March 18th, 2022

In the spirit of transparency and candour, Kevin and Jill publish weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for their team.

Kevin's notes

Back after a down week while Jill took a well-deserved vacation, the days seem to be flying off the calendar as the end of fiscal approaches. Spring is making its presence felt in Victoria, with the fragrant, humid air and the ever-stunning display of cherry blossoms on my street. Longer days, warming sunshine, clean, green aesthetics; it's simple observations to keep one grounded and grateful through the churn of a complex and challenging world.

BC Parks:

I've been less involved than earlier this spring, following the launch of the larger beta increment and the drive to finalize configuration on the camping reservation service (full launch Monday!). I'm so impressed, and a little bit (happily) surprised, that it does indeed seem like we're pulling it all off. It's hard to explain to the outside observer how much work all these services truly were to deploy and how bootstrapped the teams are in doing it.

To the layperson, Parks may seem like a huge machine, and in some ways it is — but it's an incredible amount of layered priorities for the organization to manage — conservation, recreation, compliance and enforcement, working with 3rd parties (e.g., your campground hosts), etc. It's still recovering from decades of underfunding and increased expectations. So to be delivering a suite of high-touch services (day-use passes, new Park info site, camping reservations), all essentially over a couple of quarters — count me the most impressed, and I've been on the inside! This is truly a public sector transformation success story, and while there's so much more to do (I've been collaborating on strategic planning/roadmapping workshop prep all week), this moment in time is worth celebrating. Fingers crossed for a smooth launch Monday 🤞🏼

CleanBC:

It's been a whirlwind few weeks driving towards the end of this phase. We have quite the team going on the 2x streams (GoElectric and the overall CleanBC digital experience), and I'm impressed/grateful for how we've stayed working in the open, aligned, and focused on the common purpose. A few bullets for info:

• The new GoElectric service prototype is at a high fidelity, ready for a final round of UT before dev. The devs and gov WordPress owners reviewed the design direction and provided very useful feedback re: functionality and accessibility.
• GCPE helped inform the brands implementation and will be more persistent collaborators as the design directions mature. Thankful for that! I'm always looking to bring service design and marketing/communications closer together as we find the right balance in these political priority web properties (or digital services).
• The CleanBC stream continues to work through an emergent sitemap, with content buckets going for a round of cardsort refinement.
• Content strategy is also emergent, focused on values, actions, and information—another place for ongoing GCPE collaboration to make an impact.
• We demoed the work to the steering committee (exec stakeholders/service owners) to a solid reception and continued endorsement of our direction/delivery.

And on that note, we'll be breaking from the off-cadence steer co. format moving forward, bringing that group into our sprint reviews instead. Three cheers for minimum viable governance! With all due respect to the exec cadre, it’s a lot of work for the team to prep materials for that meeting week-of, which would be better spent on delivery. Major thanks to our project sponsors for backing this pivot, yet another concrete example of how newer ways of working are being embraced and supported in the BC public service.

Other things:

• Compliance and enforcement design discovery continue to shape up, with a formal kickoff scheduled in a couple of weeks. Big thanks to Steve and Domain for keeping momentum this week in my relative absence.
• I continued onboarding into the sector leadership cohort, very excited for this learning journey over the next year!

This week in tabs:

• Dan Hill: What It's Like to be the Director of Strategic Design for a Country (Sweden!). Likely the person I most respect in design, who's writing I've learned so much from through the years.
• The Unseen Toll of a Warming World: This is how Americans describe the stresses and strains of life on the front lines of a changing climate. A beautiful and heartbreaking dynamic digital piece from NYT.
• Mapping design activities and methods of public sector innovation units through the policy cycle model. Thanks, rumon carter, for the tip on this one; disclaimer, I haven't read it yet (it's a proper academic paper), but I plan to shortly!
• Writing policy content for the web. I revealed myself as slightly out-of-touch in a meeting this week when I stated legal probably won't let us edit that for the web. Amanda politely informed me that during Covid, the content team established a pattern addressing our collective government propensity to publish public-facing jargony legalese.

After the initial embarrassment of feeling old and a bit disconnected from the designer I imagine myself to be— who fights for plain-spoken content at every turn — I was glad to learn how these structures have been established to address this endemic issue. Thanks, Amanda, it was a shot in the arm I needed.

Jill's notes

Back from a week away in the sun, I'm feeling recharged (or was). End of the week, complete with a variety of in and out of work surprise time drains, I'm now officially exhausted. Lots of movement on our files and approaching some big things. I'll start where I left off two weeks ago:

BB8s

I had a tremendous Bright Bytes or BB8's session filmed in person at the new The Exchange lab on Digital age leadership: Building trust through delivery. A key takeaway is that we need an entire session to define and strategize "Air Cover." In April, JP Fournier is up next with the Digital Funding model and more. These are internal to the BCPS, and you can find them all on the Learning Hub under Digital Academy. A few quotes below and the full slides here (though it was really about the dialogue):

What is service transformation?

Leading in the digital era requires understanding how technology supports service delivery.

Go time: Camping!

My fingers could not be more crossed for the launch of our new camping reservation service Monday, March 21st, 7 am PST. It's been challenging in many ways, as all meaningful things are if you haven't already created an account at camping.bcparks.ca, so you are ready to roll for reservations in a rolling two-month window.

I couldn't be more proud of this team, specifically our Service Transformation Team. Most of the beauty you see on BCParks.ca is the main camping pages are straight from our very own designer Harry Olson. Kevin has consistently leaned in and supported this crew as the ebb and flow through various needs [see his notes]. His ability to add design maturity to the team, recognize when we need to pull back and be more strategic about planning is impossible to undervalue.

Go Time: Environmental Protection!

We have notional funding, folks. That's right, the green light to get a team up and running in April. We are finalizing our procurement as we speak, set to release next month. A competition to finalize our full-time permanent Senior Product Manager closes on March 21st, so we are on track. It was a privilege to sit on the Deputy Ministers Committee on Data and Digital team presentation. ADM Laurel Nash did a great job and nailed the Q&A. Onwards and upwards team!

The rest

• Steve Kot is doing an exceptional job building connections, learning about C&E and kicking off our latest Service Design work cross-sector in the coming weeks.
• We are looking forward to our teammate Sam joining our Deputy in a few weeks on Coffee with Kevin (Kevin Jardine). Sam has undoubtedly been one of the most influential people in the success of our branch. His ability to lean in, learn, and most importantly, PRODUCE CONTENT has done more than he could imagine for our team's success. He's made connections with all the divisions and, through his intranet work, has a strong network of like-minded and well-information ministry teammates. Good on ya, Sam and looking forward to it.
• The latest CleanBC SteerCo meeting was refreshing. Unique content emerging and excited to see the leadership of Meg and Kevin drive us to product and delivery. I am looking forward to learning more to establish a longer-term, embedded and cross-function approach to delivering this work over the coming years.

Looking forward, it's going to be a fast and furious next month or two. Very grateful I had some time to relax last week. It quickly faded, but I keep remembering to anchor myself back there every so often. Onwards.

Enjoying the sun and do-nothing vibes.