One Team Government: two weeks on
James Reeve and Kit Collingwood-Richardson
Two weeks ago today the One Team Government unconference brought more than 180 people from inside and outside the public sector together to talk about making government more effective. This post talks about what has happened since and invites you to get involved in taking the next steps.
The event started many new relationships and conversations, and we wanted to keep that momentum going, so the first thing we did after the event was to formally make One Team Government a community-led movement. You can read about that and feed into our first thoughts here.
We’ve been happily overwhelmed by both people’s response to the event and to their desire to be part of the ongoing movement.
Reform can be an intimidating prospect, with many attempts to define ‘target states’ or complex concepts like ‘culture’. But reform happens through a million small steps, not a few big ones so, rather than try to overdefine where we need to be, One Team Government is going to practise reform by doing small, achievable things — we call them ‘microactions’.
The team and admin
People interested in One Team Government ways of working now have a weekly Wednesday breakfast club. We’ve had 2 so far and you can sign up to the third here: https://attending.io/events/breakfast3
We’ve written about our principles: https://medium.com/@kcollingwood/what-is-one-team-government-962089d6375f
We now exist on Medium, Slack https://join.slack.com/t/oneteamgovernment/shared_invite/MjA4ODI0Njc4NjQ3LTE0OTkyNDgzMzYtYTYxNDBmZTI4OA and Trello https://trello.com/b/QCd1ujAM/oneteamgov
We’ve started conversations in our own departments about how to make the One Team Government ways of working real in our own delivery context.
Events
We’ve started conversations about 3 spinoff events to be held in 2017. They are:
- One Team Gov Scotland (read about it here https://medium.com/@sarahdrummond/one-team-gov-scotland-dc2de40c437a)
- One Team Gov Inclusion (read about it here: https://medium.com/@kcollingwood/making-the-public-sector-a-more-inclusive-place-to-work-b2447d071eea) and
- One Team Gov Schools.
On Twitter
- Two government recruitment campaigns have mentioned One Team Government ways of working: https://twitter.com/jessicalakevoy/status/882850363690364932 https://twitter.com/katyarnie/status/880773779198271490
- DfE start to bake One Team Government principles into their governance https://twitter.com/marxculture/status/883265386472493056
- A huge number of conversations under the #OneTeamGov hashtag.
Writing
Many people have written either about the event or its principles. A selection here:
- Matt Edgar https://blog.mattedgar.com/2017/07/01/closing-the-gap-between-expectations-and-delivery-theres-a-model-for-that/
- Andrew Greenway https://t.co/XEfHYoLXPc
- Cassie Robinson: https://medium.com/@cassierobinson/one-team-impact-78516aedeea
- Christian Storstein: https://blogs.gov.scot/digital-engagement/2017/07/11/one-team-gov/
- Laurence Grinyer: https://t.co/4E8ExrxApj
- Skills Funding Agency https://t.co/QlNultBTVp
Not every change that the One Team Government event triggered is listed here, but if it happened in the last two weeks, let us know and we will add it. We’ll be updating our website (http://oneteamgov.uk/) soon.
Each time someone does something big or small like this, government gets a little bit more #OneTeamGov.
From now on, we will publish at least one piece of original content about public sector reform every other week (you can write too — send us your ideas or content). We’ll be starting new work in departments and documenting it. We’ll publish reading lists and case studies. We’ll be offering our time to help teams out who wants to work differently. You can get in touch on contact@oneteamgov.uk.
