2020 08 21 — Weeknotes
2.32 — meeting the graduates
Monday saw an opportunity to meet the potential candidates for the National Graduate Programme who have applied to work at Hounslow. It was an opportunity for them to get a feel for the organisation and for us to meet them. Niall introduced the session and gave an overview of the Borough and the organisation, Victoria gave an introduction to some of the council work such as the green agenda and the recovery work and finally I gave an update on the digital and transformation work across the council.
Have to say I was really impressed with them all, their attitudes, passion for making a difference and they all asked amazing questions. Really was a great opportunity to get to know each other as part of the process. They had interviews on Thursday and Friday this week and I wish them all the best of luck. I am certainly looking forward to working with the two who are successful and I’m positive they can bring a huge amount of energy to the team! The session ended a bit prematurely for me as had a powercut at the end of the session! Thankfully Plan B, tethering to the phone, meant I didn’t miss my meeting after!
Tuesday morning I had to record a ten minute video for Socitm as part of my theme, which is Ethics of emerging technologies and data, the idea of the video was to attract partners to sponsor the work for the next year. We recorded via Zoom and was almost through the recording when the Zoom, reconnecting box came up on screen — my internet connection had dropped!!! How frustrating! Got back in and had to start again! Second take, I managed to set off ‘OK Google’ on my phone somehow, so mid recording I was being heckled by my phone! I subtly reached across and turned it off and carried on — I wasn’t going to do it a third time!!! Am sure no-one will notice…
We did some more OKR work this week with There Be Giants to develop the key results from the objectives that we have set for us. We have struggled with some of this to be honest, and just goes to show how difficult it really is to make objectives meaningful. I think we all agreed that we haven’t quite got the objectives right yet, so we are going to pause for a bit and spend some time reflecting on making sure we have the basics right before we progress.
Also this week, a more formal kick off for the Digital Community Experience, which was excellent. As I have said before this is a really important project to frame the relationship the council has with communities and to ensure that we get the right technology moving forwards to best serve them. We are ensuring that we are aligning with the outcomes based review as well so that we are not tripping over each other and maximising the learnings across the work that FutureGov are doing with us.
Thursday afternoon saw me joining Victoria Lawson at a digital innovation workshop for LEDNet — which is the London Environment Directors Network. It was an opportunity to think about how we may use technology in the local environment to improve our communities. It was the first time the group of Environment Directors had got together with Digital Directors, and was facilitated by Bloomberg. There were four themes that we worked through: Air Quality and Transport; Climate Change; Green Spaces and Waste and Resources. Some really interesting things coming out for further discussion but some themes included: better use of data; how we encourage behaviour change and how we maximise the infrastructure we have.
A short Friday as I had the afternoon off. In the morning we had a show and tell for the outcomes based review work we have been doing with FutureGov, great to see over 80 colleagues from across the council getting involved. It is approaching a year since I have been with Hounslow and had the afternoon off ensuring that I use my leave (and very much needed!) Can’t actually believe that it is coming up a year already!!! What a year!
Tune of the week: Dua Lipa — Don’t Start Now — https://youtu.be/oygrmJFKYZY
