September 23, 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
No big checkmarks to report on this week — it was one of ongoing conversations and reflection.
I spent a lot of the week in a training state of mind:
- Session three of the Digital Era Leadership Program delivered by Public Digital in partnership with the Exchange Lab. Great discussion around governance in practice, building out capacity in user research and data and the persistent challenge of aligning funding models with new, modern ways of working (capital requests for ongoing Product Teams!).
- Planning out Digital Leadership Training for the Climate Action Secretariat management team. This is slowly coming together with three days focused on (1) why digital leadership, 2) how/specifics on ways of working, 3) tools and supports.
- Learning more about Section 7 of the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act and how this impacts our work across government to engage in consent-based decision making with Indigenous Peoples. It was great to hear from Amy on her experience negotiating a Section 7 agreement with the Tahltan in northern B.C.
- Attended an open house for Women in the Natural Resource Sector. It was great to share some time learning about the network and opportunities for women to support each other in a predominantly male workforce.
Always, always thinking about the intersection of service, policy and digital applications — specifically within the context of aligning policy with service design and delivery for the Environmental Protection Digital Service team. Championing this frame and the connection across division and ministry teams continues to be top of mind for me. I’m thinking about the structures, supports and expectations we can put in place to help bring these groups together and normalize this approach.
I met with leads from across the ministry on web content management to start to build out new approach to web management. Some of the questions we’re asking: who is doing internal/external web content, how are we coordinating across the ministry, what’s the structure of web teams/roles, what do approvals look like and do we need a committee to manage all these things?! Full disclosure: I’m leaning towards fewer committees across the service/digital space.
I had a few (more) meetings on the theme of data strategies and understanding the needs of people and industries for climate information, services and data. These discussions still feel like threads that I’m trying to weave together into something more tangible…and perhaps that’s a metaphor for the organization, as I’m trying to put in place a structure to explicitly connect projects and people.
And, we’re closing out the week with a Service Transformation Branch pizza party. YES.
Kevin’s notes
A short but packed week as we had Monday off. I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday engaged in ‘executive presence’ training through the year-long NRS leadership cohort I’m part of. It was great to spend time with folks from the program and be forced into more vulnerable situations than we’re accustomed to as professionals (e.g., improv). A lot of useful takeaways, especially the ‘leader’s script,’ a framework for delivering powerful messages both up and down in the organization. I also want to give a shoutout to the thoughtful and engaged facilitation by Laura from the Humphrey’s Group; keeping smart, busy, and attention-fragmented people tuned into for two days straight is no small feat and I always appreciate witnessing a seasoned pro in their work.
This challenge is especially relevant as we head towards digital era leadership training with management from the Climate Action Secretariat in October. Pedagogical design is context-dependent and you need to do the work in alignment to ensure it lands. Props to Kelsey for scaffolding the process, the WIP schedule/curriculum looks top class.
Thursday I was part of a conversation that was ultimately about finding a common language in framing up a complex design for policy challenge.
As we are won to remind ourselves, the policy is the service. In my most basic framing of what it is I do around here, I usually say something about connecting policy to delivery. It’s hard to say these kind of subjectively basic things and not expect everyone to stare at you and say duh. The challenge for policymakers (as a still discrete and siloed profession with its own norms of process, language, and interaction) is to broaden its alliances to include different epistemologies, such as that of the designer. This is the deconstruction of the organization — perhaps more aptly, renovation — required for true service transformation. Weeks ago I mused about policy as the building blocks or material of design in public problems, as they’re often inherited and established well before service quality comes into question, either as green or brownfield.
We’re a small shop at the Service Transformation Branch, 3–4 designers deep at the best of times. Recent ministry shuffles put us into the Deputy Minister’s Office alongside our colleagues in the Strategic Policy Division, who play a similar role to us in supporting complex policy/regulatory/legislative challenges across the org. It’s been on my mind almost since I started back in gov, but the true promise of our teams, and indeed the true promise of service transformation, lies in the marriage of these practices to provide truly end-to-end supports to program areas in reconceptualizing how they both codify and deliver the service, however that may be defined. Or perhaps it’s new resources coming in expressly as policy designers, with remit to explore complex problem spaces with novel approaches. We’re indexing towards realizing this coherence and I’m bullish on our ministry’s potential to be an exemplar in the BCPS in how we might do this.
This week in tabs
- Mantriatic Reality and Living After Postmodernity. It seems clichéd to address any present socio-cultural description, analysis, or insight through postmodernism. A challenge through my thesis work in most accurately describing a post-truth world of climate apathy and and our reflexively harmful pattern behaviours. A longer more wonky read than I’d normally post but poignant.
- The aesthetics of our new fictions. Another stellar piece from DOC exploring how design creates shared reality, plus much more.
- The Perils of Audience Capture: How influencers become brainwashed by their audiences. As an elder millennial who’s very intentional (read: careful) about his social/media consumption, influencer culture has always been a bit beyond me. This piece is insightful, depressing, and slightly terrifying.
- Collapse, Renewal and the Rope of History. For better or worse I’m a relentless consumer of climate journalism. I think this piece may have been linked through Bill McKibben’s excellent Substack The Crucial Years.
- If you use project gating, you’re not agile. More in-depth public sector digital musings from Sean Boots.
- Shifting from planning to learning by Ashley Evans. The biggest barrier is the go-live process. Service design teams, agile product managers, and leadership alike agree that the current process is unclear, overly complex, and controlling. Sounds familiar.
- Postcard from Tokyo on the PD blog by Andrew Greenway. Kelsey and I are so lucky to have worked w/ Andrew over the past while in a coaching capacity, and while it’s coming to an end I’m very grateful for all the insights and candid convo we’ve enjoyed in our Tuesday morning coffee chats.
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.
