Getting together with peers
On Friday, Matthew and I joined a group of great people from several councils to compare notes from our digital journeys, share the challenges we’re grappling with and think about ways we can support one another. The idea for the meet up was sparked by Paul Brewer at Adur & Worthing and the group represented councils stretching from the Channel coast up to the northern borders.
I won’t try to outdo Paul’s excellent write up of the conversation and that areas that we plan to focus on moving forward. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read that here: https://medium.com/@pdbrewer/we-made-a-local-gov-cdo-group-4f87932bd34b.
Making sure that we continue to recruit and develop a great team
At Thursday’s HackIT strategy show & tell I talked about the work we’re doing to update the market supplements that we use to make sure that we are continuing to develop a great team in HackIT. We want roles in our team to be opportunities to:
- Make a real difference for our residents
- Develop your skills and career
- Work in an energetic and ambitious team, and be involved in fun, exciting and rewarding work
- Meet smart and creative people and learn together
- Be competitively paid
The slides I talked through explain how we’ve approached this and how we are making sure that the update to our benchmarking is effective: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ryOYucmuScCo09EuDmX91Zd3ElBkM40FiWCZcLla0GE. Do please let me know if you’d like to find time to talk through any questions you have about this.
I also…
- Joined Henry and David (our Director of Housing) for our ‘Digital quarterly’ meeting with the Mayor, Cllr McKenzie and Cllr Nicholson. Our discussion focused on the progress that’s being made with the digital connectivity work which Henry summarised in his weeknote last week. I’m excited by this work because it’s a real opportunity for Hackney to use assets that the Council owns to encourage new connectivity providers into our borough and address the shortcomings of existing provision – which is a source of significant frustration for many of our residents.
- Caught up with Lucy and a colleague in our Public Health team to learn more about the work they’re doing to use data to help improve the health and wellbeing of residents of the City and Hackney.
- Had a good catch up with Lucy and Sarah, our Director of Children’s and Families Services, to talk through ways that we might help develop our support for the service.
- Went to the Senior Managers Network meeting, where we heard from Tim (our Chief Exec) about the work he’s doing to review the Council’s senior management arrangements following the recent voluntary redundancy scheme and also an update on the work that’s taking place to promote Hackney as a great place to work and develop your career.
- Was pleased with the pace that’s developing with the integration of the Hackney Learning Trust ICT team and the HackIT team. This week Bertie (HLT’s Head of ICT) joined us at our HackIT DMT meeting and I went along to the first meeting of the Education Change Programme Board, where we checked on progress across the programme of work that’s taking place to bring finance and ICT support for education in Hackney closer to the Council’s core services.
Something I’m learning
I’m taking a few days off over half term. I’m trying to decide how best to fix my backlog of stuff ahead of that – which is going to take some fairly ruthless prioritisation….!
bytherye 