What we are trying to achieve: The vision for IT, digital and data at Valleys to Coast
The first in what I hope will be a series talking about the work we’re are doing and the direction we’re heading in.
The Valleys to Coast strategic plan for 2019–2024 sets out the kind of organisation we want to be:
[a] modern, well run organisation that is defined by its amazing customer service and is a really great place to work.
We used that statement to frame our vision, summarising in a few statements, how Tech/Digital/Data can and should enable each of these characteristics. I’ve given some commentary on each point below…
But first, a note of thanks
A huge number of people and organisations have contributed to the thinking on this (everybody on my twitter follows list, at least!). We have borrowed widely and liberally, so some of this wording may be (a-hem) familiar. I hope that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Particular thanks are due to the inspiring team at Croydon whose hard work made finding the right words much simpler for us.
Modern
All services are designed, improved and evaluated based on evidenced customer needs.
Being modern isn’t just about the tech. We wanted to lead with a clear statement that all our work will focus on users and especially on customers.
We’re working on building our capability around research and design.
All colleagues make effective use of cloud collaboration and productivity software to communicate, safely share and store information, and work with increasing efficiency.
While modernity isn’t just about tech, the basic modern tools for an organisation need to be in place. We are making progress here; all colleagues have now got decent kit and we have started our move from (old, on-prem) MS Office/Sharepoint to GSuite.
We automate processes to improve efficiency except where human intervention adds value for customers.
Again — always human-centred. We will improve efficiency without detracting from our customers’ experience.
Well Run
We have a full understanding of our total spending on technology and digital and are continuously improving value for money.
Two things we need to understand:
- Where the money goes.
- What we mean by value.
We are getting better at both.
All technology and digital services meet quality and cybersecurity standards and are managed well.
This is about operational standards. We will continue to build discipline around standards and make sure maintenance is valued and resourced. We will minimise toxic technology.
All colleagues can access data intelligence and have the knowledge, support and skills to use data to make well-informed decisions.
We have recently finished a piece of work with Data Orchard, assessing our data maturity. We are starting to build our capability so we can get much more value from our data.
We are digital by choice for customers. Excellent digitally enabled services are available. All services that can be made available online, are available online. Other channels remain available, allowing customers to choose the approach that works for them.
We will be digital by choice rather than digital by default. This is a key strategic decision. It is the only one consistent with putting customers at the heart of what we do.
We will not force our customers onto digital channels, but we expect that many will prefer them. Hackney summarised this as “Services people prefer”.
Excellent systems allow colleagues to focus on providing amazing customer service.
We often talk about ‘making it easy to do the right thing’. We don’t want to waste colleagues’ time and effort struggling with systems that don’t meet their needs.
Great place to work
All colleagues have fit for purpose technology and systems which facilitate rather than constrain their work, which work well together, are resilient and can be changed rapidly to meet their users’ changing needs.
This is what it means to have good internal IT systems. This is a hygiene factor for somewhere being a great place to work, but it is rare. We have recently replaced our invoicing system (which appears in this post under the pseudonym “Invoicing Hell”) with a much-improved version, saving lots of time, effort, paper and pain. A step in the right direction but there is lots more to do.
All colleagues can work effectively from anywhere, including suitable assistive technology for colleagues who need it.
The colleagues-formerly-known-as-office-based are still working from home and we have (along with so many organisations) proved that we can be much more flexible than we realised about the timing and location of work. We’re now thinking about and planning for how we want to work in future.
We play an active role in local and national networks, fostering collaboration across traditional organisational and sector boundaries where our aims are often aligned.
Collaborating and sharing are central to keeping up to date with technology. One of the advantages of the sector is that people are very willing to share knowledge. We want to grow that into more active collaboration.
We share experience and capabilities and are a recognised leader in digital and technology.
Building on that last point, this is about being ambitious as an organisation and as a team. Neil Tamplin is our poster boy on this one 😉.
Come and join us
If this sounds like the kind of vision you would like to help realise, we are recruiting a couple of important new posts:
- Application Analyst |£36k | closing date 14th September
- Delivery Manager | £46k | closing date 21st September
If you like the sound of either post, but are worried you don’t fully meet the person spec, I’d encourage you to apply anyway. Your unique set of skills and experience might be just what we need and we will support people to grow into the roles and build new skills. We are a small organisation so we all have to be T-shaped (or possibly comb-shaped!) people.
These are advertised as full-time roles, but we are open to flexible working arrangements of all kinds.
If you’d like to have a chat about either role please get in touch: DMs are open at @pollyrt or polly.thompson@v2c.org.uk.
