S2, E13 (Week 06, TSLT blog 08)

As I sit down to pull this together it feels like time is accelerating — it can’t be a whole week since I hit publish on the last TSLT blog, can it? In the week that’s just coming to an end we’ve been up to a lot:

• It’s been fantastic to see the team working together onsite this week, supporting the first device collections for the EUD Pilot. The atmosphere in the office has been great, with an element of people getting to know each other again as we focus on the common purpose of getting the pilot kicked off.
• Stakeholder engagement sessions have started with our newly appointed network consultants (4C) set up at County Hall. This kicks off our network service procurement: thank you to everyone for freeing diaries to support this work.
• We are in the midst of a number of concurrent, important procurements. Some focused work this week lead by Shelley Edwards on our IT peripherals procurement which has a very challenging timeline given the current contract expires in August.
• It’s been great to see colleagues across Technology Services coming together as one team to support the social care platform procurement,(SCPP). We are racing to review the ITT, specification and requirements, incorporating learning from the first tender round, our move to the cloud and changes in the service areas. All with a plan to go back to market in March.
• A lot of activity across TS this week to design and implement a second shared care record with MSE ICS (Integrated Care System), working with ASC.
• Business partners are working closely with Service Transformation on Digital Discovery with ASC and C&F directors, mapping all the work that ST and TS are doing to support the modernisation and digitisation of the services, getting leaders to think differently, and planning their adoption of M365 skills, tools, and apps.
• Kevin M and Josh presented to Corporate Services Wider FLT on automation. Their presentation was really well received! Technology Services will be organising the next Wider FLT on 28 February focusing on technology, and showcasing how using products across the M365 suite can help us to maximise our productivity.

Our priorities and focus for the week coming:

• We are really looking forward to meeting with colleagues in Chelmsford Library next Friday for an onsite workshop to focus on improvements to our non-standard service request process.
• Cath, Dan, Emma, Josh, and Simmone meeting with Buckinghamshire to understand how they might support us by showing some of what they have already done with CoPilot and other products in the M365 suite.
• The Technology Services Investment Board (TSIB) are meeting face-to-face on Tuesday to the work set against the reserve. The reserve is over-committed with more projects wanting to be funded from the reserve than we can afford. We’ll be looking to review allocations, hopefully freeing up money to accommodate more projects (and also taking a view on projects that may be worth deprioritising).
• Ed will be attending Operations Leadership Team to formally ratify a new policy on international calling. This has been prompted by the contact centre and, if agreed, will apply to international calling on all platforms. Ed will also be alerting OLT to challenges with number porting that are impacting the contact centre project (we have 30,000+ numbers that need to migrate as part of the project).
• We’ll be finalising plans for the ‘jeans and jumpers’ AI session with Cabinet and CLT. We’ve lined-up some amazing speakers including Eddie Copeland (London Office Technology Innovation), Glen Robinson (Microsoft UK), Haris Mouratidis (Institute for Analytics and Data Science University of Essex), Mary Mesaglio (Gartner), and Paul Maltby (Faculty AI).

It’s my dad’s birthday tomorrow so I’m in Lisbon ready to help him celebrate. I have finished 1984 (read it if you haven’t, and re-read it if you have!). I haven’t been watching anything so nothing to share, but have been listening to podcasts and recently found the ‘World of Mouth’ podcase by Kenneth Nars. I’ve only listened to part of one episode (episode 15: Nuno Mendes from Lisboeta in London). I’ve long been a fan of Nuno’s so probably have some bias but if you’re a foodie it may be worth a look…

Have a great weekend all!