UK Gov Camp 2019: some notes, links and reflections

These are some of my notes and reflections from my second year at the annual UK Gov Camp unconference. This was a great event and definitely as good as the 2018 unconference which I wrote about in a blog post last year.

For me this community gathering has become really important food for the soul. I’ve found that the contacts, discussions and learning are great at the time but also that I am able to feed off this for the following 12 months. It’s great to be with so many people who really care about improving public services and who’ve given up a Saturday to learn from each other and help each other.

At the outset I want to add my thanks to the organisers, in particular Amanda (incoming lead organiser), James Arthur Cattell (outgoing lead organiser) and Sarah Baskerville who was in so much pain but put in a shift and a half.

James has done so much for so many people over many years. It was seeing James’ inspiring work in Defra that got me connected into this great community so I owe him a very big thanks!

Amanda’s opening to Gov Camp 2019 was warm, funny, welcoming and included a lovely tribute to David Pearson who sadly is no longer with us. David contributed so much to capturing Gov Camp moments via his photography through the years.

Like my previous experience of Gov Camp it was a very open, warm and inclusive day which is great for an introvert like me! This year I went to sessions on: creating time to think; leadership; policy making; sharing your work on the internet and; Agile for non-tech teams.

‘Making space + time to think better’ — session led by Graham Lalley, Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion.

Like me Graham has recently taken on more responsibilities, has two kids and seems to be on the go all the time. This session discussed how we can listen more, think more and get to know people more which was all highly relevant to me as I get into a new role leading a new team in my own organisation. Some good discussion was had about what things at an organisational and cultural level stops us having the time to think better.

Some simple tips emerged for creating time to think including:

• Avoid the 1 hour default for meeting appointments in MS Outlook. Consider setting meetings at 45mins so you have time to gather thoughts, breath and prepare for the next meeting rather than them being back-to-back.
• Ringfence time like on a Friday in the right environment for you to help close off the week, gather thoughts and plan for the following week. You can then leave for the weekend ready to switch off and recharge your batteries so that you perform better on Monday.
• Make sure the objective of a meeting is clear and included in the meeting request so that you can think in advance and make best use of the meeting time.
• If the meeting objective isn’t clear or you don’t feel you can add value or need to be there don’t feel bad for declining the invite.
• Offer ‘work from home’ contracts as standard like the Food Standards Agency do. This not only sounds like a way to help staff work in an environment where they can think well but it can help support equality, diversity and attracting good talent to an organisation.
• Some helpful resources were shared like the book ‘Will It Make the Boat Go Faster’ and Casey Robinson’s ‘a user manual for me’

Sharing your work on the internet — session led by Dan Barrett , UK Parliamentary Digital Service.

This was a great session led by Dan who is a really inspirational leader and an example of someone who works in the open which greatly benefits others including myself.

I struggle a bit with working in the open whilst working for a public body but I would like to do it more. The session covered how in the civil service we work for organisations that are ‘watched’ and we represent ministers and government. As a result we need to be careful as there are risks for us as individuals and our organisations. What you openly share and say can sometimes be wrongly picked up as ‘the policy’ of your organisation rather than the understanding that you are sharing your thought process in an attempt to engage others to help you work through something.

Whilst the discussion highlighted risks of working in the open there are very clear risks of not doing it. It’s clear that we can’t openly share everything but we should still seek to be as open as possible. It was helpful to be in a safe space to hear other people’s thoughts on this and hear their confidence that it is the right thing to do based on the experiences shared.

Working in the open helps people learn about what works and what doesn’t work. It also stimulates the development of networks which in turn stimulate innovation. Reflecting on this Gov Camp session I have a few things I’d like to explore further e.g. how can we establish permissive cultures for working in the open? I’m looking forward to discussing this and more in an event at the Firestarter Festival run by Leah Lockhart in a couple of weeks!

Working in government at this particular time does however mean that discussions around certain events dominating the media can’t be shared online as noted by Joshua Mouldey ;-)

Leadership behaviours — session led by Carla Groom, DWP.

The discussion on leadership led by Carla Groom explored how managing and leading can often be confused and looked at how we can support staff development within the constraints of the culture / organisation. There were good contributions from Sharon Dale, Glyn R Jones and I always enjoy listening to Defra Perm Sec Clare Moriarty talking about leadership. Her definition of leadership is that it about “making it possible for other people to do their best work”. This definition acts as a bit of a ‘north star’ for me these days in my new role. Clare also referenced the ‘tripod of work’ model which works on three observations about how and why people make organisations work: tasking, trusting, tending.

Make policy great again! — session led by Simon Neb, Defra.

I work in the operational delivery profession so I’m not a policy professional. I am however passionate about joining up policy and delivery so I wanted to listen in on this session led by Simon Neb from Defra. Some points that were made chimed with ways of working I’m used to in systems development or operational delivery e.g. “nothing ever ends, we can only do the best with what we have and know now, release it, review it and iterate.”

I don’t think I’ll ever be a policy person as I like the ‘doing stuff’ in Ops Delivery! I do however appreciate learning from policy professionals and I enjoy working with them to ensure delivery experience is fed into policy development and review.

Agile for non-tech teams — session led by Darren McCormac, Barnardo’s

My main take home from this session reinforced experience in my own team. It is better to just take some of the most relevant principles from Agile and apply them to non-tech teams rather than trying to force the full blown methodology onto a team that likely isn’t suited to it or needing it. For example the principles like focusing on small iterative steps, minimum viable products, short and regular face-to-face comms, simplicity and regular reflection. Some suggested reading was ‘the 4 disciplines of business execution’.

Other #UKGC19 stuff……...

There were lots of other sessions that were pitched and which I liked the sound of but didn’t manage to attend. I’ll be having a read of the session notes for the following:

• Data infrastructure: how do we make the plumbing sexy?
• Procurement.
• Remote working across teams.
• Developing our thinking around ethics for data and AI.
• Recruiting for the uncertain.
• Big discovery versus continuous discovery for outcome delivery.
• How can we better look after each other?
• Involving young people and thinking of them in policy development.
• Turning services and work off.

And finally……..

• I heard that Flickr is closing so I’ll need to export all my photos and videos to preserve them ASAP.
• I had some fun helping Terence Eden test a chip on his fingernail using my iPhone. He’s written a blog post about his internet enabled finger nails but whilst they are quite cool I’m not yet sure of a use for these…..!
• I happily managed to secure some of @jukesie’s highly coveted stickers :-)

All in all Gov Camp 2019 was another great event for learning and making connections which I know will help sustain me through the ups and downs of 2019. I’m very much looking forward to next year already :-)