Towards a heroic No #Tickbox pledge

This blog first appeared on the Radix UK site...

It has only been a fortnight since the publication of my Tickbox book, but the trickle of background information that was beginning to emerge when the book was first out has now become a flood.

That is clearly also my mood to some extent, even more than when I was writing the book: I now see symptoms of tickbox everywhere I look.

Teachers tell me that this is the reason they are leaving the profession. I’ve heard from NHS psychologists, prison officials, health workers - though not yet the marketing or HR people responsible for the ubiquitous five-point surveys every time we have any kind of interaction with businesses…

I suppose my top tickbox this week will have to include the news, uncovered by the BBC’s Moneybox programme (no relation!), that serious complaints about the Department for Work and Pensions can take around four years to resolve.

This example reeks of tickbox because the DWP makes the absolutely classic mistake of measuring their performance only from the moment their senior experts open the file, which is usually at least 18 months from the time the complaint is made.

There should be a word for that kind of dodge, because it happens so often - and always has done (a symptom of Goodhart’s Law in action). As far as I know, there isn’t.

I’m also glad to be cited in the British Medical Journal, no less, by Miles Sibley in his plea for more person-centred feedback being required if the NHS is really going to provide person-centred care.

I was fascinated to see a link there to a blog by Andrea Siodmok in the open policy blog of the Cabinet Office, looking for what she called 'thick data' alongside more conventional but doubtful big data - most of it seriously compromised by Goodhart's Law.  She means data with depth, about human beings - not instead, but so that big data and thick data is required to test each other.

Then there was the news that, unsurprisingly, the roll-out of universal credit - a good idea undermined and stupidified by tickbox - has been delayed again.

I came away from my Steyning Bookshop event (see picture) with a greater understanding of the meaning of tickbox. It means that people take less responsibility for the inevitable way in which the people they serve fail to fit the preferred process.


There is both the meaning and a potential antidote to tickbox. It amounts to a plea to people serving the public to take a little more responsibility. I don't mean flinging caution to the winds, but enough to make the system work. Perhaps we need some kind of public pledge - at least an I WILL NOT TICKBOX bumper sticker?

You can buy the Tickbox book from Hive or Amazon.