September 16, 2022
In the spirit of transparency and candour, we publish weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for the ENV service transformation team.
Kevin’s notes
Well, we did it — we launched the MVP of cleanbc.gov.bc.ca.
And what a last month it’s been. Content design, implementing the visual design system in the brand-new-to-gov WordPress 6 environment, navigating myriad approvals, briefings, user testing, and making change right through to launch to deliver the best possible product to the public, as well as your wide range of internal stakeholders.
I’m incredibly proud of the team that enabled this delivery. Truly this was a best-in-class government digital unit: multidisciplinary, experienced, adaptable, and relentlessly positive through all the unforeseen challenges and pivots. I’m still working to define what my role and value was throughout, what this kind of ‘design leadership’ is as a legible practice. How it might be replicated in other contexts and provide a template for public sector designers as a career trajectory. Often it’s just showing up and helping, leaning on my intuition, honed through these years of diverse experiences. But there’s more to it than that and I’ll need dedicated time for reflection to put it to paper.
One thing’s for certain: cross-functional product teams with dedicated resources, with exec endorsement + air cover, can and will do great things. It’s the way to successfully research, design, test, and deliver complex products and services. No program or operational staff working 50% with a patchwork of vendors could have delivered the quality, velocity, and rigour this team did. It’s to be documented, shared, and celebrated. Much more to come as we wrap our heads around the narrative. But for now, 🎉
Other quick hits from the week:
- Full day with the EPD crew at an in-person inception session Monday. This was an excellent 8 hours, reminding us all of the power of real-life interactions. With everyone in attendance from front line staff to vendor developers, being able to quickly align on definitions and establish common understandings was invaluable. Excellent facilitation by Kristi (agile coach) and Haley (product owner). This session (and how we got here) deserves a more fulsome breakdown but CleanBC steals all my oxygen this week.
- We had a great branch lunch and monthly meet on Tuesday. Nice to hang with everyone from STB in-person! Talking ministry priorities, sector connections, and what our fall may look like.
- Attended a virtual presentation via Rosenfeld Media from Christian Bason on his new book Expand: Stretching the Future By Design. Always a treat to hear Christian speak, one of the brightest thinkers in our field.
- I had coffee w/ JP Fournier from the Digital Investment Office, chatting the future of his teams and how they enable great work at scale across the organization. A pleasure to contribute my 2c, JP is someone in the BCPS who I admire very much.
- And I had my monthly 1–1 with our exec lead Amy, where she peeled back the curtain on the opaque jargon and practice of gov budgeting and finance. Always one of my growth areas and I’m grateful for Amy’s time!
Lots else as well, from a week where I felt a tangible fulfillment in what we do, and how we do it. It’s a special thing to come to work and make it happen with great people, professionally and as humans. I certainly don’t take it for granted.
Kelsey’s notes
As Kevin noted, this week the team launched an MVP for the new CleanBC service. It’s a revised website that will serve as a platform for climate change information, actions and services. The site is written in plain language, rooted in design research and user needs and delivered on a modern WordPress platform (WP 6, Guttenburg Blocks!) with a crisp design system.
The A-Team of ENV and GDX/GCPE that put this work forward should be immensely proud (I am of them!). It represents 9+ months of bringing program areas across government together around a clear narrative and service on climate change — something that isn’t held by a specific ministry or division, but impacts everyone. The GDX team, originally led by Meg Stiven, stepped into this undefined space along with Kevin and Harry Olson, and started to weave together an understanding of the information and services British Columbians are looking for related to climate change. They’ve now launched two redesigned web platforms (GoElectric and CleanBC, with BetterHomes to come). Mid-stream, the leadership of this work shifted to the ENV Service Transformation Branch (STB), with Meg and myself both stepping away from GDX and ENV STB leaning in with Kevin, Harry, Laura Hebert and myself (now at ENV) to drive design strategy and delivery. And — a big shoutout to Amanda Punshon for her commitment throughout this whole stream of work and Allieren Ward for coming in as Product Owner at a critical juncture to help push the MVP live.
Today, governance is still the most challenging piece of this work — who ‘owns’ CleanBC? Knitting together responsibility across discrete program areas is part of the weight of complex problems like climate change, health care and housing. Responsibility is distributed and so many institutions, people and programs need to come together as a whole to start to inch out clear progress. A new CleanBC website isn’t going to move the mark on climate change, but it does start to build the foundation of how we collectively talk about climate change and connect to what British Columbians expect and need to take action collectively and individually. The hard work in many ways is to come — to evolve the governance of this platform and continue to build a common roadmap that reflects legislative needs, political winds, program area priorities and most of all, the needs of British Columbians.
Looking back over this work, my involvement is similar to most of my involvement on other service transformation files. Scoping the problem, managing the money, finding the staff and tools, clearing hurdles, championing the teams’ vision and message and looking ahead to what’s next.
That role played out over a number of other files this week:
Environmental Protection Digital Services — Joined the full-day in-person Inception Day on Monday to ‘formally’ kick-off this work with the new AOT vendor team. It was fantastic to connect with Land Remediation and Contaminated Sites program staff and hear directly from the team’s designers and developers. We all came together on key features to include in the first release of a new digital application in the months to come. There were so many takeaways throughout the day (metrics, content, architecture!), but what stuck with me most was the need to keep the space open for policy and process discussions to set a new frame for the new digital application — the policy is the service. And, the practicality of ongoing updates to the division and Executive to keep them looped into this work.
We also had a great meeting with the folks who run some of the current digital applications for the Environmental Protection Division. This work profiled if/who manages these applications (i.e. dedicated staff or side of the desk) and weaknesses/opportunities to improve on the current approach.
Re: the policy is the service — I find myself referencing the image below from IDEO/Nesta’s Designing for Public Service Guide on a weekly basis. Policy informs how government services are designed and delivered. When defining a policy issue, policy teams must consider the frontline implications for the people of British Columbia and staff delivering the service.
Climate Action Secretariat — I’m continuing to move pieces on the checkerboard to line up staff and strategic alignment on data initiatives across the division. That’s a cryptic way of saying I’m looking for service design/data staff and money to fund them to set them up on discovery research/design work on a couple data-focused projects.
The invites are out on digital leadership training for the management team in late October. The draft agenda sets this up as a discussion about approaching the division’s work from a service perspective that considers user needs, data stewardship and navigating the digital application landscape. Excited to flesh this out in the weeks to come.
Service Transformation Team — It felt like a great week of connecting with the STB team- a full day in-person with Jackie/Kevin, lots of CleanBC chats with Kevin/Laura/Harry and a team meeting in-person on Tuesday! We checked out a forthcoming agile space at Capital Park for use by Product Teams across the ministry — really excited about a real space for teams to connect in-person and collaborate (H/T to Lindsay Macfarlane for initiating this!)
Popped throughout this week were a number of 1:1s/conversations that are helping me bring together some coherent thoughts on my role and service transformation in the ministry. More to come on this, as I sketch out some talking points and slides for use with conversations with executive, delivery teams and events in the weeks to come.
Bits and bops -
- Ongoing work to support plain language content around regional water quality
- Some intranet page updates to our division’s work on a policy cycle and Indigenous engagement
- Continuing to dive deep on the inventory of the ministry’s digital applications with Natural Resource Sector IM/IT team (NRIDS). Having a solid foundation in what applications we have will allow us to plan for maintenance/replacement and see service patterns/connections across the ministry and sector.
- Conversations to bring in additional roles to support the Compliance and Enforcement team to build out the Product Team’s capacity
- Sharing stories and support with other parents of young children — solidarity with those balancing demanding jobs at home and in the office!
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.
