Dave

This note has been kicking around in my drafts for what feels like ages. Life’s been busy! #

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“Agile or not, it’s all about your worldview⬈”

What do you believe about how the world works? Do you believe it works like a machine, that a cause always leads to an effect and that makes the world predictable? Or do believe it works in random ways, where sometimes a cause doesn’t have the expected effect and sometimes effects appear from unknown causes, that the way the world works is unpredictable and emergent.

These two opposite ways of seeing the world are often so deeply rooted that we don’t recognise them, but they matter. They matter when we run organisations the way we see the world. And they matter when we try to apply tools and techniques in our organisations. Our tools and techniques fit with one or the worldview, and they aren’t interchangeable.

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Been trying to think of nice stories to tell about the potential for the use of data to really fundamentally change local public service delivery. The best examples I can think of tend to be in the prevention / early intervention space.

The one I am using A LOT at the moment is:

“Imagine you could identify certain wards in the borough where, if a household misses two council tax payments in a row, you know to send the Citizens’ Advice folk round to help them, because otherwise there’s a 50% chance that household will be homeless and needing emergency accommodation at the council’s expense”

It’s not perfect but quite good at getting the general idea across, I think. #

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Am loving Neil’s blogroll⬈. He’s right – it is a nice list.

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Last week I attended a jointly run LocalGovDigital and LGA session about the service standard and its uptake in local government. Perhaps not surprisingly, uptake has been low so far. Phil wrote about the session on his blog⬈.

Mark Thompson was there and he talked through his ideas, many of which I think are excellent. His focus on standardising back offices to help fund better local services on the frontline led to me making this point in the chat:

We’ve veered a little way from the service standard onto how standardised services and technology might help local gov with some of its problems – which is good, because solving those problems is what needs to happen.

But to wheel back to the starting point, could a local gov service standard be focused on helping to harmonise service design across the sector, so that it can be in a better place to adopt Mark’s thinking in the future, around shared back office capabilities?

In other words, as part of a service assessment: “Oh, you appear to have not followed sector good practice and decided to do your own thing entirely that means you aren’t going to be able to be a part of a more efficient future when we share stuff. What made you think that was a good idea, and how are you going to convince your rate payers that it is in their best interests?”

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This week we ran a virtual roundtable for the Town Hall 2030⬈ project, with a bunch of awesome folk across local government digital, one of whom has already written up their perspectives⬈! 😍 #

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Local government capacity survey: IT⬈ –

This report is in response to heads of IT highlighting challenges in recruiting, developing and retaining staff across all IT disciplines, and increasing pressures facing IT teams. All heads of IT (or equivalent position) in all English councils were asked to complete an online survey between October 2023 and January 2024.

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Oops! Why accidental technology failure is a greater threat than cyber security⬈:

Within software and hardware engineering, product management, user centred design and a myriad of other professional practices, there are known ways to make technology more resilient and reliable. What’s missing is the rigour provided by matching enduring teams to enduring technology, to ensure these skills can be applied continuously.

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Well done for making it this far. Was reminded of this song earlier in the week – I love it. #