3.10 — weeknotes — today is a year at home…
This week sees a year since the Digital and IT team was sent home to work by the CEX, the week before the official lockdown started. It has been a crazy year that is for sure for so many reasons — but we have seen the best of people at this time as well.
Resilience is the word that jumps into my head when thinking about the last year. I think this is relevant on so many different levels.
Personally — I have achieved things over the last year that I never thought I would have done.
As a team — we really have come together in the most challenging times and not just kept the lights on we have pushed the transformation of the council forwards.
As a council — the coming together of colleagues to ensure that the most vulnerable in the community were safe was amazing.
Finally in terms of the infrastructure — the actual technical nuts and bolts
We should all be very proud at what we have achieved!
We had an all members meeting for LOTI on Tuesday, was really good to see colleagues from across London. As always so much going on and good to get up to speed with everything. Part of the meeting was about the future of work and how we are going to emerge from the lockdown and take advantage of the things that have really worked over the last year. Lots of opportunity here to really changing things for the better!
We had a Digital Strategy Board this week as well. Was a good meeting but rather than the usual focus on the major transformation projects we focussed on the #FixThePlumbing projects and customer care. Was a very different conversation and discussion and good to focus on the nuts and bolts of providing a high quality service.
This linked to a couple of conversations around the Technical Blueprint that we are working towards as a team. We are spending a lot of time at the moment thinking about the various jigsaw pieces of infrastructure; applications; security; data and external applications, that we need. We need all these elements to be as interoperable and flexible as possible but we also need to think about the outcomes and the skills that we need as well to ensure we are able to deliver. All very exciting!
Tried something new this week. I have been starting to pop into some of the departments team meetings as there are many people that I just don’t get to see very often at all. So started to have a Friday morning coffee morning, just 30 mins in the diary where anyone can pop in and have a chat. Was really good to see people this morning… Random conversations as well from the very sensible work conversations — to accidentally powering down whole datacentres, to moldy peas after a ski trip!!
Don’t forget we have some amazing Digital opportunities as well. From service design to data engineering, commercial analysis to project delivery, these are roles that will really make a difference to our communities. Look here https://hounslow.digital/careers/. Message me if you want a chat or more information at all on any of the roles. We’re more than digital. We’re improving lives.
I have been a bit rubbish this week about getting fresh air and exercise, think that I’ve probably only left the house a couple of times this week, which isn’t clever. The weather has been shocking though, which is my excuse but will be better over the weekend and next week…
Tune of the week: A bit more sensible this week — heard it on the radio again this week, not heard for ages, love it! The Lumineers — Ho Hey (Official Video)
