September Week Notes

Somehow I have lost September! Perhaps it was the back to school activity, the new job, or shorter days that did it.

I’ve been publishing week notes notes on Yammer internally since we formed the digital team last November, this week the forward thinker Richard Pascoe who started us on our digital journey, which is all about designing user-centered services, is moving on. I felt to mark how far we’ve come I would publish my first week notes externally, I will miss his guidance, professional integrity and proof reading!

We held our 6th digital network meeting this month which over 50 people attended, the theme was bots. A group of us got the network going as a way to raise awareness of digital opportunities, share learning and make new contacts. I’m really pleased people are continuing to attend and find it useful. Along with colleagues Laura and Penny, We Build Bots interviewed us for their podcast, a first for me, definitely need some more practice

A few of the team got to go to Camden last week to learn about their digital journey, in particular how they have been using the Liferay platform and working with Placecube. They were fantastic hosts, the building and view was stunning, now we need to think about what’s the right approach for us going forward.

Internally I’ve been having conversations about:

• The four types of digital champion role Councillors could adopt (Councillor ICT Mentor helping each other, Digital Champion in Community, Digital Ambassador for online services, Digital Change Leader)
• How we embed digital and achieve a more agile governance approach for the transformation plan being developed, I still keep going back to the Homes England Blog

What I hope I’ve achieved:

• Our new people strategy incorporating the need for digital skills and embedded digital champions across the organisation
• Changing our invest to save approach so it incorporates the need for user research/discovery stage, and decision making based on data/customer insight
• Inspiring the planning service about what we really mean by digital as part of their service convergence and transformation kick off session

What I’m thinking about:

• How we can crack the resourcing of multi disciplinary teams, interesting blog from Croydon
• How we make more visible the work we do internally and externally to truly embrace working in the open
• How we continue to develop our understanding and approach to digital across the organisation to develop a digital mindset
• Maintaining momentum of our work whilst the service undergoes re-structuring, which will help to formalise service design and user adoption roles

Bring on October, spooky fun, peer challenge and robotics!