After ten days out of the office that were spent fetching, carrying and emptying boxes while we moved home, this week was a welcome return to normality! (Overall, I’m pretty pleased with how the move has gone and consider the fact that so far I only appear to have misplaced two things to be something of a success.)

Moving forward with smarter working

We’re working hard to provide our users with modern and flexible productivity tools for their work. Over the summer we’ve upgraded the software that people use and over the coming months we’ll be replacing ageing laptops and desktop PCs with modern kit. These represent a big step forward, but we’ve been spending time this week looking into the human aspects that will be equally important in making sure that we get the fullest benefit from the tools we’re rolling out.

Our analysis of our recent user survey (more about that below) has highlighted some interesting trends that we think will help us better understand patterns of where people are adapting most quickly to the new tools and where they feel that they need more support. It was particularly interesting to see the strong correlations linked to people’s use of digital tools in their personal lives and people’s preferences for accessing training, support and guidance. I’ll share more on that when we’ve written up the findings.

We’ve also been looking at how we can make sure that we strike the right balance between policy controls and flexibility in the ways that people can use the tools we provide. As part of that we spent time this week ‘doing the hard work to make things simple’, distilling our policies and guidance into a simple set of questions that our users will be able to use to make sure that they’re doing the right thing.

Smart Cities

On Wednesday afternoon I joined a round table discussion to talk through the role of digital infrastructure in ‘placemaking’. I found this interesting because the other people in the conversation came from different professional backgrounds so it gave me the opportunity to hear other perspectives.

I’ll confess to being somewhat sceptical about ‘Smart City’ initiatives. It’s obvious that technology will play an increasingly significant role in society, but it seems to me that many of the eye catching schemes I read about might promise a lot more than they deliver. I enjoyed the discussion we had because as well as shiny technology possibilities we also took the time to think about the implications that these have on power dynamics and society, and the roles of government and business in guiding the way that these develop.

The week fitted in lots of other topics too:

• The week began and ended with meetings to take stock of our finances, which is important now that we’re at the mid-year stage. We take a ‘one team’ approach to this, managing pressures and opportunities together across the service based on the principle that we will only win when we all succeed.
• I’ve had a number of conversations with colleagues in other organisations encouraging them to commit to the Local Digital Declaration and London Office of Technology & Innovation initiative. Sharing and collaboration have long been cited as key imperatives for local government. Having led a shared service in a previous role I know first hand how much work has to go into making those succeed. Personally, I think that the Declaration and LOTI have the potential to be a real step change in smart collaboration and I’m really keen to help make sure that they’re successful.
• I met with Hackney’s new Housing Transformation Manager, Jahedur, who’s getting up to speed with the programme of work. I’m really excited about the progress that’s being made in this area of our work (and very grateful to Jahedur’s predecessor Carol for her hard work bringing the programme together and keeping it on track) and we had a very positive conversation. Key areas that we focused on were the importance of making decisions together (not having a supplier / customer relationship between the ICT / digital teams and ‘the business’ *) and continuing the work to capture the return on investment for the work that we’re doing together.
• Cate, Joe and I went through the analysis of our recent ICT survey. The headline stats are looking very positive, with further improvements in user satisfaction across all of the questions we asked. ** But it’s also really important to dig into the data and use it to help us understand where we need to focus to make sure that we’re continuing to improve and meet our users’ needs. Joe’s used some smart analysis techniques to bring out themes from the 684 responses we’ve received (a 70% increase in the level of response compared with the previous year’s survey) and we’ll be writing those up over the next couple of weeks and sharing them in the next HackIT quarterly update later this month.
• Cate and I caught up with Warren and Emilia from the Digital Marketplace team in GDS to talk about the work that Cate’s leading to develop our governance arrangements (https://blogs.hackney.gov.uk/hackit/governance-so-good-people-prefer-to-use-it). There’s a strong connection between this and the work that GDS are doing to develop standards for digital work across government and we discussed a number of ways that we can work together and share ideas and learning.
• Friday afternoon gave me time for welcome meetings with Hidayat, Emma, Sam and Ali, four of our new apprentices. It was great to hear more about their backgrounds before joining Hackney, which range from studying classical civilisation, business, IT and working in the parking service, and finding out what they’ve been working on during their first few weeks in our team.

* I learned some time ago how important it is to avoid terms like ‘the business’ to describe our colleagues in other services. We are all ‘the business’ and our customers are our residents.

** I was particularly pleased to see the very positive reaction we received to the Data Awareness Training that we’re currently rolling out. You can read more about that and access the content via Sarah’s blog post here: https://blogs.hackney.gov.uk/hackit/sharing-our-work-data-awareness-training-content.

Something I’m learning

One of the things I particularly like about working as part of the HackIT team is the opportunity it gives for continual learning from one another. I’ve been keen to learn about using Agile and design led approaches to deliver transformation for a long time, but I had very limited experience of doing that before I arrived at Hackney. This week included more examples of the value of these ways of working.

• On Thursday Richard talked me through the user research brief he’s been preparing for a discovery that we’ve been asked to do. I was really impressed by the thought that’s gone into this and it included a number of very smart pieces of thinking that will help us better understand the problem we’re trying to solve before we start to develop potential solutions. I really like this as a way of making sure that we understand user needs and reducing the risk of heading off on the wrong course.
• I’m also seeing the benefit of Show & Tells, which I’m finding much more valuable than the traditional highlight reports that PRINCE2 projects churn out. I’m finding that these give me a much clearer picture of the work that projects are doing, which in turn is helping grow the confidence to Trust the Team and know when it’s useful to ask for more details about the work that’s being delivered.

Two weeknotes in one due to general busyness and a weekend of cub camp in the woods of deepest south London… We’re moving home next week, so I’ll be taking a pause after this one and normal service will resume at the start of November.

Pipeline

Last week started with something that I’m incredibly excited about – our launch of an updated version of the Pipeline tool that was first developed by the LocalGov Digital team four years ago (Nic’s blog here is a great summary of that: https://blogs.hackney.gov.uk/hackit/pipeline).

Since it launched in 2014 I’ve always believed that Pipeline is a good idea. I think it’s essential that we have a shared space that councils can use to encourage and support collaboration, and I think this approach has the potential to have far greater impact across the sector as a whole than complex shared service arrangements (which are always tricky and often fail). I blogged some thoughts on ways that I think sharing could help improve digital services across local government a few years ago, and it’s really positive to have the opportunity to put some of that into action at Hackney: https://bytherye.com/2014/07/04/one-local-gov-digital-some-further-thoughts/.

The reaction to the launch of the updated Pipeline platform has been very positive and I’m hoping to see lots of other councils post their projects soon so that this becomes a catalyst for significant growth in cross-council collaboration – in line with the principles of the Local Digital Declaration.

Forms, forms, forms

We’ve been looking hard at our internal support processes, working closely with colleagues in other support services including finance and HR. The goal for this is to apply the same design led approach to the internal workings of the organisation as we are aiming to for our public facing services. We think that if we can do this well we will help colleagues get things done more quickly, letting them focus more of their time on delivering services, and also help to build the general understanding and consciousness of user centred design.

I’ve never managed to pin down the reason why, but there does appear to be a particular genius in most organisations for producing internal processes that are mind bogglingly hard to navigate. Particular issues that I’ve encountered include multiple approvals for the same thing, categorisation run amok, poorly designed self-service, use of professional jargon rather than easy to understand language, and security which means that things can only be done from an office desk. Usually these come together in all their glory as e-forms, often complemented by an array of downloadable documents and PDFs.

We spent some time as a management team looking at our progress with this and the areas that we’re focusing on. One of these is the process for hiring new people and their experience when they join the Council. Research work with managers and staff over recent months has helped us to get a much better understanding of user needs and the pain points that people experience at the moment. We’re now looking at how we can design much simpler processes, cut out unnecessary approvals and make sure that users can find out what they need to do really easily. We’re also looking at the best way to make this accessible to users, looking at the technology we currently use and reflecting on whether this will give us the flexibility we need to design really user-friendly services, or whether we need to make some changes too.

A quick fire list of other highlights from the last couple of weeks includes:

• We’ve been looking at the data we’re getting from the new audit tool that we’ve set up to help us understand how people are using information in G Suite (we’re using GAT: https://generalaudittool.com/) and how we can use this insight to support services in using their information well.
• A brilliant talk by Hackney resident and co-founder of GDS, Mike Bracken, who shared his experiences from GDS and set out some bold challenges for raising the standard of digital services in local government. Cate’s pic here shows the great turn out we had for that: https://twitter.com/madebycatem/status/1046761327702749184.
• A series of events organised by Richard, our Lead User Researcher, to accompany National Customer Services Week and help us learn how user research is at the heart of delivering excellent services.
• Some encouraging conversations about ways that we can make our work on information security even more proactive, learning from the approaches that major web companies take to actively seek out potential vulnerabilities. It’s really important that security isn’t just an annual ‘event’ when we renew our PSN certificate.
• A number of positive conversations with other organisations, including colleagues at the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, sharing thoughts and experience of introducing modern working technology and approaches in our organisations and ways that we might maximise the benefits of this.
• Checking in on the new ‘Check Ins’ approach which we are using to replace traditional appraisals at Hackney. The beta for this has gone really well and has brought out feedback that is being used to refine and improve the approach. The next step with this will be the Big Launch at next week’s Chief Exec’s Roadshows (I’m really excited about how this might help us make ‘performance management’ a more valuable experience for managers and staff across the Council).
• Some interesting meetings with suppliers and potential suppliers, ranging from a small start-up looking to get into the local government market to an event with G Suite Product Managers where we learned more about their future plans and had the opportunity to discuss our thoughts on those.
• A further update on the development of the high level design thinking for our new ‘web first’ network model. I was particularly impressed by the way that Kameel, one of our Technical Architects, had gone out of his way to learn about Wardley maps, look at how he could apply that to the work and also share that learning with other colleagues across the team.
• A useful session looking at the alignment of our work with NHS partners for integrating health and social care. This is highly complex because of the number of organisations involved, but it was great to see social care colleagues setting out a clear and well thought out set of areas that they want to focus on and to explore how these link in with the developing digital roadmap for our NHS region.
• I joined Hackney Management Team for a discussion looking at the Council’s preparations for Brexit. There are lots of potential implications for us at a local level and while the exact arrangements after the end of March 2019 are uncertain, there are sensible things we can be doing now to help make sure we are well prepared.
• Henry and I met with the Mayor and Cllr Nicholson to share the draft vision that Henry has been bringing together with colleagues across the Council, setting out proposed priorities for enhancing connectivity across the borough and using this to support the Council’s goals for economic growth and social inclusion. A really powerful part of this was the use of mapping to show how existing provision aligns with areas of need / opportunity and identify areas that we can focus on (eg looking at ways that the Council’s private fibre ducting might present an opportunity or us to influence the market).
• And to finish off this week I caught up with some colleagues in the GLA and other councils to check in on the work to secure commitment to the first stage of the London Office of Technology and Innovation that Theo Blackwell, Chief Digital Officer for London, has been championing. (You can read more about that here: https://medium.com/@SmartLondon/developing-a-london-office-for-technology-innovation-progress-report-2c712415d249)

Phew!

Something I’m learning

We’ve been talking about meetings.

Moans about ‘too many meetings’ are a common grumble in all organisations, but I actually think they’re really important when used well. In recent months we’ve got pretty good at planning our strategic meetings (with much clearer definitions of purpose for each agenda item to help us prepare and stay focused), and also reducing meetings by giving teams clearer autonomy and working in the open (Cate’s post on developing our governance is key to that: https://blogs.hackney.gov.uk/hackit/governance-so-good-people-prefer-to-use-it).

There’s still more to do and one of those areas is making sure that ad hoc meetings to dig into specific issues are effective. I think it’s important to use an open approach to bring out thoughts, concerns and ideas for ways forward and make sure that this owned by the team as a whole. But this can sometimes mean that it isn’t really clear whether or not the meeting has achieved its goals. One way to address that might be to start such meetings with a clearly set out proposition that can then be tested by the team and iterated on. But I’m slightly concerned that might bring the risk of closing down thinking prematurely and also giving the impression that a direction has been set when it’s actually still open for discussion. We’ll be working on this and trying out some ideas to see what we can learn.

There was lots of variety this week, something I always enjoy.

Throughout the week our Platform team have been mounting a concerted effort to crack down on the backlog of incidents and requests in our service queues. We’ve been working hard to make it easier for our users to get our help and to provide them with a more personal service. It’s also essential that our users can feel confident that we will respond to them quickly and meet their needs without undue delay.

I was really pleased to see the thought that had gone into preparing for the week. It wasn’t simply an ‘all hands on deck’ effort and careful analysis of data meant that teams were working in a targeted way to maximise the impact of the week. I was also really pleased to see how well everyone pulled together and the focus that was given to making sure that we actually resolved people’s requests, not simply closing calls to make the stats look better. When I checked in on progress at the end of the week the team had managed to close a significant chunk of the backlog and also had some useful learning points that we can use to further improve our service.

The ‘backlog snake’ was also a cheery addition to the office – a great way to track progress!

Monday afternoon included a very useful discussion with Tim (our Chief Exec) and some other colleagues talking through the challenges and opportunities ahead. I’ll confess to being a teeny bit evangelical, but I’m clear that Hackney is the best place that I’ve worked for the opportunity to deliver transformational change. As a large unitary council it has scale and there’s a natural predisposition across the organisation towards collaboration, which means that many constraints I’ve found elsewhere are much less prevalent here. We’re fortunate to have good working spaces, progressive HR policies and we are making rapid progress in equipping our users with modern technology tools. The area I think we most need to focus on now is making sure that we are supporting colleagues in developing the skills, confidence and ambition to make the most of these and reimagine how the Council can work. There are many great examples already across different service areas and we discussed ways that we can highlight these and use that to help shift expectations.

Other highlights from my week included:

• Meeting up with Rory from Made Tech (who are helping us with our work on APIs) and Mark, Josie and Paul from Methods (who are leading proponents for ‘LEGO government’ – the idea of using reusable and interoperable technology to improve public services and reduce cost) to share ideas and hear about their work.
• Some positive steps forward with our work to help services maximise the benefits of Drive for managing their documents and records.
• Two good discussions at Hackney Management Team when Liz presented an update on our work on data and analytics, and Sarah updated them on the work she’s leading to improve Freedom Of Information request performance.
• The excellent presentation that Lucy organised, where Ross gave us an overview of the Council’s children’s services from the perspective of the Journey of a Child.
• A useful meeting with colleagues from adults’ services and local NHS partners looking at how we can share information to improve the care that people receive.
• Cate’s excellent stand up presentation on the work she’s been doing to review our governance arrangements, which sparked off some really good discussions.
• A catch up with Ajman, our director of housing, checking in on the progress our teams are making and talking through areas where we need to focus to make sure that we maintain the pace of delivery.
• And I also had welcome conversations with O’Cynthia and John. I enjoyed sharing reflections from experience of working at other councils and how Hackney compares. John had also been at Hackney some years ago and it was interesting to hear a bit more of the history of the Council.

The low point of the week was hearing the sad news that Vicky, Hackney’s Head of Customer and Corporate Services, had passed away after a short illness. Vicky had been at Hackney for many years and I know she’ll be much missed by all of her many friends and colleagues.

Something I’m hoping to learn

On Thursday afternoon I popped over to the new GDS offices in Whitechapel to meet up with Neil Williams, who is moving on after seven years of working on GOV.UK to become the new Chief Digital Officer for Croydon Council. It’s great to see people of Neil’s calibre and experience joining local government and I’m really interested to see what I can learn from his experience of the move. I’m conscious that it’s quite a while since I started working for local authorities and I’m keen to see if there are areas where I should challenge my preconceptions and look for ways that we might approach challenges and opportunities differently.

(You can listen to Neil discussing his time at GDS on this podcast: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2018/09/28/podcast-head-of-gov-uk-neil-williams-looks-back-on-his-time-at-gds/)

This was a good week, with several opportunities to take a broader look at our direction and the steps we’re taking to develop our team and deliver the goals we’ve set.

On Monday we brought our HackIT leadership team together for a workshop to look at how we will embed the training and development strategy that we agreed through our recent restructure consultation. Our objective with this is to look beyond the standard clutch of courses and certificates that are typically the focus for training plans and think about the wider set of things we can do to help our people develop their skills and careers. Cate led this and we had a really great session which brought out a range of tangible micro-actions we agreed to commit to and some very positive suggestions for ways that the team can work together to move this part of our strategy forward. At one point I had to remind myself that half of the people in the room have only joined us in recent months – it was amazing how much it already felt like a well established team.

On Wednesday, Cate, Henry, Matthew and I visited Stoke Newington Town Hall for our latest quarterly away day. We use these days to look at our progress and spend time the areas of service development that we’ve been working on and I find it really helpful to have the opportunity step away from the other things that usually occupy our attention. Highlights for me were the work that Cate shared from her review of our governance approach – where we’re trying to make sure that we are getting the right balance so that we’re managing our service well and enabling agile delivery at pace; Cate and Matthew’s work looking at how we measure our service performance and the benefits of the work we’re delivering; and Matthew’s outline for ways we can work with other services to help them develop their transformation plans.

To wrap up the week, several of us joined LocalGovCamp in Birmingham where we got together with people from across local government to share ideas and experience. I was really pleased that this year we had the opportunity to share some of the work we’ve been doing at Hackney, with Emma presenting on our Planning applications work, Nic talking about our work to develop on the Pipeline platform which helps councils collaborate on projects together, and Rich showing the work we’ve been doing to develop a user research library that we hope will be useful for others as well as for our own work in Hackney.

This was my second LocalGovCamp, and I’m continuing to feel very happy with my decision to ditch most of the other conferences and events that I get invited to and use the time to learn together with peers, rather than listen to sales pitches.

This week’s intro meeting was an opportunity to chat with Riccardo our new Lead Front End Developer. Riccardo will be helping us to develop a consistent and user focused User Experience across our digital services and you can see his ace talk on the 5 Ws of Atomic Design here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7b1W47Fbng – I’d never have known that this was his first shot at public speaking! I also had fun taking new starters who were joining Hackney on a short tour of our main office campus at the start of the week, when it was my turn to be the senior manager welcome inductees to the Council.

Something I learned

We had a really good example yesterday showing how quickly we can get stuff done now that we have smarter tools for our work. Matthew started on a proposal while we were on the train up to Birmingham and we’d finished the process of Cate, Henry and me reviewing it and then getting feedback and the OK from my boss and the Mayor by 5pm. Local government often gets a reputation for slow and complex decision making. A shared doc and some speedy messaging demonstrated that that doesn’t have to be the case.

We’re currently trying out a new approach for the way that Hackney approaches performance management. Research with managers and staff over the last year has shown that the traditional approach based on annual appraisals and mid-year reviews isn’t felt to be working, with the focus too often ending up on completing the form rather than timely discussions about progress, challenges and opportunities. The six monthly cycle is also a poor fit for the work people do, with more frequent and less formal discussion felt to be a better way to do keep track of progress, give encouragement and offer support where needed. Many other leading organisations have made changes to their appraisal processes along these lines too, and we’ve been looking at these to see what we can learn from others’ experience and apply here.

As a result of this, our colleagues in HR are proposing to replace annual appraisals with more regular ‘check-ins’. These are given structure through key discussion points and support is being provided to help managers and staff get the most from these regular conversations. In HackIT we are one of the services that are trialling this to help learn where we can further improve the proposed changes ahead of a wider roll out. This week Cate, Henry and I started to use the new approach for our 1:1s, and I’ve found it was fairly easy to use and helped add a little more structure to the regular catch ups we have been having anyway. It’s also helping us as a management team by prompting some useful discussions about areas we should focus on for our own personal development. It’s all too easy to forget to make time for this, so that feels like a win already.

As well as our own development planning, Cate, Henry, Matthew and I also took some time to think about steps we might take to help support digital skills development across the Council’s workforce and also areas we need to focus on to address digital exclusion in the borough. We covered off a number of ideas and will be doing some more work to develop these further – including following up with other colleagues and partners who we will need to work with on this.

Some of my other headlines from the week included:

• An encouraging update with Liz and Ruth to talk through the work they’ve done to review business intelligence and data analytics across the Council. I liked the way that they’ve framed recommendations for what we should focus on next, learning from experience elsewhere and building on the positive work that’s already been done here at Hackney. This feels like a really important area that has the potential to help shift from a focus on reporting that tells us what’s already happened to greater insight that can help inform decisions and identify new ways to deliver services that will meet Hackney’s future needs.
• Some time spent with Jasmeen, Matthew and Nic looking at how we might help other services develop roles that can help them to maximise the impact of the work that we are doing together. We’re determined to make sure that our HackIT team is working as a trusted, strategic partner for services, so it’s really important to me that this doesn’t create a customer / supplier or ‘clienting’ relationship between us and other services. I think we got to a good place with our thinking and Cate’s follow up suggestion that we look at Product Owner roles was a helpful idea too.
• Matthew and I had a very useful catch up to talk through the work he’s doing to look at how we assess the Return On Investment for projects we’re delivering. This can be hard where baseline data is patchy and where savings will be delivered through other services’ financial planning (we’re keen to emphasise how we are supporting them to deliver their financial plans, not creating a parallel universe of ‘digital savings’). I liked the model that Matthew’s outlined and think this could work well in parallel with the work that Cate is doing to develop our own performance framework for ICT. We’re going to spend some more time on that next Wednesday when we have our management team ‘away day’ (ie day spent in a different Council office to usual looking at bigger picture topics).
• We’re rapidly approaching the mid-point of the financial year so we’re giving quite a bit of attention to our budget monitoring this month so that we are clear about where we need to focus to make sure that things are are on track for the second half of the year. We have savings that we need to deliver this year and more to identify for next year, so it’s essential that we’re planning for this in good time and making sensible strategic choices.
• I had some useful meetings with external partners this week, including local NHS colleagues catching up with work to enable integrated approaches for health and social care; colleagues in central government who are working to design the next generation of secure collaboration and sharing of data across government; and colleagues at Homes England to compare notes from the work we’re both doing to improve workplace technology and collaboration.
• I managed to make time to attend a couple of our project stand ups this week. These were really good opportunities to get closer to the detail with our work to build on the Local Gov Digital Pipeline service to provide a collaborative roadmap tool that can help build collaboration across the sector, and also the work we are doing in partnership with Camden and Southwark to reinvent the process of submitting planning applications.
• The week ended with a very useful briefing from Keith, Kameel and Lindsay who took us through the current thinking for our future network strategy. This is a vital part of our ‘web first’ strategy which, as well as delivering much needed upgrades to make sure our network is up to date, will also give us the bandwidth, reliability and security we need to make the most of cloud services and enable a managed shift from legacy applications. I was pleased to see how the thinking is developing and we identified some areas to focus on ahead of agreeing the high level design and pressing on with the more detailed design work.
• I had several ‘welcome’ meetings with new members of our team this week, which were all really good conversations. I discussed service design and the experience of moving to a new organisation with Joanne; data science and an interesting project on analysing case notes with Joe (a bit more about that below); how we are working to develop a structured approach for our service improvements with Paul; and information management and ways to make this responsive to user needs with Jonathan.
• I also managed to finish this weekend’s Peckham Rye 10k ‘fun’ run in a little less time than I did last year’s Shoreditch 10k. I’m wondering whether I feel brave enough to aim for a time that’s under 50 mins for next month’s return to Shoreditch…

Something I’m learning

I really enjoyed the notes that Joe shared from his presentation about the work he’s doing to look at how we might use data to better understand the needs of Hackney’s vulnerable residents. This is a Discovery exercise and it was fascinating to see how complex it is to understand the context of commonly used terms (for example words like ‘asbestos’ and ‘monoxide’ in case notes might indicate a risk to someone’s health but might also relate to routine inspections / requests for monitors to be fitted). I find this interesting because there often seems to be an assumption that using analysis of data and algorithms to provide services is an easy piece of tech ‘magic’, but it’s actually incredibly complex to understand context and use that to make objective decisions. I think this is a really important area for us to be exploring and I’m pleased to see it being done in a thoughtful way.

I think that technically it’s still summer for a few weeks yet *, but there’s definitely an autumnal feel now. I’ve concluded that spring and autumn are my favourite seasons and I’m really liking arriving in Hackney in the morning and walking into the office as the bright sun streams down Dalston Lane.

As we’ve had overlapping holidays, this week was my first opportunity in a long time to catch up with Henry and talk through the work that our Platform teams are doing. The Platform teams’ responsibilities cover a wide range of areas that are really important to our service and which underpin the work of the whole division. I was very pleased to see how much progress is being made, despite people being away for the summer holidays. Key highlights from areas we looked at this week included:

• Confirmation that our PSN Code of Connection has been signed off for another year, very positive news and the result of lots of hard work that the team have been leading to keep our systems up to date and secure. The work to make sure that we’re ready for next year’s renewal starts now as it’s essential that security is something that we are focusing on throughout the year, not just an annual event.
• A noticeable positive impact on our service performance as a result of the team’s focus on service improvement over the summer months. It’s essential that we focus on the quality of the experience we provide for our users, not just closing calls down on the system to make the graphs look good. I’m pleased to see the thought that Michael, Paul and the Service Support team are giving to this, breaking the work down into manageable chunks and linking the review of calls in with the wider improvement work that Cate D is leading.
• Continuing the work to make sure that our asset management is effective. This is something that every ICT service I’ve worked in has found hard, as it involves keeping track of a large number of devices and software licences in what are often fast changing and complex organisations. But getting it right is critical so that we can make sure that we’re maximising the value for money that we get from the Council’s investments in ICT and know that the decisions we take are based on accurate information.
• Planning ahead to make sure that we have a smooth transition from the project team who have been leading the G Suite migration to regular day-to-day support. Again, I was pleased to see that the teams have been working well together and have identified a clear plan with focused priorities, rather than getting bogged down.

Henry and I also caught up with Stephen (Hackney’s director for strategy, policy and economic development) to look at the progress with our strategic thinking re: internet connectivity in the borough, which links to a number of outcomes we are working to deliver in line with the Mayor’s manifesto. We agreed the headline discussion points that we want to focus on at our next update with the Mayor and Cllr Nicholson, and we also agreed the approach we will take for linking into existing Council governance where decisions need to be confirmed.

Other headlines from the week included:

• I joined the fortnightly Projects ‘Shout Out’ session that Dennis is experimenting with. This is a quick fire stand up where we run through headlines across our projects, with the emphasis on identifying aspects that might impact on other projects and giving project teams the opportunity to ask colleagues for help if they need it. I found that this gave me a very useful overview and will be trying to join the sessions on a regular basis.
• Wednesday’s DMT covered a number of important updates, including reviewing our service performance, audit plan and work to address actions that audit have identified, and Stephen’s work to review our procurement and contract management arrangements. Stephen has made really good progress with his review and I’m pleased with how this is taking shape.
• Cate and I caught up re: the apprentice network that we are setting up. Our goal is to work together with other digital employers in the borough to foster networks of support for our apprentices and to help other employers grow apprenticeship opportunities in Hackney.
• On Wednesday I attended the Local Government Association’s Cyber Security Stakeholder Group meeting. This group brings together people from across local government, central government and other agencies such as the National Cyber Security Centre to help improve cyber security and resilience across the local government sector. We got an early look at the initial findings from the ‘cyber stocktake’ that the LGA are leading on and we discussed how the results will be used to provide additional targeted support for councils.
• At this week’s Housing Transformation Board we looked at an update that Matthew had prepared giving a summary of the releases we will be delivering over the next two months: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1M6l5RpqDIIBVEen1Iq-wECQopCOlXfS3. It’s brilliant to see really big improvements for customer contact management, incomes, repairs, and tenancy management which will deliver big benefits for residents and colleagues in housing services.
• Our first set of meeting rooms are now up and running with Hangouts Meet kit so that they can be used for presentations and video meetings. We’re starting with a small group of rooms, including rooms in Council offices elsewhere in the borough, and using this to make sure that we have a good handle on the user experience and support / guidance that users need before we press on with a wider roll out.
• And this week my introduction chats were with Jasmeen and Emma. We had really good conversations about how we can share our ideas and experience and learn from one another across the team, and also the different organisations that they’ve worked in before and what we can learn from that at Hackney.

Something I’m learning

I’m currently giving quite a lot of thought to how we can work together across the Council to get the most out of the things that Hackney has done to enable a genuinely modern workplace. The combination of modern office spaces, progressive HR policies that are positive about flexible working and trusting managers and staff to get the job done, and the improved technologies that we’re rolling out is really powerful.

I’m keen to make sure that we play a part in building a strong sense of shared direction across the Council to use these to best effect, and there are lots of teams across departments that we can use as exemplars to help show the way. This is much more than an ‘IT thing’, so my main focus at the moment is looking at how we link up with colleagues to develop our approach for this and also make sure that we do this in a way that’s consistent with our agile approach, avoiding the potential trap of proposing a ‘corporate culture change programme’, which Tim (the Chief Exec) is rightly wary of. It’s increasingly clear that this links in with thinking that Matthew’s been doing about ways we might develop a ‘change support agency’ model to help service managers reimagine the way that their services are developed, so I’m hoping we can join those up.

* Although, that prompted me to check and it turns out that ‘it depends’: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/seasons/autumn/when-does-autumn-start

I’m congratulating myself for arranging my holidays so that I returned during the bank holiday week. Not only was it nice to have a four day week after my time away, it also meant that my incoming email was lighter than usual, giving me a bit more time for catching up. As a result I seem to have managed to remain refreshed rather than getting a nagging sense of being miles behind with everything as soon as I got back! (I should credit Cate, Henry and Matthew with an important part in that too – as they dealt with most of the things that were sent my way while I was off sunning myself)

I started my week by catching up on progress with our GDPR action plan, including the Digital Action Plan training we’re providing to all of our users so that they are well informed about their data protection responsibilities and know how to get help and advice when they need it. I’m very pleased to see that lots of people have already completed this important training, despite it being the holiday season, and we’ve seen some good examples of where people are taking action as a result. I was also really chuffed to see the content for this training shared openly via our team blog and GitHub while I was away (see Sarah’s blog post here: https://blogs.hackney.gov.uk/hackit/sharing-our-work-data-awareness-training-content). This is an important example of how we are putting our commitment to the Local Digital Declaration into action. In the past I’ve seen councils charging other councils to use work like this, and I think it’s important that we stop that and work collaboratively wherever possible.

We’re also pushing forward with the work to review how our documents are managed, moving away from dated and hard to use systems and making it easy for our users to get the information they need wherever they are and to work collaboratively, reducing the number of documents that are passed to and fro by email. As you’d expect, this is a mammoth task as it involves lots of teams and millions of documents. We’ve been grappling with how we can best unpick this into bite-sized chunks so that we can make progress and learn by doing, and I was encouraged to see that the approach for this is beginning to take shape. There’s a real appetite among our users to engage with this work and we’ve learned lots more detail about how different teams are working through the migration to G Suite that we’ve been delivering over the summer. I’m hoping that this will stand us in good stead as we move forward into the next phase of this work.

Cate McLaurin and I caught up and went through work that her team are doing to make sure that we’re managing our mobile telephony services effectively and ensuring that our procurement and contract management processes are working well. These are tricky and complex areas, where it’s very easy to get stuck due to the various challenges involved and it’s too easy for a focus on process to override user needs. It’s really refreshing to see how Cate and team are working closely with colleagues across the service and keeping focused on finding practical steps that will move us forward, even if there will still be more work needed later on. That reminded me of something that a former colleague said a couple of years ago when complexity was bogging down our team:

In parallel with that, Cate’s work to develop our governance model is also looking very promising. We’re keen to make sure that we don’t accidentally create a bureaucratic monster and to ensure that we fit in with existing corporate governance. Cate’s been taking a user led approach working with a wide range of colleagues and will be sharing more about the thinking in coming weeks. A key part of that is going to be making sure that we have clearly articulated the principles and standards that we use to make decisions so that we can devolve decision making and make sure that teams are able act with confidence. Some other highlights from the week included:

• Checking in on our work to improve our FOI performance, asset management and the project to refresh our users’ ICT kit.
• Comparing notes from our respective holidays with Matthew Cain and catching up with progress across our portfolio of digital and data projects.
• An introductory chat with Rich, who’s joined us from working in an academic institution. It was interesting to learn about the inner workings of universities and we also discussed email habits, which reminded me of this post: https://bytherye.com/2015/11/02/is-email-here-to-stay/.
• Getting our annual user survey ready for launch this week. This is an important part of making sure that we are responding to our users and tracking our progress in meeting their needs.

Something I’ve learned this week

While I was away I decided to trim my Twitter grazing down to a much reduced list. I’ve decided to keep this up now that I’m back and to use the spare time to focus on reading a book while I’m on my train into work (I find I’m still dealing with stuff left over from the day on my way home so far). I’m rather enjoying this and think I’m going to try sticking with that.

Following Matthew Cain’s lead, this weeknote is a summary of what I’ve been reading over my summer break. Having the time to actually read whole books again still feels like a novelty and is definitely a parenting milestone!

(I’ve cheated slightly here though, as I was half way through two of these books before we started our holiday and I haven’t finished the last one yet.)

How Democracy Ends, David Runciman (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/21/how-democracy-ends-david-runciman-review)

I discovered the Talking Politics podcast (https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/about/) through listening to the talk which led to this book, and that’s now a regular feature in my podcast listings. The book covers lots of ground, from considering whether there actually is anything inevitable and permanent about democracy as we currently know it, to looking at the key threats to that, and then suggesting where we might go from here. Thought provoking and worth a read.

Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/14/fire-and-fury-michael-wolff-inside-trump-white-house-review)

Not the most high calibre of my summer reading choices, but entertaining nonetheless.

(I’m considering giving Bob Woodward’s new book a look for another perspective on the Trump White House: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/12/woodward-bernstein-watergate-donald-trump-era)

Programmed Inequality, How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing, Marie Hicks (http://programmedinequality.com/)

This was an interesting social history, which included lots of interesting technology history too. I was struck by the explanation of how social norms and gender stereotypes resulted in the lead in computing that Britain had developed during the second world war being lost afterwards. Notions of ‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work’ meant that the highly skilled women who had been vital during the war effort lost opportunities to progress after the war ended and subsequent generations found themselves categorised into administrative roles with a host of institutional barriers to developing their careers. The negative consequences of this are still all too clear today.

I was hoping to learn a bit more about how stereotypes of computers as a ‘boys’ toy’ from the early days of consumer computing might be influential today, but the book’s focus on business and government from the 1940s through to the 1980s meant that it was silent on that.

Cyber Wars, Charles Arthur (https://www.koganpage.com/product/cyber-wars-9780749482008#)

This book delves into a series of high profile cyber attacks and describes what happened and the repercussions. I enjoyed it and thought that for the most part the book would be a good read for a fairly non-technical audience, getting beyond the ‘it’s all too complicated and scary’ narrative that’s too common in the media coverage of cyber threats and explaining practical lessons that can be learned. This could prompt some useful questions for senior people to ask their ICT teams for assurance about (and also ask themselves, given how often the causes of cyber breaches are prioritising business growth over the time and investment need to get security fundamentals right).

While the book is not a highly technical tome, I thought it would also be a useful read for a more technical audience. The case studies show how fairly straightforward measures such as keeping systems up to date, using effective access control, and training support staff to be careful when they’re asked to reset passwords should be prioritised above some of the more cloak and dagger stuff that people can often become obsessed by.

(All is not lost though, I was encouraged by the section that describes how IKEA are investing in getting the security for their ‘smart’ lighting right, on the grounds that it makes good commercial sense.)

Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism Through the Eyes of Everyday People, Julia Boyd (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Travellers-Third-Reich-Fascism-Everyday-ebook/dp/B06Y63WXM7)

My holiday reading usually includes a dose of history and I find the first half of the twentieth century especially interesting. This book was a change from my usual choices as it focused on civilian life in Germany from 1918–1945 through observations made by travellers visiting the country. What struck me from reading it was that there appeared to be an alarming level of sympathy for many of the Nazi’s policies, which comes across as being the result of a combination of social norms at the time, the group of commentators whose writing was selected for the book (I wondered how representative the people chosen were), a failure to understand the real extent of what was happening, and the extensive use of propaganda.

Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil (https://weaponsofmathdestructionbook.com/)

This book looks at how algorithms and data are shaping our world, in particular the impact this has on locking in social disadvantage and other adverse effects. Recurring themes included the use of proxy measures to determine outcomes (eg where you live being used to set insurance premiums and credit scores being used as part of screening for job applications) and lack of accountability for many of these processes. I think that data ethics is going to become an increasingly important part of how we shape our world and thought that it was interesting to reflect on how the rights set out in the General Data Protection Regulation will contribute to this. I also wonder how we might best educate people so that they are able to exercise these rights effectively.

Turn The Ship Around! David Marquet (https://www.davidmarquet.com/books/)

This has been on my ‘to read’ list for quite a while. It’s based on the experience that the author had as the Captain of a US Navy submarine where he introduced an inclusive leadership approach to dramatically improve the ship’s performance (a big contrast to the traditional command and control approach). I found it an easy read and thought that it suggested some good ideas for ways to make the shift from heroic / command and control leadership to establishing a confident and effective leadership culture across a team.

The Price of Prosperity: Why Rich Nations Fail and How to Renew Them, Todd G. Buchholz (https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062405708/the-price-of-prosperity)

This book puts forward a thesis suggesting why prosperous nations eventually find themselves reaching a point of decline, looking back from ancient Greece through to the modern world. I’m always a bit suspicious when a piece of writing starts out by declaring that it has uncovered the previously unidentified and definitive answer to a question, and some of the conclusions were too neat for my liking. I also felt that the author was too confident that the Western world’s current economic model was the right one and that the challenges we face are primarily to do with other aspects of social integration and cohesion — I doubt that it’s as straightforward as that. But I learned some interesting stuff and overall I didn’t begrudge the time spent reading the book.

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, Brad Stone (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/books/the-everything-store-jeff-bezos-and-the-age-of-amazon.html)

I’m still half way through, but I’m finding this a very interesting read. It’s easy to assume that Amazon found the magic formula for success from the get go, so I’m finding it interesting to learn more about the company’s beginnings and the different approaches Amazon has had to try out as it has grown. As Matt Ballantine has noted, I’m not persuaded by Jeff Bezos’ approach to management and work / life balance, but then I’m not a multi-billionaire so maybe it’s me who’s getting it wrong…

So, now on to the bank holiday weekend and revving back into gear for work next week! (I’m actually looking forward to getting back up to speed — which I think suggests it’s been a good break.)

I crammed in lots this week, partly because I was making sure that I was on top of things before I go on leave. I’ve decided to play with the format for my note and give a bit more focus to a couple of the topics that I thought were particularly important.

Modernising the way that we work securely across government and beyond

I had a couple of meetings this week with colleagues from across the public sector looking at how we can develop the future model for secure collaboration across public services. It’s nearly 18 months since the Government Digital Service made the very positive assertion that ‘The Internet is OK’ (https://governmenttechnology.blog.gov.uk/2017/01/20/the-internet-is-ok/) and I’m keen to see this thinking being put into practice.

The days when a ‘special and secure network for government’ (or at least the bits of government that aren’t dealing in defence and national secrets) was a good idea are long behind us and the reasons why that is a poor fit for modern public services are well rehearsed (my own missive on that is here: https://bytherye.com/2013/11/09/keeping-our-information-safe-using-it-well/).

I’m really interested to explore questions such as:

• How can we apply a ‘do no harm’ principle to secure collaboration, that makes sure that one organisation’s risk appetite doesn’t prevent other organisations from taking full advantage of the potential that modern technology offers? *
• How can we make sure that we have properly reflected the complexity of public service delivery (including the vital role that the voluntary sector and community groups play) when we design our security models?
• How might we learn from modern internet companies, who are able to protect the security of their platforms without mandating hyper-restrictive controls on their users?
• And how can we shift to a focus on applications and information, and away from large scale network integration?

I’m pleased that these conversations are taking place and while it might sound like it’s all a bit ‘techie’ I think that if we get this right it will make a big contribution to delivering public services that are fit for the 21st century.

* I also think it’s important to note that some ‘risk averse’ approaches actually have the opposite effect and make risks worse.

‘Right sized’ governance that works with Agile

Over the last year and a half we have been working hard to embed Agile and design led approaches in our work. We’re still developing this but are already seeing fantastic results across lots of the areas that we’re working on.

Something I’m keen to do alongside these changes is to develop our internal governance arrangements so that we can match the pace and innovation that Agile is helping us achieve with effective shaping of the work that’s coming into our service, oversight of what we are delivering and clear capture of the benefits that we are helping to enable. And I want to make sure that we do this in a way that doesn’t take away from the pace and energy that we’ve started to achieve.

We already have good work underway for this – including, but not limited to, developing an increasingly clear picture of our pipeline of work and also the thinking that Matthew is bringing together on our future model for capturing the Return On Investment for the work we deliver. On Monday, Cate, Matthew and I had a useful session to talk through this and look at how we are aligning the various threads. I’m hoping that over the coming months we’ll be continuing to clarify our approach and that this will help us continue to accelerate and demonstrate the progress that we are making.

Some of the other things I spent time on this week included:

• Speaking with Mark at UK Authority to talk about how we want the supplier market to change. The result was this article: http://www.ukauthority.com/articles/hackney-s-call-for-suppliers-to-join-digital-ecosystem/ and more than a few calls from suppliers wanting to chat. My diary will be busy when I get back…
• Meeting with colleagues from the GLA to talk through the business case they’re developing for the London Office of Technology and Innovation.
• Some more intros with team members who’ve joined over the last couple of months. This week I caught up with Susan M-L, Lee, Susan S and Michael and really enjoyed our conversations.
• A very useful overview from Lucy talking through the strategic landscape in adults and children’s services and the work we’re doing in those areas. I like how these sessions are helping us to make sure that we’ve got a clear picture across the work we’re doing.
• My quarterly update to Hackney Management Team (my report to them is here: https://blogs.hackney.gov.uk/hackit/committing-to-work-in-the-open) and also update meetings with the Mayor and Ian (my boss).
• Our fortnightly management team meeting, which included looking at our service performance, user satisfaction and a really useful discussion about the work Cate is leading to help us embed our approach to training and development. This linked nicely with a separate discussion later in the week about Hackney’s work to develop inclusive leadership approaches across the Council.
• Meeting up with a colleague from Essex County Council to share the work we’ve been doing to use the Digital Marketplace and redesign our service.
• Planning our user survey which will go out in September and will help us check in on how we’re doing and make sure that we are still heading in the right direction.
• Catching up on our health and safety arrangements – watch out for a reminder about completing your workstation assessment if you haven’t done it recently!
• A very useful briefing from Chidi, Kim and Lindsay on the analysis for our database rationalisation work.
• And also some time spent updating the information that we’ve provided for the Council’s Corporate Plan.

Phew!

Something I’m working on learning

There’s lots of training and guidance for managers on how to have ‘difficult conversations’ and discuss areas where performance needs to improve. I’ve found that there’s less about how to provide useful feedback when things are going well, and I find that I’m sometimes unsure about how to do that without unintentionally sounding like I’m being picky and moaning – especially when I appear to have acquired a completely unjustified reputation for being something of a pedant… 😉 I’m going to give this more thought and look for ways that I can get better at this.

Now that we are close to completing the initial G Suite migration (with over 3,000 people moved over and just a couple of hundred of people left to do) we’re pushing ahead with the work on information and document management, and at the start of the week Anita, Sarah, Tom and I went through the analysis of audit tool requirements. This will be an important part of helping us to move our information management approach from the current model which is based on having highly structured file management that is standardised across the Council towards an approach which allows services to tailor their arrangements to better fit their needs and equips our team with tools that will help them guide and support services in managing their information effectively.

And on Friday Anita and I met with Sonia, the Council’s Head of Policy and Partnerships, to look at ways that her team can take advantage of the G Suite tools for their work. This was a very encouraging discussion and there are lots of ways that having access to more flexible technology will make it easier for them to share ideas and develop strategic plans together with partners. It was great to hear how much progress Sonia’s teams have already made and we identified some useful areas that they can explore next.

As Cate and Matthew were both off last week Henry had to put up with more of my chit chat than normal. We had a useful catch up to go through the recent feedback from the Mayor and Councillor Nicholson on the connectivity strategy that we’re developing and we also looked through some of the other areas of work that the Platform teams are prioritising.

Lucy and I caught up with Sarah, director of children and families, on Monday and checked in on our work together with her services. This was a positive discussion and Lucy also gave me a quick walk through the Discovery exercise that’s been taking place to look at how data might help with contextual safeguarding. I was particularly interested to hear how this is helping the teams involved think through the sorts of questions that data can help answer – I’ve often found that reports and data can accumulate over time and the purpose for producing all the data gets lost, so it’s good to see that this work is starting out by considering user needs.

As we’ve committed to support the Local Digital Declaration I was interested to join the Slack chat that Rishi Sunak, the Minister responsible, held on Tuesday. I thought that it was positive to have direct discussion between a Minister and the practitioners whose work will be impacted by an initiative that they’re promoting and highlights from the discussion were captured in this blog from the MHCLG team: https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2018/07/24/using-slack-to-askrishi/. I asked whether this would become a regular thing and the response to that was positive.

Now that the school holidays are upon us there’s a bit more juggling to be done with childcare. That took a fun form on Wednesday with a day off and a trip to the theatre.

Back at work, Thursday included the Finance & Corporate Resources Directorate Management Team, where we discussed workforce planning across the directorate and wider Council (with particular focus on how we can plan recruitment effectively and market the excellent opportunities that Hackney offers), and also the Corporate Resilience Forum, where we were pleased to see that the work to update BCP plans across the Council is pretty much complete and test exercises are well under way.

Friday brought with it an interesting conversation with Mark Gannon at Sheffield City Council. Mark’s currently bringing their IT back in house from an outsourced service (which reminded me how fortunate we are that Hackney has already done this some time ago) and is also looking at how the Council can help lead wider digital change across the City. It sounded like there might be some useful opportunities to share ideas and learn from each others’ experience so we’ll be following that up.

Later on Friday I caught up with the work on our device refresh, which should see kit for our user research arriving soon as well as an initial batch of Hangouts Meet equipment which we can use to test out the benefits of extending video meeting capabilities across the Council. We’re going to start with our floor, some other locations in the HSC and Town Hall and also some of our remote sites where we expect to find opportunities to help teams based at those sites save time and be more closely connected with colleagues in the core campus.

My team intros this week were brought by the letter L. On Monday I caught up with Lindsay (who’s joined Hackney as our Infrastructure Manager) and on Friday I finished up my week with a chat with Liz (who’s moved to ICT from the Strategy, Policy & Economic Development division to be our Data & Insight Manager). It was interesting to get their thoughts on how we’re developing as a service, in particular how we connect up across teams, and I was pleased to hear that they’ve both had a positive experience so far.

Something I’ve learned

Liz and I also discussed the use of tools like Twitter as part of working in the open. I’ll confess to having initially been sceptical about the value of social media and it took a lot of persuasion (and coercion…!) from my boss to get me to sign up to Twitter back in 2009. But I’m pleased that I did and I’ve made lots of really valuable connections through Twitter since I joined. (I have, however, ditched Facebook – mostly because I find it annoying, but they do also seem to have stretched the ‘creepy’ boundary a bit too far in my view…)