July 8th, 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
Week 2. I saw a few more familiar faces (both old and new) in meetings this week, which helped me feel a bit more settled in the new role. Relationships are the foundation of my work, so it’s nice to feel like I’m starting to get to know people, their perspectives and how we all fit into the bureaucratic puzzle.
A few high points from the week:
Welcomed Kevin back from his two-month leave (hurray!). It was great to take the week to check in, hear about his adventures running, climbing and thesis-writing (the biggest mountain) and really appreciate how great it will be to work alongside him on the Service Transformation team.
Continued to build out my understanding of how the Natural Resource Information & Digital Services (NRIDS) supports ministries’ IM/IT needs through partnership agreements and ministry and IM/IT portfolio leads. I’ve set up weekly check-ins with our Portfolio Manager to help me quickly get up to speed, which has already been super helpful — a safe space to ask basic questions and collaboratively chart a course for coming months on capital IT projects, staff sharing and documenting the ongoing and future IM/IT needs (aka modernization planning as NRIDS calls it).
Connected some dots around CleanBC. 1) re: partnership with Climate Action Secretariat (CAS) on how we’ll work together and 2) procuring developer support to build out the service platform MVP this summer. My role continues to be creating the conditions for service design to happen in this space — building executive support, ensuring access to subject matter expertise and bringing the needed skills/competencies to the team to deliver.
Continued to explore opportunities to share mining information in an accessible way. How might we share information online in an interactive and compelling way that is supported by on an ongoing multi-disciplinary team? An evergreen question for government services and information with no easy answers.
B.C. has a variety of platforms — Gov.bc.ca, BC Mines Information, ArcGIS, WordPress and others that all come with their associated pros and cons. Low-cost and low-tech entry but lower design features and interactivity (gov.bc.ca), custom development on an existing platform and team with a compelling future roadmap (BCMI), custom development work with high design and interactivity features, but on a custom platform with challenges around ongoing product stewardship (ArcGIS/WordPress/custom sites). Sifting through these platforms with some guiding principles on content design, accessibility and interactivity, and product stewardship will hopefully help us narrow down our thinking. This work has been a great way to meet people across the natural resource sector and really get to know the existing product teams (BC Mines Digital Service!) and the stories behind their products.
I got to know the digital transformation team at BC Parks — in person! Over a two-day BC Parks retro and strategic planning session, I heard about the challenges and opportunities of this work over the last 15 months (circa June 2021). The team has pushed through to launch the Day Use Pass, an evolving BCParks.ca and improved reservation system. Moreso, they’ve built the foundations for new ways of working rooted in understanding user needs and looking at digital tools and data as ways to improve service delivery.
H/T to OXD’s Gordon Ross and Park’s Rumon Carter for their intentional low-facilitation approach to the sessions and the chance to reflect as a team and build our Legible Practices. As I said over dinner on Wednesday night — this team is both ‘being and becoming’ models for digital transformation within the B.C. government. And…there’s still lots of work to do. Really excited to dig into what’s next on the roadmap and how modern data practices can continue to evolve the organization.
Finally — some hiring and HR stuff sprinkled throughout the week. Most of government is mostly hiring, most of the time. So much of hiring in the digital transformation space is actually organization design: creating new positions and changing the structure of teams.
This week, I drafted a Band 4 job profile that will hopefully lead to two new Director roles within the Ministry to lead digital transformation efforts within divisions.
I also finished up the hiring for Design Leads roles in my previous role at Government Digital Experience —I’m excited for the amazing folks with great experience that will be coming into those roles. And, there’s a to-do for me on writing about tips on how to apply for and interview on design roles in government.
On Friday, I participated in a workshop with the Exchange Lab on cross-ministry hiring for digital talent. Shout out to their approach on this work and actually building a cross-ministry, multi-disciplinary team to lead this work to improve and create consistency around hiring for digital roles across government. So needed and such complex work to do to take on (smoothing classifications, increasing HR/PSA capacity and dismantling folk policy). I’m excited to continue to support this work through the sessions and pushing forward new design job profiles (IS30s/Band 3s), job stream matrices to show progression/career path in design roles. Holding myself to account to get these done next week!
Kevin’s notes
Hello, it’s me! The past two months seemed to both fly by and take their sweet time; I’ve been writing (a thesis 95% completed), travelling (two separate stints in America), and enjoying downtime at home, fostering a banner raspberry harvest and going on lots of dog walks. In a benevolent act of strategic foresight I kept on top of my inbox most the time I was off, making for a soft landing emails-wise on Monday. No one wants to spend 8 hours deleting and archiving messages to feel like they have a grip on their current state. As I’m still finding my rhythm again as a functional working person, I’ll keep these weeknotes relatively brief:
Service Transformation Branch
Us! We’re a pretty different unit than when I departed end May. Kelsey has started in the ED role, Sam is off to a new opportunity at Parks, Jackie has joined as a service designer embedded with EPD, and we have a new Exec Lead in Amy Avila. I’m really excited a V2.0 of the branch and our new status as a funded, persistent team out of the new Strategic Services Division at ENV, alongside our other central services colleagues.
- I spent a few hours with Kelsey bookending the week, getting up to speed on our current portfolio and talking the future. Much more of this to come.
- I enjoyed lunch with Amy on Thursday, getting to know each other a bit better and talking story about gov life.
- Excited to catch up with Harry next week when he’s back in office — my one connection back to STB V1!
Climate Action Secretariat
CleanBC is cooking along, also going through staffing transition as Meg has moved on to a new role at CITZ (congrats Meg!). As well, Elaine from CAS is off to a new opportunity so we have a new collaborator in Kristine to bring into our service platform fold. Thankfully Laura and Amanda have kept steady hands on the tiller and the prototypes for the service look amazing. In the coming weeks I’ll be looking to lean in and provide substantive support/inputs as we aim to launch MVP in the early fall.
We also met with the Climate Partnerships and Engagement Branch to update on progress with their Community Energy and Emissions tooling; this was a thread Jill and I engaged on back in the early spring and much has moved forward since then. Looking forward to connecting with JP and Scott at the Digital Investment Office (CITZ) on next steps before getting to team/platform.
BC Parks
I sure picked a timely week to return as Parks conducted two days of facilitated retrospective and strategic planning regarding service transformation — as you, the loyal reader of these weeknotes may recall, we’ve been heavily involved in these efforts over the past 15 months or so. Worth noting was these sessions were in person at the Exchange Lab — and wow, what a reminder of the power of human synergy in a shared physical space. I was involved in many, many virtual workshop sessions through the pandemic and straight up, they don’t compare. I’m all for the accessibility and distributed benefits of online, but when it comes to trust, candour, and momentum, being together in the room is unparalleled.
The first day was a fairly standard retrospective exercise interrogating the good, bad, and ugly of the products, workstreams, ways of working, and delivery successes/challenges. Day two rinsed out the ‘what’ of strategy, the risks facing Parks’ future, and prioritized areas of focus for those involved in service transformation initiatives. Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt was the reference lens and materials and deft facilitation was provided by OXD. I’m no expert strategic planner so this was a great learning exercise, a version of which I could see Kelsey and I executing sometime in the future with our internal partners.
Mines transparency
We’ve been engaged to support data transparency efforts surrounding mining in the BC’s southeast. Not sure I can say much more than that at this juncture, but it was the most net-new file I touched this week.
Compliance + Enforcement
I caught up w/ Steve Kot and shadowed a design session w/ John and Stephanie from Versett (fka Domain7). The work looks to be going amazing and frankly, the design processes were over my head as a total outsider; usually a sign that they’re deep into the weeds picking things apart to put them back together. With stakeholder reviews coming up I’ll be sure to tag in for those, likely receiving info at the correct fidelity.
This week in tabs
- What is a service designer? by Lou Downe (formerly of GDS, now of The School of Good Services). This passage re: what actually makes someone a service designer hit home:
Service design is 10% design. The fun stuff above where we spend time listening to users, understanding problems and interpreting this into ideas for new services or changes to existing ones. The rest of the 90% of our time is spent creating the conditions for service design to happen. Understanding constraints, reading laws, building relationships with stakeholders, getting funding, winning buy-in.
The tendency to instrumentalize, or to treat something as a means or resource for achieving some end goal, shows up in the personal lives of many technologists. Many types of “fun” are made telic… it means that Silicon Valley, for all its counterculture-inspired talk about radically reimagining the future, has not shored up the strong ethical grounds requisite for principled construction.
- Sharing Federal Digital Services with the Other Layers of Government by Aaron Snow. A deep dive into the value of sharing common services and components across jurisdiction in Canada, codified through legislation.
I ran the West Coast Trail last weekend and I’m not sure which left me more fatigued; the 80k sand and mud slog or this reintroduction to the cognitive endurance required to bring my best to work every day. As with everything in life, processes of meaning and and substance require persistent effort!
