Q1 (April-June) 2024 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
First it was weeknotes, then month notes, and now quarter notes. Egad. It’s been a minute.
Q1 themes
A few themes emerged in Q1 2024 (April — June):
Continuing to do all the things, carrying on, nothing too fancy. Is implementation actually transformation?
A few times this spring I’ve reflected on our branch name being a bit lofty — usually it feels like we’re just trying to get stuff done vs transformation. And by ‘get stuff done’ I mean ensuring the implementation of policy intent through bringing multi-skilled teams together to delivery modern government services. The implementation frame seems like it might(??) be less jargony than the transformation one and I’ve been trying it out in conversations with folks.
The ‘carrying on’ bit also refers to the amount of work in flight we’re supporting and how the follow through on it is, and will be, key. This includes supporting the various product teams launching MVPs, building out governance, finding the means to fund the teams past capital case funding — all of this, is the somewhat boring magic of implementation. The art of ‘carrying on’ to get things done and actually deliver successful government policies and services.
This is touched on by Jenn Pahlka (check out her conversation with BC Deputy Premier, Shannon Salter and Chief Information Officer, CJ Ritchie), Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast, as well in a conversation with JJ Sutherland (Scrum Inc.) when he spoke with and visited B.C. government teams in April.
Always be aligning (using governance as a means to do so).
I’ve talked about governance at length previously, but it continues to be a key torch for how we align teams on the work to be done and who is responsible for making decisions about it. Shining the light and creating the space for conversations about who is involved and responsible for digital service delivery is a way to build awareness about what modern service delivery means.
The process highlights the need to bring policy/operations/digital accountabilities together to successfully deliver healthy technical systems and functioning services. And in doing so, it starts to socialise the notion of a service community, where various teams/roles are involved in ensuring successful service delivery.
We’re currently working on governance exercises for a shared capital-funded system across two ministries, a ministry-based system with multiple users across our ministry and a sector-approach to a portfolio of services.
How might we reduce administrative burden?
Administrative reporting, tracking and processes exist in all bureaucracies. They support transparency, fairness and consistency, amongst other things. And…they take up a lot of time. I’m struck by the relative nimbleness of operationally funded digital services that are subject to standard accounting and reporting processes versus the layered reporting and processes related to capitally funded initiatives. Capital initiatives involve significant sums of funding, so I understand the scrutiny — and I hope we can work to ensure the efficient spending of these funds by working to state of minimum viable administration.
This June, we took one step closer to minimum viable administration by working with our Conservation and Recreation Division partners to host an ‘Administrative Inception’ for the Parks and Recreation Digital Transformation team’s capital-funded work.
Inception days are pretty standard for product teams to quickly establish a product vision, minimum viable product backlog and design/technical approaches. The administrative inception aimed to clarify financial and reporting processes and assumptions associated with actually running the product team. All the key administrative folks came together (those responsible for paying invoices, contract management, reporting, etc.) and participated in an open conversation. We clarified who to go to for what, addressed some existing pain points and surfaced some overlapping reporting requirements. It was particularly useful to visualize reporting and financial processes between the Digital Investment Office (central government) and the sector information management team (NRIDS) through which capital funding flows through to ENV. Shout out to Jess Wade, Diana DeCotiis and Darcie Meyer for leading the inception sessions!
Takeaway: spend time on administrative alignment, just as you would on a product roadmap or MVP definition!
If you don’t have foundational team operations in place (i.e. how you’re paying invoices, knowing what can be considered a capital expense) you’ll spend precious time on operations vs designing and building the actual digital service.
Branch focus, prioritization and coordinated efforts.
The Service Transformation Branch spends the majority of our time (at least 50%) supporting service delivery and digital services teams across the ministry. But, we wanted to get crisper about how we spend our remaining ‘branch/individual’ time. Throughout the spring we embarked on a branch planning exercise to build out our collective roadmap:
- We mapped what teams we are supporting and their key milestones/our supporting roles, as well as our individual areas of focus: it was a lot — almost too much. So, we needed to prioritize and scope down what we actually wanted to focus on.
- We clarified how much time we aim to spend supporting program areas (50%) and what could be left over for STB work (about 25%, with 25% for staff development/corporate stuff/surge capacity on projects, etc). And we highlighted we’d like to work together on these initiatives as a multi-skilled team (yay!)
- We identified the key groups we serve and the needs they have around service/digital transformation. We proposed opportunities/actions to meet these needs.
- We themed and grouped these needs and identified four key areas, and prioritized them on a effort/impact scale. They are now our quarterly focus areas for 2024/25!
- Training, connection and community
- Measurement
- Data and AI
- Digital delivery 101
Q1 Branch Focus: Training, connection and community
Goal: ENV teams know STB and where to find information/support related to data and digital delivery.
What we did:
- Worked with some ENV greats (ahem, Diana deCotiis) to present the second annual Agile Open House in April, which created a space for ENV staff to meet product teams and connect in-person and online.
- Presented at various ENV, sector and govt events on ENV work like intro to user centred design, overview of the CleanBC digital experience, approaches to governance for shared systems and more.
- Posted stories to introduce our new team members and their work, plus provided some tips on hiring service designers
- Pulled together a go-to series of slides on the Service Transformation Branch to support a consistent narrative on our model and approach
- Hosted our regular community sessions: bi-monthly ministry digital working group with key division leads, monthly designer meet-up, bi-monthly data and digital delivery guild for all ENV folks interested in digital delivery.
- Hosted a Virtual Skills Training Week for ENV staff. 350+ participants attended five sessions over four days hat focused on digital basics like using TEAMS Planner or Lists, improving email communications and presentations, as well as getting to know Agile approaches. The curriculum was informed by a staff survey asking on digital training wants/needs. Turns out, folks were seeking basic support on using digital tools and approaches, as opposed to diving in deep into the world of digital delivery and service design. A good reminder of asking first and tailoring your work to your audience!
Up next for Q2: Measurement.
Q1 recap
In Q1, the branch is continuing to work across the ministry, in every division at various scope and scales. A high-level overview of what kept us busy in Q1:
Environmental Protection Division >> Supporting service design to explore how integrated pest management authorizations and certifications are delivered, scoping how to approach service design of hazardous waste transport services and waste discharge authorizations and continuing to provide UX design support for in-flight development work on internal systems supporting site remediation services. An in-person inception day kicking off the design and build of the integrated pest management work was grounding and exciting — lots of ideas from the program staff on how to improve service delivery.
It’s an ongoing balance to find the right touch/approach and communication to add velocity to an agile team juggling multiple projects at multiple stages, especially with a 5+ designers spread out across various service areas. Harry and Martha have been leaning in here and will continue to do so through the summer.
What’s the critical mass of designers on a team when the role of a design lead emerges as a need to provide oversight and weave the work together? (I think we’re there!)
Martha and I attended an in-person session with the EP Digital Services team in April, which was a great chance to connect with the team and collectively share and plan key priorities for the year ahead. I’m excited for the team to continue to come together around the model to continuously sustain and improve (digital) service delivery across the division.
Henry’s also been digging into data management support for a variety of teams within the division. I’m particularly excited for his current work building out a data management approach to help ensure data quality and accountabilities — stay tuned!
Compliance and Enforcement >> Supporting the launch of a pilot of the public complaints tool in early summer, while also planning for onboarding future teams and full out of the Minimum Viable Product to the full Conservation Officer Service. We’re exploring some low-code/no-code approaches for other services, which is interesting, but also testing our ideas on how to build an integrated, flexible portfolio — one that may include open source and proprietary approaches.
At the same time, we’re working across our division to build out a roadmap for a sector approach to Compliance and Enforcement tools. This touches on governance, technology, funding, policy/program processes — all the juicy bits. Modelling what ministry participation looks like in this space with varying usage rates of various technical systems is a bit mind melting — so one of the principles we’ve landed is that of simple approaches over complex administrative burden (note theme on reducing admin burden above).
CleanBC Digital Experience >> We’re actually in the process of moving the team into the Ministry, which includes hiring and some (a lot) of administrative and operational pieces. Building out the team’s roadmap and hiring staff has been a key priority, all the while launching working with our partners to launch new products like BC Home Energy Planner and the Energy Savings Program. Shout out to Lindsay for continuing to chart the course for this team during a time of transition.
Various bits and bobs >>
- Aligning service design and product delivery within the Climate Action Secretariat’s community emissions reporting services.
- Continuing to consider how the ministry is evaluating cumulative effects for authorizations and permits.
- Tools! Martha and Harry are continuing to lead the way in establishing practices and identifying needs for design tools within ENV.
We’re just tipping over into summer and Q2 — the season of delayed meetings due to vacation and a general slow-down of things. Here’s to slower and sunnier days, carrying on with the work with fewer meetings, more time to focus on measurement and more frequent updates in this space!
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.
