Weeknotes June 4th, 2021

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

Kevin’s notes:

I want to start by honouring the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc people and amplifying their message:

Now is not the time to ask questions but to simply offer a kind ear to your Indigenous friends. This situation has opened a wound for so many. Be an active listener.

With the news of the 215 weighing heavily, it was a solemn start to the week. We started off by jamming on that thing we still can’t talk about. Some smart people were in the [virtual] room and we made sense of things. Other folks from other teams showed us related things they’d been working on, and it looked great. Sorry for being vague! Maybe in the future, I’ll just omit this from week notes? Might be challenging when it starts to fill most of my days.

Next up we met with Elaine from the Climate Action Secretariat to discuss the potential for reporting via an innovative and dynamic public-facing web experience. This led me to the Online Service Solutions group from CITZ to find out exactly what CMS Lite (our corporate CMS) is capable of in delivering a non-standard/static web experience. Short story, it isn’t. In gov, your only option seems to be a WordPress instance, and I was wisely cautioned to consider:

• The requisite joint working group exemption from the mainline gov look and feel
• Accessibility standards
• Content design / plain language writing

And while perhaps we may not land on the parallax effects that were sent our way as reference points, there are still options. strongerbc.gov.bc.ca is a great example of a more engaging web experience from gov while still retaining the core design system and meeting W3C guidelines.

I enjoyed a lunchtime sunshine walk with an old friend turned new colleague in Indigenous Relations at Parks. It’s been a long time and we had a lot to cover; career paths, the best waves on the south island, and how we can work together for better Parks outcomes. I’m looking forward to learning more about his team in the near future and how Parks digital services can help them in their journey and mission.

That afternoon we presented our complaint management problem framing findings to the NRS C&E Committee. I feel the analysis was well received and sparked great discussion; this in turn has pushed the process to concept case writing on a bit of a tight timeline. I followed up later in the week with the person on the pen for the submission. We talked about centring user needs over cost/benefit analysis, and how value in this context is more of a loop than a spectrum: better experiences for staff in managing complaints results in better citizen outcomes, which results in lesser business process burdens, which results in better staff experiences… ↺

I also met with Karen from the Environmental Protection Division (EPD) at ENV. Karen runs branch ops and carries a large digital portfolio. Engaging with EPD has been high on the list for STB since the day I started and it was great to have this first conversation, learning more about how our roles could complement in digging into service transformation opportunities in the division.

Jill and I met with a trusted confidant/facilitator a couple of times this week to work through our service offering vis a vis IITD; differentiators, overlaps, collaborations, process, the whole works. We also met with folks from the Digital and Development Services (DDS) unit (IITD’s crack design and build team-of-teams) to discuss project/problem definition and intake. This had me reflecting on the role of design in early discovery and how to best use generative methods to flush out the problem space and foster early alignment on the core service challenge. More to come in this discussion and I’m excited to contribute to the design of an open and standardized process for DDS engagement across the sector.

bcparks.ca! It’s almost fieldwork time for the GDX service design crew. I’m really friggin excited to have them conducting user research on this project. I’ll outline the approach some other time (maybe in a project retro post?), but great strides were made in setting things up this week: prototyping process, research plan, initial participant outreach… this team is going to run hot the next couple months and the project is going to be so much the better for it.

On the note of bcparks.ca, Wednesday we briefed the Deputy and ADM on the roadmap and key deliverables. I got the nod to run through the bullets, and it was a pleasure to present all the fantastic work the team has rallied around. We’re making great progress and it validates the realignment process we went through when myself/Jill/Rumon joined the project a couple of months ago. Agile means the ability to adapt quickly to new conditions, and I’m proud of how this team pivoted. Great feedback from the senior exec, now to keep shipping!

Long overdue, Gordon Ross and I did some catching up. For two verbose folk, 30 min wasn't nearly enough time to talk shop, summer plans, and Garmin smartwatch recommendations. Gord, I highly value the time, always have and always will.

Closing down the week, we reviewed V1 of the Ministry’s digital strategy and chatted about where it points us. North stars are important. Delivery is more important. Aligning the two is where the organizational magic happens. Like many topics, this warrants an entire post (or book).

Link Roundup

Thinking is Work: “Remote work has necessitated a sharp increase in the time we spend communicating since we have fewer opportunities to do this serendipitously (bumping into colleagues in between meetings or at our desks). Of course, the tactical work still has to happen, and many of us feel an acute sense of guilt when we’re not at our computers executing: doing the things we say need doing in our communications.”

“Fake COTS” and the one-day rule: “One of the long-held norms of government IT is the perceived benefit of COTS solutions: “commercial, off the shelf” software. In government environments where IT isn’t seen as a core competency, and that by and large are short on technical expertise, being able to buy ready-to-go software products to meet government IT needs is an appealing approach.” (thx rumon carter for the tip)

Code for America: Design Principles that Put People at the Center. “Over the past few years, the design practice at Code for America has expanded along with the changing responsibilities and specializations of the larger design, UX, and civic tech industry. To codify that growth, our team came together to formalize the key principles that guide our work.”

Other stuff happened this week at work week as well. Honestly, it felt like two weeks jammed into one. My reflective powers are diminished as I write this on Friday night, so apologies if it reads a bit like ‘and then we did this, and then we did that.’ I also finished a group assignment in my grad program and ran a lot, with a race bearing down. The weather was hot and windy most of the week, and my favourite moment was swimming in the Gorge one evening, truly an urban jewel in Victoria. I end the week tired but resolute. It can be a tough world out there. Be kind to yourself and others.

Jill’s notes:

This week was a hard one. I hope you are all taking time to take care of yourself and those around you.

Reading Kevin’s notes above I completely feel the vagueness of my weeknotes at times. In short, I met with some amazing people who showed me the great work they are doing. There was also some “amazing, but not something we can help with” this week. Which as someone who likes to help and is often tagged as a bureaucracy hacker, was a challenge. But I’m attempting to set boundaries so Kevin and I can survive as a small team. I’ll endeavour to not duplicate the detail above and instead highlight a few other pieces. Despite the heaviness of the week and emotions in general — a few things on the go.

Concept Cases

It’s that time of year again when each ministry gathers its IM/IT capital funding requests for submission to corporate. Every year, we compete for a ~$100M pot of cross-government funding. What this really means — an opportunity to grab an interest-free loan with some serious paperwork attached — in the tech space this sometimes produces an asset which often hard to define. Enter professional judgment — which is the only reason I entertained completing an accounting designation (no shade to my accounting colleagues, if anything, I’m jealous of your knowledge and abilities).

Regardless, capital funding in government for IM/IT is a bit controversial. Defining the asset is one thing but the next is the affectionately named double hangover that follows. What is a double hangover you ask? Well it’s when your capital is done, you have a new system (ideally a service), you’ve changed the world (including the expectations of your staff and the public if you did it right) and now you are left with:

1. Amortization: remember the loan part, yup, you have to pay that back. Typically this is straight-line over 5-years (the capital was 5 million, you now owe a million a year for 5 years). This is meant to be the useful life of the asset. What is the useful life of a continuously improved product or a neglected government system? Well, that is a whole separate conversation, but often, it’s a lot longer than 5 years.
2. Keeping the dream alive: those expectations you set do not just disappear. You designed a responsive and impactful service with an exceptional digital product or product suite, and you may have even used a digital team to do it. That team has credibility, relationships, and the trust of your users. Now what? Well, you have to pay for it to keep running.

Enter the double hangover. You are now paying twice. I don’t need to explain the challenges that that brings. On the flip side, without that interest-free loan, we cannot raise the bar. Setting expectations is impossible without the funding to show leadership and the public where those expectations could be. The concept case is step one. My week was defining how to best shape those cases to present the problem, chart a path to ensure we have the right evidence and support the ministry in recommending our highest priority efforts.

Weekly Musings

There are some really exciting opportunities coming our way that will not only test our ability to deliver but stretch the broader delivery network in gov to do more. I’m beyond excited to dig in.

This week I also saw a clear shift in mindset from some of my colleagues.

I think I get it, by putting these initiatives together we focus on WHO we are delivering for and not how we’ve organized our branches

— ENV staff member

YES! I nearly jumped through the screen for virtual high fives, hugs or whatever we can do these days. The momentum we’ve been building around the transformation of services over single app modernization is growing. It is starting to make sense. That moment alone will make me smile for a long time. And did I mention this happened three times this week with separate people? Here we go!