Team?
I have been always good at finding good people. We got on the team people who were knowledgeable, able to deliver, saw the big picture. People wanted to join our department, even temporarily—because they had a feeling that this way, they would be able to influence and make a change in Finland.
That is because the word gets around. You work on the culture and atmosphere of the department, and if it changes, people start to notice and talk about it. Like the word went around that not only did we deliver, but it was also fun to work there on the team with our strategy sessions and other social events.
What I have always done is to have the last interview. I call it more a discussion even because it is not formal. I meet everybody before they join or before we sign them on, so I can understand what sort of person we would get. I am trying to see for myself how they fit on the team. We need people of different types; they are not supposed to be like me. I am also trying to understand where we could use the new person in the future. What are his or her intentions: to remain an expert or also become a manager? Things like this.
I also started using personal tests in recruiting. The interview times are so short that it is difficult to be sure of the person fitting the task. The tests supported the final decision-making.
Who Was Your Most Impactful Hire?
The three heads of unit, or team heads who were my direct reports and managed people in the team directly. A big part of my initial department reorganization was opening the management team positions. I got in people that were willing to cooperate, with whom we were able to create a trust relationship, with whom we were on the same page so that we could also easily substitute for each other. Each person was also of a different type. This made us work well as a team because there was always good, necessary discussion about the best way forward.
What Do You Consider Your Biggest Achievement in the GCIO Role?
I had been asked to deliver, and we delivered: the X-Road implementation, suomi.fi services, information management law, and so on.
We also created a Digitalization Agency to drive true digitalization in the government and its services.5 Its trial some years earlier had not succeeded. With people and mindsets changing, we managed to get the idea adopted. The agency is meant to aid and boost digitalization efforts of ministries.
I am happy that I was also able to create good and trustworthy relationships. This includes with all my four ministers. We built up personal good relations with them even though they were from different parties. I have always told my opinion, and always looked out for Finland as a whole, and that was the premise of our collaboration.
I also built up a wide network in the whole state, including municipalities and especially ministries, but also on international level. Our customers are our agencies, we need to deliver for them and keep in touch. But the network meant I was able to always connect and ask for advice or help. If you have good contacts, you always find where to ask for help or support. Networking takes work. That is why I started to work on it in the beginning already.
Are There Things You Would Have Done Differently or Things You Even Failed At?
I did not manage so well to get some politicians to understand what digitalization means and why we needed to invest in it. I wanted them to look into the future more, when factories are not the only working places, and what sort of opportunities this creates for doing work in Finland. Getting them to understand that world is changing around us.
We were told that public sector ICT was very expensive and spending too much money. We even had some ministers who did not understand that everything in the government needed ICT to work, or staff such as police officers would have to go back to using paper and pencil. This meant that money had to be put into ICT for it to work.
I think I did not find the right channels for this message. Looking back, we could have perhaps early on done more benchmarking or showcasing on how much money other countries were committing to digital government. Looking at it now, I do not blame the politicians but myself—that I was not able to provide the right material or background for them to understand what needed to be the way forward.
The thing is that I am not the person who wants to be in the public spotlight. All my predecessors had been in IT news and other professional media continuously. I told to my bosses already in our first call that this was my handicap. Perhaps a publicly more-visible leading role would have also helped to make my case with politicians, too.
What Made You Leave Office in 2021?
Well, I had been in the position seven years in total by that time. The last of my terms was ending and I had to decide if I would apply again for next years. I felt that I had given what I could, for Finland and for these tasks. It was time for a new person to come in with bright ideas, also time for the department and the network to get in someone new with fresh ideas and ways of doing. I believe in change.
How Did You Work to Make Your Changes Last or Stick?
During my last year, we worked on a new strategy and an action plan with the whole department, looking out to year 2025. I thought this would make it easier for the next government CIO to take over, because the strategy and work plan would be laid out. He or she should make adjustments, of course. But as the team was involved in working it out, then the whole organization would be already behind it and ready to take this way forward. The department team actually had demanded or suggested to make the strategy.
Some of our ongoing initiatives also are supported and prioritized by the minister, especially those based on the government program. This adds to the platform that my successor can take up. But the platform of plans is still open enough so that its own changes can be made. I also went through the strategy