S2, E16 (Week 11, TSLT blog 11)

After a little hiatus we’re back with some updates, hello @everyone 👋 (Hopefully I’ve tagged that properly and everyone’s had a notification about the blog, pop a comment in the feedback if there’s a better way… or just to tell us what you think of the blog!)

Key decisions, reflections and updates from the last few weeks:

• ❗ 📺 The ‘jeans and jumpers’ AI session went down particularly well. With Eddie Copeland, Glen Robinson, Mary Mesaglio and Paul Maltby as our guest speakers there was a lot to learn and share. Some follow-ups that are worth your time:
• Mary’s opened the session, framing AI and giving us some common language. She didn’t use slides in the session but shared these afterwards (they broadly cover what she said): Mary’s slides | Mary’s slides with notes
• Eddie shared the ‘LOTI’ perspective, covering both what LOTI were seeing across the sector and work that they were supporting. The slides he used are here: Eddie’s slides
• Gartner also shared a paper: Plan for Generative AI’s Impact on Jobs, and these videos of Mary presenting key notes speeches on AI at the Gartner symposium (definitely worth watching): The Next Era — We Shape AI, AI Shapes Us and AI is Changing the Human-Machine Relationship
• ❤️ We’ve published version 1.0 of the ECC technology roadmap! Cath posted about this on the All TS Teams site too. The roadmap is our North Star and sets out what we’ll be doing to support service improvements for our citizens and colleagues, as well as the work that we need to do to ‘fix the technology plumbing’. The roadmap will iterate and has involved input from across TS. We will be working with colleagues in ST to create the digital roadmap as our next iteration. If you’d like to hear more about this work or would like the team to attend a team meeting, please contact: tsib@essex.gov.uk — we want everyone to have a say in the work that we do.
• 🤓 The business case for the investment in Platforms for Data programme was endorsed by OLT last week and will be presented to Members at the Transformation Oversight Board (TOB) next week. We’re on schedule for a Cabinet Member decision by the end of March.
• 📊 Gavin Jones chaired the Data Talks virtual conference which ECC hosted. The conference is for the public sector and brings together a diverse array of expertise all with a shared passion for turning data into insight to achieve real and positive change.
• 💰 TSIB approved the next steps for our Enterprise Service Management project, and we’re now developing and refining the detailed business case.
• 🛜 Momentum is building on the network programme — we’re being supported by a consultancy (4C) and have a very tight timeline to get the procurement underway and completed before starting transition from the DUCL network.
• ✏️ We had our second co-design sessions with colleagues from across ST and TS on Monday and Ben and Ed and reviewing all the input from those sessions. The discussions focused on 6 ‘insights’ from the first co-design, getting into some detail around how we transition to the Essex Digital Service and best meet the needs of our citizens and colleagues. We will be sharing outputs from the session as soon as possible.
• 🥇 An audit of change management across our ERP system (MyOracle) reported “good assurance” (the best assessment possible in an internal audit) across all measures. This is fantastic news and acknowledges the excellent often unseen practices in keeping our technology infrastructure fit-for-purpose and safe. Very well done to everyone involved, what fantastic news!

Next week:

• We have the People and Transformation Performance Board where we’ll heard from business partners and FLT about key performance across the function.
• Gavin will be leading a directors meeting and extended leadership team event.
• We’ll be preparing for a ‘digital CLT session’ at the end of March where CLT will be discussing the Modern Digital Council portfolio (part of the Whole Council Transformation), reflecting on the AI jeans and jumpers session, and reviewing the lessons learned from some of our large technology projects (eg Social Care Platform Procurement).

Hope you all have a great weekend — it’s ☀️as I type this, 🤞it’ll stay that way and I’ll not be standing in the rain watching footy on Sunday!