Building a better digital family information service — sprintnotes #02

New to these notes? Every two weeks (a sprint), we’ll share the things we’ve been up to and let you know what we plan to do next as we re-design, build and test a new product to manage the digital front door for the service.

What we’ve been up to

• We gained approval from Ofsted to work with the data feed that provides a bunch of information driving the service. This was touch and go, but the team were glad to get passed this hurdle. Not so fun was realising that the documentation for this data feed was a little behind the times (mentions of direct.gov anyone? Very 2007!)
• Behind the scenes, work continued to tackle the data. There are over 200 fields in one table that need matching and transforming into 18 tables of the new community standard we’ll be using. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless. We now have some basic data migrated into a shiny new database.
• The team reviewed some of the early prototypes, providing shape and direction to drive forward the admin experience, as well as the overall approach to content. Liz coined a new phrase that sums up the goal perfectly: “minimum viable information”. This means we should focus on the stuff that we as Bucks can add value with, and signpost elsewhere if not. The aim here is to figure out what the minimum amount of information a person needs from us to be able to make an informed decision.

@dinosaurenby sharing an intro to the work at ODI Leeds — watch the clip here

What we’re doing next

• We’ll continue to chip away at the data migration tasks. The plan is to have enough scaffolding in place to be able to start creating some working software. ‘Learning through making’ at it’s finest.
• The team will be working to better understand how to structure service information and guidance into life events. Through this, we’ll be exploring how to best describe and prioritise the services we offer, and how they can best meet both the policy outcomes we’re striving for as an authority, the needs we know our users have.

Data wrangling in action. Three tables showing differences in data formats

Want to get involved?

If you’d like to learn more about the project, or fancy being involved in testing and informing the work — please give us a shout.

Our next show and tell will be on Friday 20 March at 11.30am in Exhibition Suite Room 1 at County Hall. Please come along!