Another week has sped by – this one including an in-person get together for work and learning that drones are now the tool of choice for roofers assessing for repairs. Variety is the spice, eh?
3 things this week
Here’s 3 thoughts from the last 7 days.
Making service design work in councils
Great to hear from former colleague Annie Heath, current colleagues Surita Solanki and Donna Roberts, and LocalGov Digital comrade Phil Rumens in this podcast episode on Making service design work in councils from the Local Government Association.
Loads of great takeaways from the discussion and sharing but particularly love what Donna says about: “If you are going to build things for people, then involve people”. Her recognition that this doesn’t just mean people like you or who are already familiar with the way a service works and the language it uses, and that being clear with people about what we can and can’t achieve are just *chef’s kiss*.
Surita’s point too about new ways of working, being explored at Birmingham with Foundry (a model which can scale, or be replicated elsewhere): “we want people from the services to come join us, come and see what it’s like to be part of a hack, to work on a problem and how all the different roles come together to look at the problem, ideate a solution, do some prototyping, and then see what it looks like in terms of building that.”
User-centred design shouldn’t be the exception, nor should iterative prototyping at pace. But they are so I’m really happy a bunch of great people who are making huge strides in this space got to talk about it and have their voices amplified by the LGA.
Product as the creator and the destroyer of dreams
It’s overblown for dramatic effect, of course. But, this was a phrase which briefly passed across my mind during our in-person Product Day this week while hearing from the Ministry of Justice and their work on Lasting Power of Attorney.
This was fascinating all round and great to hear how teams are formed and bonded, and how work is identified, approached and delivered in other areas of the public sector. There was much which resonated with the approach I’ve taken or been involved in elsewhere and which now we’re trying to bring to update Birmingham’s online services.
Amongst that was the power of no. That as much as Product is there to shape and deliver, they are also there to say no or deprioritise where there isn’t the evidence of need or value. This – the saying no or accepting there is a wait – is a skill still needing practice in local government.
Future certainty
‘In short, you can purchase this record with no fear of its becoming obsolete in the future.’
I rather liked this footnote on the back sleeve of a record made half a century ago. At once it is confident and convincing to an uncertain buyer as they move from mono to stereo, and also so completely unaware that technology of all kinds was really only getting started.
Does the guarantee hold? Well, the record is not yet obsolete although it does have more competition. And there’s probably a lesson in there for any of us working in digital or technology, in any sector, today.