A wholly inappropriate video, but the song was stuck in my head all week
So this reflecting lark seems to be paying off. I’ve found myself making it part of my daily routine in post-work downloads with Mrs L, and even sharing what I feel I’m learning with colleagues as I go through the week.
I’ve been continuing my quest to understand everything in as short a timescale as possible. There’s something I find unsettling about not ‘knowing my numbers’, so I’ve been keen to root around and get some key facts in my head (fact #1: 15,500 PDFs. Let that one sink in..).
One approach I adopted that I enjoyed was delegating some of my learning to my (more than capable) team, dividing up the ‘stuff’ I needed to know as topics and letting them decide who gets to teach the dummy. It was also another opportunity to spend more time with them on an individual basis as I finally got around to a completing a good conversation with each. Sometimes not being in the same building has its disadvantages.
The big ‘new’ thing this week (for me and for everyone here) was the kick-off for our new customer platform project, which I’m very excited about as it means working with a supplier with an approach I believe in. I’m still not sure if the ink is completely dry on the contract, so I’ll maintain keeping the worst kept secret in localgov a bit longer. I really hope we get to a point of public blogging on this project soon; I shall keep the pressure on to do that as I’ve learned so much from others this way, and I do have Make Things Open, It Makes Things Better running through me like Blackpool in a stick of rock.
There are some tensions with the sheer amount we want to accomplish with the platform in a short time in order to avoid contract renewal deadlines. This will mean some compromises, but perhaps in a good way as they’ll avoiding kicking the can down the road. We’ll need to start relying on the user research/development from others already baked into the platform, and some excellent work previously carried out in the council.
So having new toys like this is great as they allow us to do more stuff, but they also give us an opportunity to check where we are on our journey and reset things where needed. Perfect timing for me coming in really, as it means any changes I feel are important will have an easier road to adoption.
We’re also looking at trying on Product Ownership for size, with an Owner for each workstream. I’m pretty excited about this as it means more learning for me and the chance to break from a ‘task and finish’ approach to service design.
A quick summary of other Change:
I’ve tried to limit myself to five ‘when I was in Oxford’s per day, but this is proving difficult as many of the challenges faced there are the same as in Dorset. In some ways this is good as it means I’ve got some experience to go on (and often some docs in my Google Drive to dip into), but it is a shame that every council has to invent their own approach to tackling the same issue.
One of the more pleasant ‘same’s is giving some early input into an intranet revamp. Due to the complications of bringing multiple councils together, a Sharepoint approach wouldn’t have worked for everyone and a quick install of GovIntranet was used instead to handle the considerable comms needed to move 6 organisations into 1. Now it’s time to revisit what is there and decide on next steps. This had me delving into my intranet work at Oxford. Looking at what we did I think we got things right with our approach, and actually I started looking back on our achievements as a small, isolated team with some pride.
I guess I thought that stepping out of Digital in Oxford in June and joining Dorset in October would mean I’d jump the Big Scary Accessibility Deadline of 23 September, but it looks like there’s more to do (but there always will in getting this stuff right). Luckily it will be more about galvanising work already done, but also some exciting internal collaboration with our Comms team on the wider aspects of content design (letters etc). I found myself saying it might feel we are putting up barriers, but actually we’re helping take them down. That feels like the right way to pitch it with people rather than focus on legal compliance.
After a week of learning and identifying a number of things that aren’t quite right or need addressing, in opposition to last week’s ‘everything is so shiny’, it felt like I was turning grumpy. But I realised all of them are fixable (and easily) rather than a wider sign the culture is broken. Each time I raised something with a colleague I didn’t get the pushback I’ve been used to receiving. More a “oh, thanks for letting us know — we should get onto that”. I love that kind of responsiveness
A quick summary of other Sames:
With the turmoil overseas hopefully leading up to an Orange Overthrow in the next weeks I’m sure my team will be delighted to know that all 7 seasons of The West Wing are available on Channel 4 with The Guardian setting out their top 10 episodes. What a great time to be alive. There will be a test after half term