January 28th, 2022
In the spirit of transparency and candour, Kevin and Jill publish weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for their team.
Jill’s notes
And we are rolling in the open folks.
Parks as a Platform
Through our work to transform BC Parks’ services to better meet peoples’ needs, we see an opportunity to inspire and empower people inside and outside governments — especially but not only in the technology community — to spark and share innovations to improve park operations, enjoyment, and stewardship. Get involved!
I don’t even have words. This was our first priority and has consumed hundreds of hours of Kevin and I’s time. This is big and I’m so proud of this team and how it’s coming together. This really is just the beginning.
Speed round
In the spirit of year-end, Kevin and I are doing some minimal weeknotes for the rest of the fiscal. As you are probably experiencing — it's crunch time and time is limited.
Eight Friday’s to fiscal year-end:
- EPD Digital Era Leadership round two — loved the conversation and as always met new people across the ministry.
- Caught up with John Jordon in preparation for next week's #DigitalBC Livestream — why digital trust and identity should matter to you.
- Chatted with our colleagues in forestry re: lessons learned, roadmaps, reporting structures and hiring.
- Learned more about the Pathfinder Single Sign-On / Log in team from Zorin Samji at the PO Commons.
- Had some much-needed in-person — in real life — time with Ari and a few other colleagues.
- Great conversations with our IIT colleagues re: future state and our continued evolution together.
And on to another week.
Kevin’s notes
The biggest +1 to Jill’s boosting of Parks’ public launch of their service transformation efforts. To watch the organization truly embrace concepts that were pretty foreign just 9 months ago — the org as a ‘platform’ for service value, being design led, responsive policy — it’s incredibly validating. I’m bursting with pride for how far we’ve come and the better experiences these services (and backend stuctures/processes) will facilitate for the public through what promises to be another busy summer in BC’s parks and protected areas! As Jill said, this is just the very beginning.
End of fiscal is a tornado, so lightening round weeknotes from here through April is highly likely.
CleanBC
- Meg and I continued to work on overall project strategy, which now includes an emergent collaboration from the Behavioural Insights Group out of the PSA. I’m very excited about this! We also did a bit of backlog refinement as things continue to crystalize.
- The core team (which now includes our consultant partners April and Hsinyu, welcome!) engaged in a problem definition workshop, trying to further refine the problem spaces. Still much ambiguity to the nested goalsets in this work, and I couldn't help going down a few quasi-abstract value theory tangents. Always a good exercise regardless — the method process is the value, not exclusively the outputs.
- Meg lead a presentation to the steering committee (EDs etc across the stakeholder ministries) seeking endorsement on our approach. Landed very strong, great work Meg!
EPD
- Jill led and I helped facilitate two half days of our Digital Era Leadership curriculum, in which I give a human-centred design overview. Big shoutout to all the participants from EPD, a lot of lively discussion and enthusiastic engagement with the materials. I find the sessions a bit fatiguing but also very rewarding.
- Sat in on a couple meetings prepping for a progress update to exec next week. A bit of swirl on how to frame things up and present but I think we ended the week aligned. Looking forward to attending to see the team report on all the amazing progress and learnings to date.
Compliance and Enforcement
- Finalized our design discovery procurement scope. Thanks Jill for the math/edits and to Kelsey and GDX PMO for supporting, you folks are the best. I’m both excited and anxious to lean into C+E; it’s a whole new expansive and undefined challenge space starting ground up. Looking forward to welcoming the new Product Owner, starting Monday!
Other
- An all-too-brief virtual coffee with former OXD colleague and design practice inspiration Deb, who’s been working with Health through much of the pandemic. Another [longer] catchup soon!
- BCPS HCD community of practice. Thanks for the pandemic case study GDX Service Design! Such amazing community is already coming out of this new CoP, big shoutout to the conveners. It’s a big signal for growth and vibrancy of design across the public service
- Policy CoP. A brass-tacks session on rural considerations in policy development. As always, when we talk about policy development, it’s generally interchangeable for ‘design,’ and the first principals are the same — diversity, inclusivity, accessibility, empathy, care, safety, diligence — outside-in.
Hope everyone is having a great weekend!
