The Toon Again

Heck of a busy week, but one with plenty of rewarding chats and progress.

The new digital centre

But first, let’s dip into what we want from the new digital centre. For the most part, I agree with what’s been written by Jukesie, Neil, Tim’s roundup of what other people think and Jeni. (Stewarding the commons is particularly close to my heart.)

While there’s a bunch I could add, I truly believe that a captivating vision is the first thing to establish. The biggest priority.

I spent much of 2019 and early 2020 thinking about future digital public services, the boring magic, and I believe we pulled together something inspiring. To get it out there and show people a possible future, I’ve blogged about the sketches we made. Please, take a look.

There’s more I can share, including some of the gubbins we thought needed to exist to make it possible, but a lot of it is very similar to Richard’s anatomy of public services.

There’s a lot of highly-skilled, creative, caring public servants out there who can bring about truly internet-era services, in-person and online. But we all need to be moving forward in the same direction. ‘If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.’

The fire in my belly hasn’t gone out, and I’m lucky to be able to use it on making the planning system fit for the 21st century. Let’s cook up something bigger, broader and deeper in other domains.

Let’s push things forward.

Handover notes

I’m going on holiday in November so I’ve been writing up regular meetings I go to, projects I’m running alongside doing lead-product-manager stuff, and what to do if something thorny comes up. It’s amazing how much knowledge you can build up over 6 months, and how embedded you become in a functioning platform.

Newcastle

Went up to Newcastle again to talk about testing and a data quality framework with Paul, our lead developer and our data governance manager. We covered lots of detail but unfortunately didn’t get into defining the framework as much as I’d like. That’s partly because Paul and I had to jump into some last-minute meetings.

Pathways for local planning authorities

The latest cohort of local planning authorities are four months into their projects to prepare and provide data to the platform. There’s a handful of LPAs making plenty of progress and publishing their datasets, but the majority of LPAs are stalled.

To get more insight on effective interventions we can make, and to identify specific needs LPAs have that we might be able to meet, I’ve started a couple of projects with the community managers in the programme.

The goal is to map a pathway – like a pipeline or funnel you’d have in sales and marketing or a startup – collect data on LPAs’ progress, and do a small discovery to identify key enablers and blockers. For example, I think a lot of people are waiting for our work on the specifications for tree preservation orders and listed buildings to be iterated. I also think GIS and data officers aren’t getting as much support from project leads as they need. These are assumptions that need validating or invalidating.

Successful experiments

The Data Providers team has been experimenting with using notifications to encourage LPAs to improve data quality through one of our services.

They set up tracking on the links they sent out, meaning they could see LPAs using the links, visiting the service, and looking at the issues with their data. A few LPAs even started fixing their data, and in less than a week one LPA fixed all the issues with their data. It’s so good to see!

Not only does that suggest notifications are actionable for users and a viable feature to add, it also validates that aspects of the service work and help LPAs get the job done. The LPA that fixed their data hadn’t been a part of any research or testing previously, so it’s the first time they’d used the service!

I’m also feeling good about my decision to implement screen recording on the service. It’s a privacy-respecting implementation because we don’t collect any personal data from users, and it has enabled the team to see users achieve successful outcomes.

Good chats with Comms

We had a good chat with Comms, who asked lots of good questions to work out how they can help us achieve some of our objectives over the next few months. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of it, there’s lots to do and we need their help.

Watching, listening, reading

On Thursday I watched a few episodes of the new series of Industry, the rich-ploitation drama from the BBC and HBO. I like the deeper portraits of the characters and whatever chutzpah Harper is up to, but there’s no denying that a lot of the storylines are designed to titillate.

Off the back of my note on using social media less, I picked up Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. It’s an eloquent argument and pretty entertaining, and I’m enjoying the research she’s done into 1960s communes to show how switching off doesn’t work.

Hadn’t realised that Actress had a new album out, Statik, so I’ve listened to that a lot. Listened to it so much that Bandcamp has asked me to buy it and won’t let me stream it any more. It’s a good feature, that. Reminds you to purchase the things you appreciate. Also listened to Tim Hecker’s soundtrack for The North Water a lot. I loved the show but hadn’t realised it was him scoring it!

Pumpkin

Tonight we’re hosting a pumpkin party. There’s roasted pumpkin with a green sauce, plus a large pumpkin stuffed with wild rice, grains, harissa and feta, all made by my partner from our homegrown pumpkins. I’ve baked another pumpkin pie since last week’s was so successful. Unfortunately I had the oven up too high and it’s a little bit too ‘caramelised’! We’ll just have to add lashings of cream, eh?

All washed down with a magnum of pét-nat, Astro Bunny 2022 from Wildman Wine. It’s ‘utterly frivolous’ according to Jancis Robinson, which is good because we’ve got six people coming over. I haven’t really thought about whether it’ll go with the food but it’s taking up too much room in the fridge.

Bookmarks

· Weeknotes

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