Our 57 new MPs have spent the Summer representing their constituents, writing to ministers and getting used to Westminster traditions and rituals.

North Norfolk MP Steffan Aquarone has written for Radix about his first impressions of Westminster and he’s identified a whole stack of things that need to change.

The Houses of Parliament are sinking into the Thames. Many dozens of offices were condemned upon their vacation by outgoing MPs. There are electrical and water hazards only a few metres underfoot, and the whole thing will cost billions to fix – not least because MPs are insistent they stay in the building while it happens.

But there is an even greater urgency to transform the way the organisation operates if we’re to bring about the change this country badly needs.

The layout needs updating for a start:

Rather than being designed around main thoroughfares, the grand corridors are built around the ritual ceremony that opens Parliament. The layout was set in a pre-digital age when runners carried messages between chambers, meaning the fastest way from the new bit to the old is via sets of narrow stairs.

Instead, a modern internal design is needed, where the main thoroughfares join together areas most frequently used by MPs and staff going about their business, with plenty of space to step aside and benefit from chance conversations and exchanges, privately but safely.  MPs stuck in small individual offices is a less ominous, but no less outdated, example of pre-digital working practices.  Opposite Westminster, the York Road offers a striking range of modern, collegiate working environment that could serve as nearby inspiration.

He has some thoughts on how the structure of Government inhibits it:

Modern organisations are customer centric; their bosses oversee key functions that are aligned to their customers’ or users’ journeys.  They are no longer siloed by functions that mirror operational processes (and are more convenient for the organisation than its customers).  Government needs Secretaries of State for Prosperity and Wellbeing, for the Citizen Experience, and for Data and Privacy, if it’s going to respond to the needs of the modern world, not catch-all Secretaries of State for Agriculture, Health, or Local Government.

Government needs innovation and the capacity to defy convention:

And innovation needs people to challenge the status quo: whether in the confines of a lab, or through open encouragement of divergent views.  But it’s nearly impossible to break or test rules without knowing what they are, or how, when or where they apply.  Stick around long enough to learn the conventions and you’re in danger of just accepting them as normal. And that’s the problem: in Westminster, undocumented convention obfuscates these rules. Would-be challengers are fighting blind, and even those pitiable souls become part of the fabric and the furniture rather than ready to embrace change when the opportunity presents itself.

A change in the work environment with many new people  could, together, inspire cultural change:

If we really want politicians to be creative, collaborative, and human, we need them to occupy a place of work that is inspiring of the possibilities of the future not revering of the long distant triumphs of the past, organised to facilitate dialogue not division, and operating with clear, transparent, modern codes of practice.  And if we want government to be able actually to do things, we need to start by transforming the fundamental way government is structured to go about its business.

All of the organisational transformation projects I’ve been involved with have needed a majority of new incomers to make any real difference to culture and practice.

You can read the whole article here.

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