3.03 — weeknotes — the first of our new design authority meetings… oh and another laughter yoga session…
Another hectic week — I am sure that I start all of these weeknotes with the same thought. But all good, we continue to make good progress in a number of areas across the council, including this week getting the vaccination and mass testing centres in the borough set up. Hounslow, this week, is at the top of the infection rates in London, which is not a spot that we want to hold. Lots of work continues with the community to bring that number down.
It was a LOTI all member workshop this week, which is always good and something to look forward to. Firstly to catch up and see colleagues from across London and secondly as there is so much going on it is good to find out where we are with things. We are leading on a piece of work for innovative procurement in housing and working with a number of other councils, starting to get this off the ground more formally in the council — well overdue to get the various systems replaced.
We had the first of our new Design Authority meetings this week. We have evolved these meetings from the Digital Design Authority that we had in place ensuring that we had good governance across the council for digital projects. But with the council’s transformation programme getting off the ground we have evolved it into the design authority for the whole council to ensure that we consider projects with a number of difference lenses. We are calling these different lenses that we need to ensure get applied to all projects, our levers for change.
They are:
- Straightforward Decision-making
- People Centred
- Partnership by default
- Digital is how we do business
- Clear and transparent processes
- Powered by Data and Insight
- Green by Design
- A Preventative Approach
The meeting I think was OK for the first one, a bit of challenge on a number of areas that was frustrating as I wish we’d have considered these earlier and a couple of sloppy mistakes with some of the slides that could have been avoided. Onwards though for the next one! This is a really important part of the governance of the transformation as well as ensuring that we are joined up not just across the organisation but across the borough as we have health colleagues attending.
Caught up with the presidents team for Socitm this week for a chat really, in normal times we would have had a couple of opportunities for dinner and a beer or two but we haven’t had the chance. Was really nice to chat to everyone outside a formal board meeting… talked about everything and nothing, a really good team and looking forward to doing more over the next few years.
Attended a few of the UKGovCamp sessions this week, the first time I have been able to go, they have been awesome, great to chat to people and hear from others similar thoughts and challenges — certainly gave the brain some exercise across Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Ended the week with laughter yoga, another bonkers and amazing session that we put on as part of a pop up digital festival. I’m not sure I can say anything else about it — but if you ever get the chance to have a go — please do it!!!!
Possibly peaked a bit too early with my running this month, last week I said I wanted to run 10k before the end of January — well I managed it this week, went out for a run of Friday evening and before I really knew it I was at 6k and thought — this could be the one — so kept going! The last km was hard and it started to rain which wasn’t pleasant — but I did it — dead chuffed!
Next week I want to ensure that we have the devices for school children progressed and perhaps even another 10km (no thats just silly talk)…
Was great to see the inauguration of President Biden in the week. Pretty emotional stuff really, particularly the 22 year old, poet laureate, Amanda Gorman, with her poem “The Hill we Climb” — I found myself just hanging off every word she was saying — it was delivered with such emotion and passion — just amazing! Certainly a time for hope.
What was also amazing as part of the inauguration were the artists appearing, yes I know that’s not the element that I should be focussing on but it really was a star studded occasion with Lady Gaga, J.Lo, Garth Broooks and Katy Perry (alongside others). So I am cheating this week and having two tune of the weeks. I love the Katy Perry song, Firework (and the fireworks were pretty amazing) and then I found a pretty cool mashup of the song!
Back to being a lockdown domestic goddess this week with baking bread and changing a washer in the tap that has been dripping for the last month!
Tune of the week: Katy Perry — Firework (From Celebrating America)
