The MacGuffin

It’s been a busy start to the year and there’s a few notes I want to write, so better get the weeknotes down.

New York

Went to New York for a week and had an excellent time.

Saw the Brooklyn Nets! Ran across the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges! Walked around a snowy Central Park! Saw great art, including Turner’s Venice! Peeked in a capsule from the Nakagin Tower! At delicious food! Listened to Beastie Boys loudly on the subway!

Work focus

With a new lead joining us on planning.data.gov.uk and my contract nearing its end, I’ve moved myself away from Extract and back to the platform so I can do handover properly. The blended team are continuing the alpha and researching with local authorities, and I’m shifting back to finishing off things I’d started.

My main goal is to get the key performance indicators I drafted properly embedded in the teams, so that they can see what’s working well and what’s not. We’ll also publish a performance dashboard so that users can see data being added to the platform, coverage across England increasing, and data quality improving (where needed). We’ve had a static performance page since I joined but making this a live dashboard, based on the platform’s data, will be a big win.

PSD would also like to do some work on describing patterns for the platform – getting data indexed, getting data out – to help our data providers and data consumers. There’s a good opportunity there to change the perception of what a data platform in government can be, so I’m looking forward to it.

Also need to finish off the service handbook I started, and help the team prepare for a live service assessment. Plenty to do!

Productivity from AI…or ways of working

My reading from this article on labour productivity growth and AI, and the two papers it mentions, is that productivity growth might be correlated with more productive working methods.

For example, in IT or technical services or warehousing or wholesale, where teams are adopting Lean etc., surely less waste = more productivity? It’s interesting that the industries experiencing productivity growth from AI were also seeing productivity growth before AI came along. In general, adapting and redesigning processes and reducing waste will likely have an impact on productivity, so adding further automation thanks to AI will surely help.

If you view your AI strategy as the Trojan horse for your digital strategy, you’ll have a much easier time redesigning processes and workflows, adapting ways of working to reduce waste, and later automating the fixed processes (with or without AI).

How AI affects the day-to-day of digital professionals

Nikola at Ministry of Justice invited me to speak on an AI leaders panel at their popular AI conference, the second year it has run. We were talking about how AI has impacted the day-to-day jobs of people on digital teams, so I shared some thoughts. The session was open to public servants only, so I’ve recapped my comments on the Boring Magic blog.

Improving delivery

Also on the Boring Magic website, I’ve started writing up case studies of my work, starting with improving delivery with GOV.‌UK Design System. We doubled their release cadence inside a 6-month period and they’ve kept on releasing often.

Take a look at the case study to see what I did.

Watching, reading

Been to the cinema twice already this year, to see 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (fantastic, anti-modern, return-to-folk story) and No Other Choice (funny, unexpectedly Luddite).

Also started reading Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why it Matters and, wow, it’s excellent.

Running

Ran the Maverick West Sussex trail half-marathon on Saturday, which was a fun and muddy event (see the photos!). First time I’ve run a half since August and I didn’t hold back, so my legs are feeling it. But the Manchester marathon isn’t far away so I need to stick to my plan fully now.

Bookmarks

· Weeknotes

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