2021 01 15 — Weeknotes
3.02 — making a difference with laptops for children in the borough!
Why I had never thought of publishing my weeknotes via Linked in I do not know, but I am glad I did — welcome to all those new readers from last week. Was really nice to read all the comments on LinkedIn about them — and even found a few more Crawley Town fans! 😊. There were also some really good ideas — thanks to Jo M for her thoughts on her end of day reflections, I really liked her approach:
GLAD: What am I Grateful for, what have I Learnt, what have I Achieved, what have I Delighted in. Always good to end the day on a positive!
Been a really good week to start the year this week! (also decided that last week didn’t really count as it wasn’t a full week!)… I think I managed to do the majority of the things that I set out to at the start of the week, have managed to do a lot of commuting to and from work and certainly feel more prepared for 2021!
The main achievement this week is that we have managed to gain funding for and even more importantly, find stock, for about 750 laptops for children in the borough who do not have access to a device for home schooling (and some connectivity as well)… There is a huge amount of work across the Country on getting devices to school children and we have been doing a lot of work in the borough to get devices as well. But over the last week or so it became clear that there was a really significant need. The estimate from schools was that 1500 children did not have devices and the odd half a dozen devices every so often wasn’t going to help — something more fundamental was needed. We worked through the issue, the funding, the availability, the practical elements and managed to pull together a paper for Gold and got it all approved!! 😊 Thanks to Nick for sourcing the devices as well — all we have to do now it make it happen — simples!!!
We had a session on Wednesday with the West London Alliance on the digital programme and Fin took us through the draft work plan for the year. There are some really big projects that we are looking to deliver here especially around connectivity in the area. Lots to do!
“The West London Alliance (WLA) is a public sector partnership between seven West London local authorities of Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon and Hounslow. Our team delivers initiatives in the sub-region, working across borough boundaries and focussing on the priority areas of: economy and skills, employment support, mobility and transport, housing, health and care, and digital.” — https://wla.london/about/
This links / overlaps with work that we are doing in Hounslow on improving connectivity in Hounslow as part of our Digital Inclusion. I had an update on Monday with Nick and Michael who is working with us to move this forwards. The work includes improving access to the borough for fibre suppliers to increase the amount of fibre to the premises; working with mobile operators to increase coverage, looking at 5G as well as wifi coverage and all sorts of other things… Starting to make some good headway which is great. Again really important that as part of the Digital Strategy we are doing projects that actually make a difference to our communities.
Had a really good call on Friday with FutureGov — they have been doing lots of work with us on a range of things, but Friday was a chat around where we are with the Digital Community Experience work — we are working with them to get a technical blueprint for the ecosystem of technology that we need for the future. This new ecosystem will ensure that we are able to deliver what is needed in the most flexible, open, efficient and innovative manner possible. A bit of work yet to do on it but really coming together well, this is going to give us the ability to really move things along.
Felt a bit emotional this week as we had the last of the Leisure Boards, where we have transferred services back in house. This has been a great cross council effort to get it done, during the pandemic and in such sort timescales — still a chunk of work to do but we have had these board meetings every week for the last few months and it felt brilliant and odd that they are coming to an end.
Still dead proud of the work to get the laptops, the fun now is going to be to get them distributed across the Borough to those that need them, but great to be part of an organisation making the best use of technology but in a really meaningful and impactful manner.
Over the next week: Looking forward to UKGovCamp next week and received the swag this week in the post — going to be great. Decided that by the end of the month I want to run 10k having done a couple of 6ks this week! I also want to ensure that the first Design Authority next week is a success.
Was nice to have finally moved the fish back into the lounge this week as they had been banished to the conservatory whilst we were getting new carpets before Christmas.
Tune of the week: Bit of a random one — but came across this at the weekend. The Piano Guys doing Titanium!!! Super cool… https://youtu.be/fz4MzJTeL0c
