Weeknote 8: week ending 26th January 2024

A week that started with a power cut thanks to Storm Isha which meant playing catch up with a bunch of people who were pencilled in for catchups on Monday morning. We’re approaching the end of the first calendar month of the year so its been a week of checking in on our priorities and thinking ahead to February.

What I’ve been up to

1. Had my first (virtual) session with my cohort on new directors course run by the leadership college for government. We’re meeting in the real world in a few weeks time so this session was a chance to get to know each other and compare roles and challenges. Key takeway – manage your energy levels.
2. Had a really productive workshop with our risk and assurance colleagues to uplift our risk registers, make sure they are accurately reflecting our biggest challenges and how we are managing them.
3. Some good thinking and activity in support of our digital comms colleagues – planning around how we prioritise work with our GOV.UK presence, separate websites and intranet.
4. An excellent session with the Digital Outcomes team to refine our offer to the business and how we can land service ownership as a concept and an operating model.
5. Planning and preparation for our monthly digital leadership team next week. The first time we will all have been together in the same room since before Christmas, a lot to catch up on and some meaty sessions to get through (including a risk challenge session, our future live services / operating model and annual business planning).

What I’m focusing on next

1. Continuing the huge push on recruitment and skills. Lots of training opportunities being proposed and an assistant director role being advertised next week amongst others.
2. Welcoming back Steve Railton to the leadership team after an extended break. Need to bring him up to speed on what we have been up to in his absence.
3. The monthly leadership team mentioned above, likely to generate lots of activity.
4. Lots of sessions about future live services support, both before, during and after the leadership team day. This work is rightly consuming a lot of focus at the moment.
5. I’m attending what sounds like a really interesting event about building generative AI-powered digital public services. Keen to find out what we can learn from others in this space.