Let's talk about what it actually feels like to lead digital transformation inside government.
You get hired as a Chief Digital Services Officer, or some similar title. Your job? Deliver better online services. Your real job? Transform how government works. Update decades-old processes. Get career public servants to do something totally new. Convince other tech teams that they need to change, even when they think they're already agile, already user-centered.
You've got a smart team. You've got ambition. From the outside, it might look like you have the power and resources to make change.
But here's the truth: horizontal leadership is hard. You're coordinating across silos, building trust where it doesn't exist, and trying to make change without direct authority.
Too often, when we talk about digital transformation, we tell hero stories—about the exceptional leader or team that somehow broke through, against all odds. But heroics don't scale. And in government—systems built for stability—we can't depend on individual acts of bravery to deliver the kind of sustained change our teams and our communities need.
These folk don't lack courage, and they don't lack capability. What they lack are the conditions that make transformation possible.
Reality Check: How the System Fights Back
Here's what we don't talk about enough: the system actively resists the very changes we ask these teams to make.
You're pushing against an entire system designed around processes that don't support continuous delivery or people who want everything defined upfront. You're also trying to convince folks who already think they're doing digital right. Teams that have "user research" in their process but never actually change anything based on what users say. Tech teams that call themselves agile because they do standups but still plan in two-year cycles.
No one leader, and no one team, can be the single point of failure in a system designed to keep things the same.
I used to talk about "bravery" with my boss and my peers. But what does brave leadership need to actually look like?
What Brave Leadership Looks Like
- Clarity of Purpose: Leaders who keep public value at the center, even when politics or process try to pull them away.
- Constructive Dissent: The courage to question "the way we've always done it" in order to make space for better options.
- Bias for Action: Moving forward with imperfect information, building small, learning quickly, and adjusting course.
These are the behaviors that get services delivered and trust rebuilt. But bravery like this can't survive on willpower alone.
From Heroes to Systems
We have to stop relying on heroes. Because heroes don't scale, and heroism burns people out.
Instead, we need systems and the conditions to make bravery possible.
First: They need the real costs to be visible to decision-makers.
Right now, most executives don't see how much time citizens waste on broken processes, what it actually costs to maintain legacy systems, or how much trust gets lost every time someone can't complete a simple transaction online.
Second: They need permission to experiment safely.
Instead of defining mandates by massive platform replacements, they need to run small, reversible experiments with real users that don't break existing services and prove new approaches work.
They need to build "show don't tell" into their process. When other teams say "we're already user-centered," they can't just argue—they need to invite them to watch actual user research sessions.
Third: They need incentives aligned around outcomes, not outputs.
Success should be measured by how well services actually work for users. They need to ask about user satisfaction, completion rates, and trust metrics—not just delivery dates.
Fourth: They need digital capacity built across government, not just in digital teams.
Policy people need to learn to work iteratively. Procurement people need to understand what "minimum viable product" actually means. Legal teams need frameworks for approving experiments, not just finished products.
It's not about asking individuals to be braver. It's about building the structures that make bravery the normal way of leading.
The Role of Civic Tech: A Rallying Cry
This isn't just an internal government problem. The civic tech community has a role to play.
If you're a vendor: Stop selling transformation and start supporting experiments. Help government teams show what works instead of promising what could work.
If you're an advocate: Make the case for digital government in business terms, not just citizen experience terms. Help executives see the real costs of the status quo.
If you're a technologist: Share your knowledge, but meet government where it is. Help build capacity across the organization, not just in the digital team.
If you're all of the above: Understand that the person with "Digital" in their title is often the pivot point, but they can't transform alone. They need the whole system around them to evolve.
If you want to see brave leadership thrive in government, here's what those leaders need from you:
- They need proof points—small, visible wins you can help deliver in weeks, not years.
- They need surge capacity—designers, developers, and product managers ready to jump in when opportunity strikes.
- They need better stories—ways to explain the "why" in human terms to ministers, media, and residents.
- They need cover from the outside—credible voices who can say, "this is the right move, and here's the evidence."
- And they need tools they can grab and run with—open-source code, reusable playbooks, procurement templates.
If we do this together, we make it safer for leaders to be brave. And when brave leaders win, residents win.
Originally delivered as a keynote at the Civic Spark conference in August 2025.