It’s taken a while to record the second CDO Chat video, but today I finally had the joy of an hour of Ben Unsworth‘s virtual company!
Ben has done loads in digital government, including stints at the Home Office and with FutureGov, and these days he is the Director for Service Transformation at Essex County Council.
In this video, we talk about Ben’s role and what it encompasses, the importance of accessibility in digital services, the roles needed to make change happen, and the impact of the lockdowns and the future of work. Oh, and of course we hear a little about his shed too.
If audio is more your thing, you can grab that on Soundcloud.
It’s taken a while to record the second CDO Chat video, but today I finally had the joy of an hour of Ben Unsworth‘s virtual company!
Ben has done loads in digital government, including stints at the Home Office and with FutureGov, and these days he is the Director for Service Transformation at Essex County Council.
In this video, we talk about Ben’s role and what it encompasses, the importance of accessibility in digital services, the roles needed to make change happen, and the impact of the lockdowns and the future of work. Oh, and of course we hear a little about his shed too.
If audio is more your thing, you can grab that on Soundcloud.
I’ve been involved in the implementation of low code in a couple of councils, and in the right circumstances it’s a great fit. In the panel session, I’ll be exploring what those circumstances are, and what some of low code’s pitfalls are, as well as what it is brilliant at.
I’m going to be chatting with the following ‘legends of low code’:
Kev Rowe, Croydon Council
Craig Barker, Cumbria County Council
Clare Evans, Tewkesbury Borough Council
Ben Evans, Ashfield District Council
Lee Gallagher, Hertsmere Council
Big thanks to Nick Hill for organising the panel – as well as being informative, it should be good fun too.
Something that I have found helps an awful lot is having a simple way to match identified user needs with the technology capabilities needed to meet them.
It helps in two main ways:
by encouraging people to consider the user needs they are trying to meet before thinking about technology solutions (always tempting, but dangerous!)
by reinforcing the message about capability-based technology delivery, as opposed to always thinking in terms of single monolithic systems
By considering user needs first, then identifying individual capabilities to meet them, it’s possible to come up with solutions that are more likely to succeed and can often be cheaper and quicker to implement.
A good example of when I used this was when I was advising on a new intranet project. The initial requirements list had all sorts of stuff in it – HR policies, telephone directory, social networking, better collaboration (whatever that means!), and loads of others.
I was able to break it down into the needs we were trying to meet, and then come up with the technology capavilities to meet those needs. I found that adding an extra translation layer betwene the teo – tasks – helped with doing this. Here’s an example below:
User need: I need to know if my pay will increase this April
Task: quickly and easily access details of pay grades and scales, via search or navigation
Technology capability: publish pages of content
Pretty obvious perhaps. But let’s look at another need:
User need: I would like to understand the organisation’s policy on remote working
Task: find and read a policy document
Technology capability: share and manage versions of documents
Now, traditionally both of these things are requirements for an intranet. But broken down in this way, we can understand that we need an intranet to publish pages of content, but perhaps for the sharing of formal documents, a more specific capability is needed?
I then add a fourth column, which outlines the potential technology to deliver the capability. In the latter case, this could be a system such as Sharepoint or Google Drive, which may already exist in the organisation.
By following this process through with all the identified user needs, you’ll end up with a list of what technology you’ll need, along with a map of what you already have that can do those things, and where you have gaps.
To make it super easy, here’s a Google Doc template, with a worked example for the intranet, that you can copy and make use of.
A few months ago, I recorded this chat with Kit Collingwood, from the Royal Borough of Greenwich, about her work at the council, the new digital strategy she authored, and how she and her team are tackling the many challenges facing those working in digital in local government.
If you just want the audio, you can grab that on Soundcloud.
Stefan at Strategic Reading said about this interview:
This video conversation is modestly billed as a CDO chat, but is actually a master class in strategy development and application. The approach is deceptively simple. Two people who bring both depth of experience and thoughtful reflection range over everything from rapid mobilisation in the face of a pandemic, through the vital importance of using data effectively, the challenges of dealing with dominant vendors, creating a team with the right balance of expertise and humility, and giving that team the support to design and build services which meet the needs of people outside and inside the organisation.
