May 27, 2021
Sprint Notes #25
Covering 12–25 May 2021
Welcome back to our team sprint notes!
Career opportunities with Local Digital
We’re currently recruiting for four exciting Grade 7 roles within the Local Digital, Cyber and Digital Planning teams. Find out more below and help us spread the word!
Local Digital Collaboration Unit
- Collaboration and Engagement Manager — applications close on 31 May
Local Government Cyber Security Programme
- Security Architect — applications close on 28 May
Planning for the Future reform programme
- Digital Planning Private Sector Engagement — applications close on 1 June
- Digital Senior Policy Lead — applications close on 2 June
Join us for Digital Leaders Week 2021
We’re excited to be partnering with Digital Leaders for another week of exceptional digital transformation themed events from across the sector. Taking place 14–18 June 2021, there’s still plenty of time to book your place on some of the fantastic sessions on offer, or why not submit an event of your own?
So far, our recommended sessions include:
- Open Referral UK launch with Snook, CAST and Essex County Council
Our Local Digital funded project, Open Referral UK, will showcase how the national data standard can make a difference to people’s lives. - #LocalDigital Lightning Talks
Join us for a series of lightning talks from 5 Local Digital funded projects that are improving citizen experience: LocalGovDrupal, Income Management System, Housing Repairs Online, Future Work Design and Digital Inclusion Toolkit. - Moving beyond HowBusyIsToon.com — where next for citizen centred data?
Jenny Nelson, Digital Lead at Newcastle City Council, will share where the City is going next, moving past sharing footfall and busyness information, sharing other real time data to help inform individual decision-making. - Data to Insight Forum #1: Data Modelling in Children’s Services
Join Alistar Herbert for the launch of Data to Insight’s new series of ‘Forum’ workshop sessions for colleagues to share insights and approaches across organisational boundaries. - Fast and inclusive decision making; it’s possible
Join Tim Shand, Business Analyst at Haringey Council, to find out how you can utilise his ‘Liberating Structure’ style process to make decision-making easier (trust us when we tell you this is great!)
We’ll be adding to our list of sessions over the few days, so make sure you’re following us on Twitter for updates, or sign up to our newsletter.
Funded projects
Reducing Invalid Planning Applications (RIPA)
The project is preparing to test Houses of Multiple occupation (HMO) applications in their next user round. This journey will be tested with the Southwark branded application.
They have also been progressing with user research and system improvements, with the view of moving into Private Beta. They held their first session with future private beta participants, which was really well received. The project has also made good progress with establishing a benefit case workstream.
You can read more about what they got up to in the previous sprint, focussing on the various types of testing and benefits case activities, in their latest blog post.
If you’d like to attend their next Show and Tell on 4 June 2021 at 10.45am, email digitalplanning@lambeth.gov.uk.
Back Office Planning System (BOPS)
The project recently held a Show and Tell and has been making progress with further user research sessions. They’ve also put together a BOPS Validation Guide and are on track to launch their Private Beta service.
The project is also preparing for a Show and Tell this week, where they will give an update on what they’ve been working on in the past 2 weeks. Visit their YouTube channel to catch up on past Show and Tells.
How Busy Is Toon
The project held an ideation session where they explored a number of ways to meet user needs relating to accessing travel information.
The project also had their mid-project Show and Tell, during which they:
- showcased their research from adding travel information data to the platform
- spoke about the work they’re doing to create an onboarding guide for other councils
They were also joined by Essex + Hertz Digital Innovation Zone and North Tyneside Council, who shared their experiences of working with the project on creating similar platforms in their areas. Watch the Show and Tell recording on our YouTube channel and read the slides.
Help shape how the project moves forward by filling out one of their two live surveys:
- resident thoughts on potential travel information that could be added to the platform
- council views on real time open data
Finally, the team is also preparing for their Digital Leaders Week 2021 presentation on 15 June 2021 at 2:00pm — don’t forget to register your place!
Open Referral UK (ORUK)
The project will be running a launch event on 14 June as part of Digital Leaders Week. During the event, representatives from different organisations — from local government and the private sector, to voluntary and community service organisations — will share their experiences with the standard, and talk about the benefits of wider adoption for local community services. Register for the event to find out more.
LocalGov Drupal
Project lead, Will Callaghan, has written an article about the project’s approach to collaborative code development for Open Access Government.
The team also uploaded two more video skills sessions to their website and YouTube. The most recent one, on sociocracy, will inform how they manage the LocalGov Drupal community as it grows.
Feature development continues as the project reaches the end of its second sprint, which you can read about in their latest sprint notes.
Mark Conroy has also published a blog post in which he talks about how users can create ‘sensible defaults’ in their theming templates.
Lastly, we’re proud to announce that the project is a finalist in the ‘Sharing Economy’ category at the Impact Awards! Votes are open until 17 June so make sure you cast your vote.
Future Work Design
The project team are continuing work on finalising their DPIA’s so that they can begin their next phase of research.
This week, the project team published a blog post on what they’ve been up to so far in Phase 2 of the project. Last month Eddie Niblett, the project lead, spoke on Great Yorkshire Radio about Future Work Design. Listen to a recording of the show on their website.
Children’s Social Care Demand
The project is moving forward having completed some user research and defined their next steps, including the development of a project roadmap.
The team have been collaborating using Miro and experimenting with different ways of communicating their work, including using the ‘Amazon Flywheel’ model. The flywheel describes how you can create a “virtuous loop” to drive delivery. The team described this as “one way we’ve played with looking at our portfolio of current and potential projects”.
Digital Inclusion Toolkit
The project is working with their website development team on testing various plugins for notifications for users. Last week, the team published their contributor guide on the website.
Housing Repairs
The project has finalised their supplier advertisement and is getting ready to post it on the Digital Marketplace in the coming days.
Digital Place Based Engagement
The project is meeting with Future Fox to share their learning on producing what a digital planning notice may look like.
Thanks for reading! For the daily download on all things #LocalDigital, be sure to follow us on Twitter.
