Head is spinning with ideas and next step possibilities this week – exhausted in the best possible way.

Connection conversations

LocalGovCamp Midlands gave me the opportunity to have lots of individual conversations, as well as be part of several great discussions in the room.

This was my first LocalGovCamp event since (I think) 2015, and the first in-person work event (outside of office days) since 2019. It felt very natural to be back and was a really insightful and fulfilling day.

In terms of conversations it was great to have a chance to chat more with my Birmingham City Council colleague Rachel Carter on some of our direct work, but also cross-sector sharing and learning; also great to catch up with former colleagues from our time at Nottinghamshire County Council Andy Lowe and Tom Styles. There was chance in group discussion to reflect on our Digital First work as well as what we’re working on now.

Also great to see LocalGov Digital folks including Nick Hill and Dave Briggs, as well as meet some new sector colleagues and start to talk about the LocalGov Digital content standard work which is coming up.

3 things this week

The framework supporting a ceiling by Bernard Hermant

A framework library for Local Government

Lots of the talks at LocalGovCamp were around different frameworks – and all of them looked very useful for their particular focus.

There was:

  • a framework for conditions for success
  • a customer experience framework
  • a data maturity framework
  • and even a digital quality model (which is a sort of framework)

Several other existing frameworks were mentioned – such as around cyber security – and it made me wonder if a library of existing frameworks might be a useful resource for the sector? If so, is it something we could collectively create and populate through LocalGov Digital?

There were also great sessions on process mapping, and automation including a Beat the Bot challenge. It’s all given me plenty of thoughts to take back to the office and start putting in to action, as well as made me look forward for more LocalGovCamp and LocalGov Digital activity this year.

Improving service processes vs creating cross-service user-centred journeys

I’ve been musing quietly on the difference between improving (even transforming) user journeys for individual services, and taking a broader user-centred view of multi-service journeys which may fit more closely with the user’s mental model.

The example I’ve been thinking on (because of recent work on an individual journey) is:

  • the individual user journey of telling the council you’ve moved for the purposes of council tax
  • a multi-service (possibly multi-council) journey about moving (which could include council tax, waste services, school admissions or meals, and more)

Every individual journey needs working on to meet the relevant user needs, but perhaps we’re often stopping short of looking at how these individual journeys might fit together and designing the multi-service / multi-council journey on a broader activity.

There’s something about breaking silo working within organisations to build a multi-service journey, and something related to the Local Government Digital Service discussion potentially too. Mostly I think it shows there is still miles we can travel to turn the view from organisation-centred to user-centred.

I’d love to hear from anyone who has worked on this type of stuff.

Services Week – a plug for sessions

Next week is Services Week and the whole line up looks to be packed with great sessions. I wanted to plug 3 in particular from colleagues at Birmingham City Council.

Shall we connect?

I’m looking for conversations and opening my calendar for opportunities to connect across 2024. Drop me a message if you’d like to chat though and we can find something that works I’m sure!

If you’re a vendor please check out the latest news on my employer before grabbing a slot – these conversations are not an opportunity to try and sell to me. And if you do work at the same organisation as I do reach out on Teams so we can say hello!

You can also get in touch through the ways on my get in touch page so let’s see what we can arrange.

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash