Month: October 2024

Two weeks since the last weeknote and I didn’t even notice that I missed writing one last week – not good. I could say “things are busy” but they are always that. Reflective time though is in short supply right now so even a quick note is better than none.

What I’ve been up to

1. Setting our directorate priorities for the next quarter (that’s quarter three) to take us up to Christmas. The team is generally running at, or over, capacity so clear areas of focus help us to manage our resources and effort and try and screen out some of the noise. The priorities are:
   • better management of our current change initiatives. Improving our processes to get more efficient in tracking and delivering them. This includes better communication flows into – and through – digital, clear roles and responsibilities, better expectation management and improved cross-agency collaboration.
   • Planning the next phase of digital’s part in the Organisational Blueprint programme. A programme director has now been appointed to lead us through the detailed design phase. It is critical that we get this right and ensure we are fit for purpose for the agency’s – and its users- needs.
   • Ensuring we get the right processes and decision points in place for service transition and our future live service support model. We have been working well with the Evolve programme team to get this work moving but now we need to accelerate it.
2. We held our monthly portfolio assurance board. Its maturing nicely now and the meeting ran far more effectively than when I first joined the agency. Props to Krystalla and team for all their support.
3. We also held our monthly Portfolio Assurance Board – where we review all work and escalations across Digital in the round. All senior digital leaders attend this meeting and its a chance for us look sideways across the various teams and reflect progress.
4. Yet more governance – time consuming but critical – we held the monthly risk review board. A while back we appointed risk champions to work with, and challenge, risk owners. The consequence is we are seeing a step change in how we manage and report risk. A massive thanks to all involved.
5. Spent quite bit of time with various colleagues to ensure we successfully deliver the S106 project – a quick fix digital solution to support an initiative of the new Secretary of State. The team have expended a huge amount of energy to ensure we can deliver on this. Again, well done.

What I’m planning next

1. Spending some quality time with the digital leadership team this week to deep dive on our priorities and turn them into tangible, trackable actions. I’m v conscious this time of year that the clocks go back, it gets darker, half term comes along and its suddenly Christmas. Its really important that we stay focused on delivery against our commitments so this planning time is important.
2. Catching up with the digital shadow leadership board. They act as a brilliant sounding board / conscience to me and the rest of the digital leadership team so looking forward to hearing their concerns, feedback, suggestions etc.
3. Its the monthly change executive board on Tuesday and we (digital) are presenting a paper on support for help to buy.
4. We’re hopefully holding our second product management breakfast on Wednesday. If you’re a product manager, or interested in product management, and you’re based near Canary Wharf, drop me a line.

Time continues to fly and there is so much going on, its v hard to prioritise at times. I’m trying to keep half an eye on the meaningful noise being generated about the creation of the new Digital Centre design panel in the hope that I might have something to contribute to the debate. Focus, focus, focus…

What I’ve been up to

1. We signed off our review of progress we have made against our business plan for quarter two. That’s the first half of the year done and we’re doing pretty well. Some of our initiatives have been paused while the agency organisational blueprint programme communicates future corporate direction but other than that we are largely on track.
2. Lots of discussions and negotiations about future live service support for new services being delivered by our change programmes. This is starting to shape up well.
3. Related – reviewing our “small g” governance processes to ensure they are optimal and reducing duplication where possible. This is an ongoing task and critical to mode of operation so I am devoting a lot of energy to resolving this as widely as possible.
4. As a response to the intro above – some frank conversations with the digital and senior leadership teams about prioritisation and how we make time to deliver the things that really matter rather than the noise and fast balls generated by the business.
5. Got to hang out for an evening in the Gherkin for a cross-govt round table discussion about the future for AI and data. Great views from the 38th floor!

What I’m planning next

1. Our portfolio assurance board is meeting on Tuesday. Its now got into a good rhythm managing the pipeline and spend approvals which really helps with solidifying our digital governance processes.
2. Got to do some work this week confirming our priorities for next quarter and how we will measure performance.
3. Looking forward the next few weeks, planning how we can best use in-person time as a senior leadership team to tackle the issues that are priorities and currently slowing us down. We built a backlog of issues and initiatives earlier in the summer but we are all busy people so time together to address these is really important.
4. Working on how we better manage the pipeline of change requests generated by the business – how we deal with the enquiries and pull them through our system into live.
5. So much more.

Anything else to note

I mentioned the Digital Centre design panel creation above and my interest in what they are do. Both Jukesie and Neil Williams have provided some excellent commentary themselves and links to others already. Hopes and wishes to which I would add:

• A focus on leadership skills for digital leaders, which I often hear is a problem for people stepping up into senior roles. How do we help future digital leaders navigate the likes of the audit committee or the corporate risk register reporting requirements?
• Sensible and proportionate restatement of why the digital spend controls are important and how they work. The loss of this grip at the centre has been a real problem for digital and tech teams for the last few years. But related theres a lot of confusion about what the purpose is, its often seen as another layer of unwanted governance.
• A focus on wider business change. A blind spot for “classical” GDS IMO. We built great products and delivered amazing digital services. But we often forgot the impact on the enduring business functions. Bodies are good at rejecting organs. Can’t do that again.

Continuing in my tradition of writing last week’s weeknote almost halfway through the next but determined to get back into some kind of rhythm of recording my thoughts on whats top of my mind at the moment.

What I’ve been up to

1. I got out of the office last Tuesday to visit the Digital Government expo at the Excel centre. Managed to see a few old faces, talk with potential suppliers and soak up some of the excellent demos and talks. All without picking up loads of the useless freebies that inevitably get foisted on you at these kinds of things. I always marvel at just how LARGE the Excel centre is and how much is going on there every day of the week.
2. Had a few meetings with our Microsoft account team last week which gave me more insight into how we can make more use of our contractual relationship. We have access to loads of training opportunities that we need to make more use of and publicise across the agency to give anyone interested access.
3. Our fortnightly management team focused on performance and priorities. We have some big challenges around improving the measurement of our service delivery and how we guide colleagues through our various approvals processes
4. We held an extraordinary portfolio assurance board to gain approval for some new initiatives to move into discovery. The digital centre of government has recently restated the critical importance of enforcing spend controls and we have been working with MHCLG colleagues to tighten up our processes around this. Great to see it in action.
5. We reviewed our posture around our principal cyber risk in advance of the executive board’s regular review of principal risks. This one is _always_ a live issue but we feel like we are managing the risk to the best of our ability at the moment.

What I’m planning next

1. Focused very much on information sharing and how decisions are communicated to whom, and when. We make a lot of decisions every day as a collective leadership team but they don’t always get communicated to all the right people. Looking actively about how we improve this discipline.
2. On Wednesday we have our monthly all hands call. A rare chance to connect with the whole team, share some thoughts on priorities and challenges, and hear back from them on what they are working on.
3. On Thursday I have the quarterly board meeting for NASEN, the charity I am a a trustee of.
4. Our monthly digital review is also on Wednesday, a checkpoint that feeds up into the Change Portfolio Executive report and promotes our key achievements and successes over the last month.
5. We are reviewing progress against our annual business plan now that we have reached the end of the second quarter of the year(! – already) as we have to report where we are against a plan at the end of the week.