S2, E14 (Week 07, TSLT blog 09)

Maintaining momentum on our blog is challenging, getting a blog our every Friday, and making sure that we all have a voice takes some coordinating! If you find the blog useful and interesting to read, please comment to let us know. Specifically, feedback on the bits that you enjoy would be really welcome. We need to know if it’s working for you, and therefore a good use of our time.

Our highlights and reflections from the week (and key decisions that we’ve taken) are:

• We had our first coffee pairing group sessions — a great chance to meet colleagues across ST and TS, and if you haven’t already we suggest you sign-up. The next sessions are already being organised!
• We’ve been running a series of Microsoft Copilot demo sessions this week (shout out to Simon Willis) with lots of interest in the tool and positive feedback on the interactive sessions. Great work Simon!
• Our stakeholder engagement sessions on the Network Service procurement have continued and we’ve had a very positive meeting with DUCL on action progress following the recent network audit.
• Folk from across TS (and more widely) got together in Chelmsford Library today for an improvement workshop on our non-standard service request process (NSSR improvement workshop). Attendance and contributions from colleagues attending were great and we’re looking forward to taking forward some of the thinking and learning.
• The Technology Services Investment Board met for a workshop to review pipeline schemes and inflight projects and get a better understanding of the work that we had ring-fenced budget against. It was a great face-to-face session and helped us to focus on the work that really matters, freeing up funding that had been ringfenced for work that’s either complete, no longer needed, or that should be deprioritised. TSIB will be making formal recommendations that re-balance the portfolio and budget to Members following the workshop.

Looking to next week our focus and priorities are going to be:

• Finalising preparations and arrangements for the jeans and jumpers AI session (which is attracting a lot of attention!), we’ll share a link to a talk by one of the speakers in a couple of weeks…
• Preparing for the co-design sessions in March — the logistics of arranging bookings seem unnecessarily challenging! Hopefully more on that early next week…
• Discussions on v1.0 of the Technology Roadmap and preparing to publish and share that more widely.

This week in casa Garcez we’ve been reading and watching:

• Breaking Bad — definitely behind the curve on this one, but it’s keeping us amused as the days get longer…
• Anachronist: a time travel adventure — probably not really age appropriate but it’s a bit sci-fi and light easy reading… I’m not sure I’d go so far as to recommend it!

If you’ve had time off for half term this week (or have some planned next week), hope you had/ have a great restful break! Have a great weekend all ☀️