2020 04 17 — Weeknotes
2.15 — the post Easter chocolate haze…
Actually it wasn’t that much of a chocolate fuelled weekend, as much as it would normally have been. I have however, resorted to eating the Easter Eggs that I had bought for my family — but they’ll never know…….. On the days where I haven’t been out running I have gone out for a walk, and it’s been really nice to see lovely bits of Crawley that I had never seen before, literally on the doorstep…
It’s been the first week for a long time where I’ve not gone into the weekend thinking too much about work, other than the fact that I failed again to get my weeknotes done on a Friday. I have spent the majority of my time over the last month working around the set up of the Community Hub and it’s been a constant worry to make sure that we have the processes and data that means we can support the delivery of food. We spent a lot of time over the last week, really refining the processes and with the additional NHS data that we received at the end of last week (and other data) it was a good week to review where we are.
Tuesday I covered Gold and the Cabinet briefing for Clive. Was good to see that we really have embraced the technology across all areas of the Council for what is now starting to feel like business as usual. There was a focus on Social Care in the Borough at both meetings and Kelly our Director of Public Health gave update on the situation in Hounslow.
We also had the April Digital Strategy Board. We have been taking this time to fundamentally review the Portfolio of work that we have in Hounslow and how we can reshape this to ensure that we deliver on the Digital Strategy. Lots of work completed on this but more to go as we continue the work to transform.
Wednesday, I attended the LOTI Show and Tell on the Digital response to the pandemic and what we are doing in London. I presented a couple of slides on what we are doing in Hounslow and a couple of reflections around the last couple of weeks. Attention then turned in the meeting to thinking about the future — it’s great to see so many digital solutions emerging. There is a real opportunity for doing things differently as we come out of this…
We have had a number of conversations this week about the Hounslow recovery plan, lots of conversations around the fact that ‘recovery’, just doesn’t feel the right word, implies going back to the same as it was before and I don’t think it will. Ensuring that we continue and build on the momentum of the One Hounslow programme of work, will be key to ensuring that the change will be beneficial to Hounslow’s communities.
I also ‘volunteered’ to try and get the technology together for the Hounslow Leadership Group next week for various presentations and workshops / round table discussions — all remotely — so that’s going to be fun! Technology has been working really well for the weekly Q&A that Niall has done so should all be good!
I have been hugely impressed this week as well by Captain Tom, so much so I was late to a meeting to watch him cross the finish line. What started as a family joke to raise 1000 has now raised over £26m. Just amazing…
This week also appeared to be the week where home haircuts started to happen. I’ve not seen any disastrous ones — but do share! Generally hair isn’t a topic of conversation that I can add much too… But it’s been a positive for me that I have always cut my own!
Friday night after work I attended the Digital & IT virtual pub… Was really good to see a few faces that I hadn’t seen for a while whilst having a beer or two. Was really good fun and shows that you genuinely can do these things.
Tune of the Week: Stormzy — Blinded By Your Grace in the Live Lounge
