August and September month notes
In the spirit of transparency and candour, the service transformation team publishes reflections on the what and why for the team.
Kelsey’s notes
The rain is here, the leaves are piling up in the gutters: it’s fall. Time to take stock of our work through the end of summer (August/September — even if it’s a bit late).
I’m writing this on a dedicated team writing morning — it feels hard these days to carve out time for reflection, so we’re trying out dedicated writing slots. So far, so good.
Building the broader team
I spent time at the end of August and into September (trying) to focus ‘on the practice of service transformation.’ This always feels like a challenge to prioritize, because as a group we see our key value and raison d’etre is to help drive improved delivery of services through program areas. This means that time spent on building the conditions for our branch and practice to thrive is often given short shrift.
A few things we did over the last months to address this:
- Planning and facilitating an in-person full-day workshop across the service transformation leads in ENV to reflect on our milestones and challenges over the last year — and look ahead to where we want to go as a collective
- Creating a digital roadmap from those insights to help reflect what we’re doing now and where we’re going.
Still to do: share this report back with the broader ENV service transformation team - Introducing a new sprint-based approach for STB core members — meaning we’re going to dedicate 5 weeks to working with our delivery partners, then 1 week dedicated to STB/general service transformation work. This is similar to an approach in one of partner teams (BC Parks digital services), who have a ‘no-meeting/refactoring week’ every 6 weeks
Still to do: define our backlog for our first STB week starting November 26. - Revisiting our team agreement to help onboard new team members — this outlines our ways of working, expectations of team members and other often opaque processes (I.e. team communication norms, vacation and time-off requests).
I’m excited about the potential to bring our team together more tightly around our mission, and provide dedicated space to advance our practice. I’m also hoping this approach results in us moving forward more quickly on items (like design tooling, digital governance and systems guidance, community building) that benefit the cross-ENV digital community.
Governance for connected services
Complex services cross ministry boundaries. This means ministries need to collaborate on how they design and deliver services and digital applications. Easy to say, hard to do.
This can look like two ministries both using a single digital application for different services, or a service that relies on multiple ministries that all use different applications. The former is more of an application governance question and the latter a ‘whole or connected’ service governance question.
A few thoughts managing digital applications and services that cross organizational boundaries:
- A digital application that is used by multiple ministries should only have one product manager. It’s their role to work across the various program teams to identify and understand key user needs, prioritize work to address them and manage funding against these priorities. Multiple product managers that represent purely their own ministry perspectives leads to misdirection and confusion.
- SaaS products shared across ministries need even more attention and governance support. SaaS (software as a service) products tell a fictional dream of all the user groups getting along and meeting all their needs. There needs to a be a central voice managing budget, prioritizing enhancements and directing the vendor. Multiple contact points with a vendor leads to inefficiencies and confusion.
- We haven’t solved the cost-sharing puzzle. Shared use of a digital product doesn’t mean equal use. We’re still working through how to assign a dollar value to a ministry’s participation in a shared digital product or digital service team. I’m leaning towards general allocation of support (I.e. 50/50 or 25/25/25/25) in recognition of the efficiencies gained through collectively supporting a single team or product versus ministries acting individually. I’m curious to look at any approaches in other sectors (I.e. shared real estate, shared corporate services) that might offer some ideas on how to approach cost-sharing here.
A few other major pieces over these last months:
Minimum Viable Product launched for Site Remediation Services in August. The SRS MVP enables proponents to submit their application forms to request to remediate a contaminated site online, view the status of their application and respond to additional requests for information. My support on this work continues to be how it can be set up for success (roles, governance, scope, funding) — much less about the actual interface design or technology behind it. That being said, I was able to lean into some security reviews and support prior to launch. Shout out to the leadership from the EP Digital Services Team (Karen Li, Haley Sawyer) on managing the complexity of this file and really embodying the division-led approach to digital services.
Looking ahead:
- Working to secure operational funding for this work via various funding submissions. Ensuring digital and service capacity is accounted for in any budget requests is a key means to building a solid foundation for government service delivery.
- We’re adding design leadership to the team to ensure cohesion and direction. Kevin has joined the 3+ designers on this team to add some practice oversight and support via regular crits and planning sessions
- Scoping how we approach tackling new services with the right team capacity and budget. The business case supporting the EPD Digital Services work spans 4 services over 4 years (2022–2026). We’re almost into year 2, and starting to work on our second line of service (managing pesticide use). Juggling the two existing services (site remediation and pesticide use) will be tricky as we add even more complexity to this file.
CleanBC.ca service leadership and sustainment is now centred in ENV.
This means we’ve welcomed a new Product Manager, Lindsay, to the Service Transformation Branch to lead this work on behalf of ENV. Lindsay brings a depth of experience to the CleanBC team: she’s a past Product Manager with the Clean Growth digital services team and most recently piloted a Director, Digital Services role with the Climate Action Secretariat.
Under the transitional leadership of Kevin and Lindsay, the CleanBC team has found its feet and is delivering new services at pace. They’re back in sprint cadence, have pushed out a refreshed GoElectric.ca site in line with CleanBC.ca design guidelines and user testing feedback — and are getting out in IRL (in real life) to test the site and digital service approaches with youth. At the same time, we’re working through the behind-the-scenes pieces to ensure we have the right roles and budget to sustain this work in the long term.
Ongoing work:
- Update our MOU (memorandum of understanding) with participating ministries to ensure it accurately reflects deliverables and cost-sharing (ahem, see note on connected services and cost-sharing governance above).
- Ensure alignment on budget and reporting actuals. The CleanBC team is made up of Minstry of Citizen Services staff and vendors, so we need to ensure we’re accurately reporting out on the contributions (and costs) of these members.
- Setting a roadmap for the year ahead. We spent a lot of time in 2023 transitioning leadership and catching up on prior commitments for updates to CleanBC and GoElectric. Now, we need to look ahead to how we can improve the CleanBC digital services over the coming year(s).
Lots more to report on, but that’s a quick snapshot of the last couple months!
The opinions and views expressed in this post are solely the author’s and do not represent those of the Province of British Columbia or any other parties.
