I love what OneTeamGov represents, the cross silo mentality, the honesty of approach, the nurturing, the caring, the inclusivity. It is bloody awesome.
I attended OneTeamGovGlobal last week and spent the day helping facilitate the sessions that had been crowd sourced in the unconference.
What is an unconference, well if you don’t know by now, I recorded this video of James Arthur Cattell explaining what it is a couple of years ago.
Yes, a couple of years ago – when I was still working in the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) trying to change the culture from within.
This work, known at the time as #OpenDefra, predates OneTeamGov and I didn’t realise at the time was trying to do a very similar thing, albeit on a smaller scale. We were trying to get those within Defra group (including about 30 organisations including the Environment Agency and the Potato Council of Great Britain) to see themselves as part of a data/digital ecosystem where software suppliers and external users had as an important voice as the policy folk.
The #OpenDefra approach, which was kick started by the then Secretary of State announcing we would release 8000 new sets of open data within a year (June 2015) when at the time there were only a few, successfully created an environment to break organisational silos and created an agile-ish team from across the group who believed in working together to deliver the common goal.
It was hugely successful, in order to deliver the target we had to break 6 or 7 data publishing processes and truly work together.
There were about 30 people who the success depended on and each of them gave huge amount. However there were a few key individuals who came together to create an environment where change occurred, and I learned huge amounts about change from them. They are James Arthur Cattell, Stefan Janusz and DavidBuck.
As individuals they are brilliant, but put together they are incredible. They personified the change we needed to see. A flatter and more encompassing Defra structure with the kudos to be able to go anywhere and talk to anyone. I was proud to be in a team with them.
Still my biggest regret is that I do not believe the momentum and the environment created was capitalised on and the moment that the target was delivered the civil service norms started to exert themselves and we were asked to revert to trying to deliver significant change by doing things in the same way as always – I think we all felt totally demoralised by that.
Which is where OneTeamGov comes in.
I thought that when #OpenDefra ended (it got rebranded as #DefraData and has gone very VERY quiet) those individuals would fade back into the system and find it very disenchanting as they had seen what was possible. But then Kit Collingwood and James Reeve (So many James Reeves to scroll through to tag) met, launched One Team Gov and a new focus appeared for my peeps.
My bunch of incredible mavericks had found a new home, and it was bigger and better than that which we had before. At this point I had started my journey out of government, my time, for a number of reasons, was up and I needed to move on. But I now could rest easy that they would be alright.
What is even more great about OneTeamGov is even though I am now working at the Open Data Institute I can still be part of the movement because I believe I am part of the change that is needed, it doesn’t matter who my employer is I know I have something to offer this change movement. So I can remain involved.
This has helped me hugely with my transition out of government after 19 years (and all the baggage that brings) validating that I still have something to offer as my working life is effectively starting again.
Last Monday, #OneTeamGovGlobal was incredible and many others have written on here why (random selection – there are more):
BUT for me it was incredible because I saw 3 of my friends standing on a stage (with others) taking the applause of a 500 strong crowd of people who were realising what I already knew. They are bloody awesome.
Looking forward to the(ir) next step in the OneTeamGov journey.
