July 2nd, 2022
In the spirit of transparency and candour, we publish weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for the ENV service transformation team.
Kelsey’s notes
This week I started a new role as the Acting Executive Director for the Service Transformation Branch with B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy Strategy. Great team, big shoes to fill — some notes over here on how I’m feeling about starting something new.
Diving into my first week notes. Longer than usual, but there’s been a lot to process.
Over the week I got to know the service transformation projects across the ministry. This meant I:
- Scoured our Teams channels and files
- Flipped through so many presentations and briefings
- Read the Ministry’s Digital Strategy, Service Plan, Mandate Letter and IM/IT business cases
- Googled a lot of people and tried to understand team structures in the B.C. Government Directory, which wasn’t easy since the directory doesn’t reflect spring 2022 ministry changes
I connected with the Service Transformation team through weekly stand-ups, lunch dates, impromptu chats and a great preview of Harry’s presentation to the Design Community of Practice on how we might design community in an increasingly virtual age. Community doesn’t just happen — it takes intention, compassion and curiosity from yourself and others. I’m excited to continue to nurture these values within the team, the ministry and folks interested in service transformation across government.
By the end of the week, I’d met with product owners and directors from Environmental Protection, Compliance and Enforcement and BC Parks agile teams (Climate Action Secretariat is on deck for next week). I asked beginner questions like ‘tell me about yourself, what’s the problem you’re trying to solve, what’s exciting or challenging?’. I came away a bit less of a beginner in their spaces, but still with so much to learn from them — and a few ideas on how our team can offer support.
I was struck by all the ‘beginning stages’ of service transformation. What’s the official point where you move from beginning to in-progress?
The Environmental Protection team has a funded capital IM/IT business case and is in the process of securing an agile vendor team. The Compliance and Enforcement team is a step behind and will be presenting their funding case to the Deputy Minister’s Council in late July. Both teams need to embrace and cultivate a beginners mindset in their respective staff teams to help lay the foundation for new ways of working. They’re already doing this — I attended an EPD Executive Alignment session on their emerging focus on land remediation services which laid a clear picture of the agile development approach. We talked about governance and expectations — essential things to have alignment on before the vendor begins.
I also began work on the CleanBC digital service on the other side of the Government Digital Experience (GDX)/Environment partnership fence. The team is still working on narrowing down an approach to prototyping content and when they’ll be ready to hand wire frames off to a developer. I focused on finalizing the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) guiding the partnership, procuring a developer and scoping the work and timelines to make sure how and what we build in WordPress can be used by the GDX WordPress team in the future.
I learned about our ministry’s vision for service transformation. It’s not too complicated for our team: we’ll continue showing value through delivering improved services and we’ll keep on building the foundation for program areas to sustain this work through new roles and ways of working. Doing the work — problem definition, user research, designing prototypes, running workshops, writing code and content. Building sustainable support through hiring, procurement, advocating, supporting, and smoothing the all the things along way.
I got to know the Ministry’s Business Improvement Unit and can’t wait further align our work and support each other. They’re working on a Policy Lab to better support ministry policy teams and, as they say, the policy is the service, so I’m all in on making sure our teams’ are building off each others’ work.
You’re not always starting from scratch when you start something new — you’re usually just adding to existing products or services. In the weeks to come our team may lean into the years of work to improve access and transparency of mines information and this week I leaned on others’ past experience (thanks Jess Wade!) and thinking in this space.
Finally, I wrapped the week taking part in the Ministry’s Digital Era Leadership Program. These sessions are really about being beginners and working as an executive leadership team to build a common starting point and vocabulary for service and digital transformation. I’m not a beginner in the digital space, but am with the natural resource sector. I reflected on the digital leadership traits identified and being bold, but starting small and iterating really spoke to me. This feels like advice for me to lean into this new beginning — be bold — but in a way that feels right to me and models how the Service Transformation Branch has already been working.
Alright. The first week is over. I’ve begun — things are in progress.
Kevin’s notes
He’s back on Monday — hopefully rested, recharged and with some amazing adventures to share.
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.
