3.19 — weeknotes — going in-in or is that in-out and a slight left turn…
Just as you think we are coming out of the worst of the last 16 months things take a slight left turn. You may have seen in the news on Wednesday that Hounslow has been listed as a area with high number of cases of a variant of covid. This has meant that we have to spin up surge testing and surge vaccination quickly and therefore there is a need for staff to be redeployed into a number of rolls to assist. Just as you think we are coming out of things, it has felt a bit that we have gone backwards. However it is amazing again how the organisation and colleagues respond.
So it has changed the end of the week to what we were expecting but continues to be lots happening…
We have signed the next wayleave agreement to provide access to superfast broadband in the Borough. It is part of the range of work taking place to improve communications across the Borough!
We had a One Hounslow update at Board this week and I took a couple of papers as part of the Digital Strategy as well as the general update on projects. On the projects, we had some great feedback across a range of areas. The one comment we had was to ensure that we get the right level of engagement and communication out to Board, Councillors, colleagues and the community on everything going on. Challenge accepted!
I was pleased that both papers were also approved by board. The first was a paper to ensure that we get more governance around our online websites. We need to ensure that we have the right governance on all our websites and to ensure we have a full picture of the family of sites. We need to ensure that they are joined up, integrated, accessible and work for our communities — we have some work to do! But a great first step to ensure that between Digital, Customer Services and Communications we ensure we do all that!
The second paper was an update on our Digital Community Experience project and the need to ensure that through this we use the components of the infrastructure repeatedly to ensure efficient deployment and a seamless end user experience. We have been using components such as Gov.Notify and Gov.Pay along with others for a while but part of the ongoing plan is to ensure that we use repeatable technology as much as possible, so we provide the best experience we can.
Thursday was another visit to Hounslow House! Every time I have been there I have seen different colleagues and colleagues that I haven’t seen for a year — Thursday was no exception — was really nice to see people. Went to Hounslow to meet colleagues from the CCG and Push Dr as we are having one of their pods being installed into the reception area. Again we have done a lot around our World of Work this week, of which this is part of.
On Wednesday evening we had the second of our Members briefing on world of work. Whilst it was a bit stressful in the 5 minutes before the meeting as I learnt I was going to be flying solo, it all went well and was another great session!! Again we had a great conversation and questions from everyone.
Nice to actually get back to some normal again this week as we get into the next stage of coming out of lockdown — it has been so nice to actually use the gym — at least once or twice. And on Monday we had the crazy idea to actually go in-in, or is that out-in, but either way we went to the pub! Inside an actual pub! Was very well managed and felt very safe and was LOVELY to have an actual pint!
Looking forward to Eurovision at the weekend! So only fitting that tune of the week is the UK entry — douze points? And yes I did actually make my management team listed to Scooch Flying the Flag in a meeting — 1 for a bit of distraction but mainly in a thinly veiled way of getting us to think about how we are going to improve the communication on the digital strategy — how we are going to Fly the Flag — inspirational leadership I think!!
Scooch — Flying The Flag — https://youtu.be/XT6yOIC6ihI
Tune of the Week: James Newman — Embers — United Kingdom 🇬🇧 — Official Music Video — Eurovision 2021
