#BureaucracyHack — how the day will work
The 3rd of July is a little under a month away now! Find out more about how we are expecting the event to run, here.
We’ve been quiet because we have been busy beavering away! Last week Rose M published her first ever blog post on hacking recruitment and we’ve been busy at work scoping out the Tomlinson Centre for the day itself (thanks to Hackney Council for providing the space!).
The main thing we’ve planned out now is the agenda and how the day is going to work. That is the subject of this post (the agenda is at the end).
First of all, this type of event hasn’t been done before (to the best of our knowledge) so we’re kinda free-styling. If you have any thoughts or ideas that might make it all go smoother, please comment below 👇 or join our growing group of volunteers!
The whole idea of the day
The whole point of the #BureaucracyHack is that it is a day to try to get together to actually solve some real problems for people that work in bureaucracies. That means it for doing much more than talking — we’ve planned the day to maximise doing time:
- We’ve stretched the day from 9.30–5.00pm
- We’ve limited time for pitches and welcomes (but haven’t skimped on lunch!)
- We’ve worked with people who have volunteered to do homework in advance so that each stream can be as productive as possible.
- We’ve broken the day into six ‘streams’ — each one with a topic lead, a facilitator, a room, supplies and a problem to solve. Each stream will only hack one problem — but may come up with multiple ‘hacks’.
- Each stream will run all day and will have a morning session and an afternoon session.
This is still a One Team Gov event so if a session isn’t working for you, just switch — in fact we encourage it — any of the teams will need different skills at different stages.
If you don’t feel like you’re being productive, go and find a stream where you can do something!
Pitches
Because we’ve done so much homework on the stream topics, the pitches will be about helping you to decide which stream you would like to contribute to. This is slightly different to an unconference where streams are decided on the day.
If people are interested, we could have still have a ‘wildcard’ stream which people could vote for on the day — we’ll ask our followers on Twitter whether they thing this is a good idea.
We’re going to write another post about the stream topics themselves next week, so look out for that!
Morning Session
The morning session will mostly be for setting up the team, getting on the same page, sharing existing knowledge and settling on the exact problem to be solved and how the team are going to do it. You might call this a ‘hypothesis’. Then you can use any spare time to start tackling the problem
Each session will have a room and will be chock full of stationery, kindly provided by RedQuadrant.
Sessions will be also facilitated by two people:
- Someone who can provide some research and a high level brief on the problem and who has already started thinking about the problem. They’ll lead the first hour of the session.
- Someone who is responsible for making sure the team runs smoothly, facilitating discussions, servant leadership, documenting discussions and actions.
Then at lunch you’ll get the chance to share your initial thoughts over an ‘open mic’ — perhaps to attract the kind of people you’ll need for the afternoon session, or just to see if anyone knows how to crack a problem you’ve got.
Afternoon sessions
The afternoon session will be mostly for knuckling down and hacking your problem. Come up with as many ‘hacks’ as you can.
We’re committed to working in the open and taking accountability for our own actions, so by the end of the afternoon session we’ll ask every team to have produced:
- A bunch of hacks (whatever these may be)
- If you can’t do everything on the day, a list of actions to be taken after the hack with committed owners
- A 10-minute ‘show and tell’ style presentation to give back to the whole room at the end
- A blog post about the hacks you’ve created, co-authored by the team which we will publish in the week after the hack
Planned Agenda, 3rd July 2019
9:30 Arrive, chat, grab a coffee and pastry
9:45 Welcome from the #BureaucracyHack team
10:00 Pitches
10:15 Break-out into streams and settle down to work for the morning session
13:00 Lunch with an ‘open mic’ to share any thoughts, problems, needs or solutions (thank you to eSynergy for providing lunch!)
14:00 Back into streams for the afternoon session
16:10 Show and tell presentations of your work for the day
17:00 Closing and thank-yous
17:15 Optional pub trip (yes we know its a work night but Convivio have offered to buy everyone a well-earned drink), probably at the Duke of Richmond, E8 3NH
That’s all for now — next week we’ll tell you about the pitches and streams in more detail!
Finally, there’s still a chance we could squeeze you in if someone drops out, so if you haven’t already, sign up here:
