“One of the most important and ambitious AI projects ever undertaken in Australia- if not the world - was the creation of “Nadia”. — CIO Show Podcast on Artificial Intelligence
“The potential role of an innovation such as Nadia in the access to justice.”— Professor Dame Hazel Genn DBE QC. University College London
“This is extremely significant, because this new industry (AI digital humans) may have been birthed from the Nadia project, which may become the most significant outcome of Nadia.” — Marcus Endicott. Global Virtual Beings Facebook Group Convenor
“From an academic perspective, this is a history of digital humans and a future required reading for academic courses on artificial intelligence.”
- Dr Chris Hillier, University of Southampton Business School, UK
“Nadia is a useful opening to a discussion of where we are with technology, legal aid and access to justice. She illustrates a number of key themes that are relevant to contemporary developments in access to justice and technology. Technological innovation is sweeping across our economies, raising questions about the relevance of old demarcations.
Any government funded project is subject to political factors (change of minister and government and you can be done for) ...NHS Online, an online health support system developed by the Labour Government, was wiped out by an incoming Conservative/ Liberal Coalition – and then, effectively, rebuilt when its value became apparent.
The creation of Nadia, with which we began, gives some indication of the imaginative possibilities of the future. Technology could develop in ways where machines take up some of the slack created by the demise or lack of physical provision.”
- The Legal and Education Foundation of the United Kingdom Annual Report. May 2017
Book Reviews
Nadia was a ground-breaking Australian government initiative led by Marie Johnson. This is her personal, moving, and bluntly uncompromising account of what happened — the highs and the lows. For a moment in time, before being killed off by “bigoted bureaucrats,” Nadia became a testament to the incredible power of co-design and the creative use of technology to enhance and enrich the lives of people with disabilities.
But this book is about far more than the groundbreaking use of technology — although Marie’s account of the successes achieved with the innovative use of AI is in itself a remarkable tale. Nadia showcases the benefits of AI when applied to well-defined domains — it’s a world away from the boasts of the tech bros busy touting their incoherent and copyright infringing, regenerative, text-based, hallucinogenic chatbots.
All too often, digital initiatives are plagued by backwards-looking groupthink, the distorting lens of front-end interface design, and the endless recycling and rebranding of the tired web-centric dogma that’s predominated since the 1990s.
In contrast, the co-design and implementation of Nadia embraced participation, inspiration, innovation, and leadership. Good leaders don’t preach and impose. They listen, and they learn. They work with and alongside people who understand the problems to generate creative, insightful, and better ideas to solve them. And they consider both the risks and benefits of different approaches, feeling their way to more successful outcomes.
This participative, collaborative mindset helped Nadia soar. It created a vision and approach genuinely worthy of the description “digital transformation.” As such, Nadia was perceived as an act of heresy, non-conformant with the broken dogma of form-based, transaction-centric “digital government.”
No wonder, then, that Nadia was shut down. An act of bureaucratic contempt towards the very people public officials are meant to serve. A shocking, bigoted denial of people with disabilities who worked effectively together to co-design a better approach.
Nadia is a passionate, unashamed, soaring song for the soul of the human spirit and the creative and liberating potential of technology. A tale of how co-design empowered thousands of disabled people to become active partners in creating better outcomes.
- Dr Jerry Fishenden, Global Technologist, Writer, Composer. United Kingdom. 5 Star Review on Amazon UK. Read more at NTOUK.
A case study in senior APS failure but grass roots innovation. This is an important document that provides detailed factual information for politicians who are motivated to be representatives of all of their constituents and managers at all levels in public sector agencies tasked with delivering effective services and information to EVERY member of the community seeking knowledge or access to a service.
The current and emerging technologies provide public sector managers with both challenges and opportunities to produce highly cost effective, client focused solutions that can be accessed by all, regardless of their sophistication in the use of technology.
The document also provides senior decision makers with how innovations can emerge from any community and that concepts such as co-design can be potent and high value alternative to the current approaches favoured by timid managers that produce spectacular cost over runs and failures with millions of taxpayers’ dollars wasted to fund the lifestyles of the various suits ( commonly carrying bags constructed from carpet material) that populate the diaries of senior public sector managers.
Co-design exercises, overseen by senior managers are a better pathway to the effective use of powerful technologies that the current rampant use of expensive consultantware of dubious efficacy.
The author also exposes a fundamental fact that innovation can be bottom up rather than the top down approaches that are burdened by cumbersome bureaucratic overheads that lack agility and will discourage real innovation.
This work also documents the fact that public sector needs can drive innovative communities to solutions that can stimulate the SME IT sector to thrive and build a vibrant indigenous technology sector. NADIA has left our shores and is evolving overseas. Shame on the managers who stopped it, and stifled local innovation.
The book also provides insight into the failed approach to IT driven by a central agency under the wing of the Department of Finance which has held this responsibility for over 20 years with multiple precursor agencies to the Digital Transformation Agency wasting billions of dollars on failed whole of government pipe dreams.
Hopefully the well documented abrupt termination of the NADIA project will stimulate some senior managers to understand the failure by the Services Australia managers to recognise the merits of NADIA and look to embracing the approach that this project team used. That is that bottom up innovation founded on co-design exercises with the community has significant potential to assist the department make effective use of its staff and the technologies available to it.
- 5 Star Review Amazon. Australia.
AI Lessons from a Different Perspective. This book is not a typical technology book where an author takes a third-person perspective describing the impact of a new technology such as AI. Instead, it is a personal account of how a ground-breaking initiative involving social reform and technology innovation went wrong. The author deftly draws us into understanding the depth of challenges she faced with governmental bureaucracy. Her detailed account of the events leading up to the failure of this beautifully designed, first-of-a-kind AI project by and for people with disabilities one can only read in disbelief and feel the frustration of the author.
It is a book that is well researched and full of facts and timelines that provide a context for readers to glean some valuable lessons about how human bias and bigotry can destroy a clearly promising and innovative technology such as AI. But out of that dark experience, the author's creative refocusing on a digital human initiative to improve healthcare guides the reader to a bright and hopeful future.
- Frances West. Former IBM Global Chief Accessibility Officer. USA. 5 Star Review on Amazon.
Innovation, How to Mess it Up, and Hope. I've been the lead identity architect for several large global, commercial projects as well as for a government citizen identity & authentication project. I tell you this because when I read Nadia, it was one of the best books I've read in several years. Why?
First, it educated me on the importance of co-design. Written by a world class expert, it made me realize how critical it is to implementing citizen facing, targeted, government services for all citizens, including those with disabilities.
Second, it was a very well documented story of how a government can mess up world class, leading edge innovation projects. Page by page, Marie shows how the government took Nadia and:
* Inappropriately expanded the concept to all of government
* Listened to big tech which was proposing chat bots which wouldn't work as advertised with the target audience
* Then wrap up Nadia with a failed project, Robodebt
* And kill it, without understanding the consequences to tens of thousands or more of their disabled citizens who couldn't work with call centres and complex websites to be serviced
* Then vilify some of the people involved in the innovative program
I strongly suggest senior government leaders and bureaucrats read this book as a classic lesson in how to not manage innovative projects.
Third, the book affected me so much, I'm rewriting a 436 page cost centre doc for a $18-27 billion dollar architecture, rethinking legal identity for humans, AI systems and leveraging this to rethink learning, by including co-design.
Fourth is about hope. The book lays out how people with disabilities can't easily work with existing web and call centre services for them. My message to them is to not give up hope. I've realized co-design is critical in being able to create services for disabled people which works regardless of how you learn and communicate. You folks will become one of the main drivers in creating out of the box services to all people on the planet. Anyone who's a change agent should read this book.
- Guy Huntington. Global Identity Architect, AI Expert and Visionary. Canada. 5 Star Review on Amazon. Read more on LinkedIn.
I cried. Like tears streaming down my face cried. For the first time ever in a client meeting. During one of my very first visits to Australia ever. Why? Because the inspirational Marie Johnson - my client whom I was meeting for the very first time -showed me the beauty and power that was the #Nadia #co-design process in action. Why? Because before #AI broke onto the scene and became a household name, I saw early and first hand the power this technology has to improve lives. Why? Because, simply put, seeing so many amazing people from across Australia gather together to improve lives was simply overwhelming. MYPOV: What happened to #Nadia is a cautionary tale for us all.
— Julia Glidden. Global Technology Executive. Former IBM Global Government Industry; Former Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector. USA. Read more on LinkedIn.
Paradise Lost. Like many I was excited about a future where I could just ‘talk’ to government agencies and health bodies about my complex needs as a retiree with multiple chronic conditions. 24 x 7, taking as long as I need, and getting answers that made sense. Hope died along with Nadia. I now understand how and why this was taken away from all of us who need extra help but as angry as that made me feel, I now also have hope that Nadia’s will still be part of my future.
— 5 Star Review on Amazon Australia.
