Peter Krantz, CIO at Sweden\u2019s national library, the Kungliga Biblioteket (KB), constantly asks himself how citizens can be served better today while preserving a nation\u2019s cultural heritage in a format that will be accessible decades from now.
Krantz was appointed as the KB\u2019s first CIO three years ago following a major restructure which saw the library\u2019s IT operations integrated from various departments into a single IT organisation. Since then, the library\u2019s focus has been on driving the interoperability and usability of digital services and the openness of data.
\u201c The national library has worked with free information and building knowledge in society for many years,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to be part of a journey to see if we can bring more information to citizens and make people more focused on getting actual facts into discussions in society.
\u201cThe KB has done some great things over the years. It has been working with open data and has done a lot of work around usability, but it was unevenly spread around departments and projects. Now we have a shared vision of what we want to achieve and how to do it.\u201d
What attracted Krantz to the KB was the challenge of introducing modern operations into a 355-year-old organisation. The first thing he set out to do was to harmonise how the library works with IT by applying a set of core principles \u2013 cross-functional teams, emphasis on usability, and a focus on the effects, not the features, of a service.
An important part of this strategy has been to create a more flexible IT environment for the library\u2019s employees by ending the practice of everyone working on the same standardised platform.
\u201cA standardised platform was probably easier for internal IT to handle, but we have noticed our users are more comfortable if they have control over their computing platform,\u201d says Krantz. \u201cWe do have a platform for those who don\u2019t really care which one they use, but we also try to support the people who want to use a different operating system or device.\u201d
Although this increases the burden on internal IT systems, which need to be compatible with various platforms, it improves their usability in the long run, says Krantz.
\u201cA lot of organisations will have to follow this path because people grow up with their own computing platforms at home,\u201d he adds. \u201cThey are used to them and that needs to be supported at work. The days of standardised platforms are running out in the public sector.\u201d
Not many people know Sweden\u2019s public sector IT landscape better than Krantz. Since 2007, he has worked for the Swedish eGovernment Delegation, been adviser to the country\u2019s IT minister and chairman of its national forum for usability and accessibility. He is passionate about making digital services more usable.
\u201cThe government in general is becoming a lot better in the area of usability than it was even 10 years ago,\u201d he says. \u201cWe now employ several user experience specialists who know how to conduct user research to find out what users need, instead of just asking them what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n