Where do you draw the line on what you work on having a public purpose? I’ve been thinking about this a lot while looking back at my career to date. I’ve always wanted to work on something with a direct and tangible public purpose. But I’ve had to do some mental gymnastics to make that work.

At Cambridge, the University is a major local employer, a potential engine for national social mobility, a research centre that adds loads to medicine/technology/the arts, it’s part of a city deal organisation with local government to handle infrastructure work (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Cambridge). But… delivering digital services in the university doesn’t necessarily get you close to those bits. Its remit isn’t big enough. And part of that is a sensible aversion to the Cummings approach of “just fire some clever people at the problem and see what happens”, as the institution is a finely balanced stalemate of clever people who don’t particularly want any more getting involved. So, you then have to focus on what you can do. You can increase access and accessibility. You can bring the ideas of user centricity in and change the epistemology of who is a user of the university. There is reform for the public good that can be done and, really, should.

On the other side, when I’ve been a contractor or worked for agencies, I’ve definitely been working on things that are much more straight up and down public service, but the complication of the money and contracts muddies the water. I’m there because there’s money, a contract, whatever, not necessarily because the work is excellent, or a good fit. And, to be blunt, you are there to run a business and when that aligns with public good, that’s great, but there are no guarantees.

Equally, can you sensibly argue that working on the UK’s immigration services is a public good? Nationalised arms companies (when they existed)? It would be hard to argue that working for the Police doesn’t make you complicity in their well documented problems. Working in government doesn’t always mean performing a public good.

So, that leaves me with the idea that working for the university can be a good, but it must be performed. It is not inherent. It must be chosen and embodied. And that is political.