6.33 — weeknotes — 200th Weeknote!!!!!
I can’t believe there has been 200 of these over the past 5 years or so. I also can’t believe that I have kept them going for that length of time. I also also can’t believe that anyone actually reads them…. Thank you! Hopefully they are vaguely interesting/ useful/ cure for insomnia.
Last couple of weeks
Reception desk — after months of work, lots of planning and engagement we have finally built our new reception desk in Hounslow House. I am so pleased with it. Will be my legacy at Hounslow long after I leave! This is a very visual change and reflects the new approach and team to Resident Experience in the Borough, lots more to come in the new year.
It was the annual end of Digital Festival team day on Friday — bringing the whole team together for some reflection and thinking about the year ahead. Not a death by PowerPoint day (ok a bit) but a chance for colleagues to come together, to have a chat and a coffee. We had the amazing Darren from AWS come and chat to us about what we are doing with them, some ideas for the future and some general geeky stuff…
It is also a chance for celebrating our successes and the Leader presented our annual Team Awards. It’s so nice to do these, voted for by the team as to who deserves recognition for the past year. Categories are themed against the council values as well as rising star and team awards.
There were a number of themes coming out of the day. Aligned to the Councils Ambition and all about delivery over the next 12 months on a range of our projects…. AI — Data — Cloud Journey — TCE. Certainly not going to be a quiet year.
Had a Loti all member face to face meeting last week. Love the work we are doing across London here. A real mixture of some of the basics and more innovative projects to improve services to communities across London. One of the best things about this session was the space to network and catch up with colleagues. Does turn into a bit of therapy sometimes, but good to know there are common themes we are dealing with.
It has continued to be a hectic couple of weeks, things used to slow down towards Christmas but not at the moment.
End of Year Reflections
It’s been another tremendously busy year, full of frustrations and challenges but fundamentally massive progress on a range of things across the council.
The Team Charter that we did earlier in the year has improved and changed the behaviour across the team. Although work to do to keep it fresh and alive in 2025. (Think I found my new strap line for next year)
So many projects have gone live and other key legacy systems replacements progressing, broadly, well. Many challenges in there too, I’m not green washing things in that first sentence and want to promote an honest account of things but that could be several weeknotes in itself. We have the right people with the right approach working through the various programmes and making good progress.
I can’t forget the efforts involved in the business as usual either. Sometimes very easy to be distracted by the new and shiny things but none of that possible without the basics. The team do an amazing job at keeping everything running and working each and every day. Often goes unappreciated or unnoticed (never by me) but the effort that goes in is considerable, more so in these times of heightened cyber security risks.
Governance processes still frustrate me, in part the Council processes and in part how we have interpreted some of them. BUT change is afoot and we have the opportunity to do things differently in 2025. Changes to the constitution and procurement approach mean we have a moment at the start of the year to review…
That said we have done a massive amount with IG across the council since I’ve taken on the role of SIRO (Senior Information Risk Owner). Top to toe review of approach, processes and so on. Much better engagement and ownership across the council. New and combined processes have made the whole thing more streamlined and we are able to get into where we need to now. This is important as we start to do more work on data and AI etc in the new year.
I can’t believe it’s been a year since I’ve taken on the Resilience and emergency planning team. Who would have thought that I would be talking about the plan for Death of National figure, or senior royal, the council's major emergency plan or flooding prevention in the borough. Tim and the team doing an excellent job at getting me up to speed. We have made some changes already in the approach in emergency planning, the Leader commented in his speech at the team day that it is all more visible. The video they have done to explain what they do and to encourage more across the council to get involved was great, although not sure they really enjoyed doing it. (They have repaid me with assigning me council gold for Christmas day….)
Socitm continues to go from strength to strength — I have really enjoyed being Immediate Past President this year and supporting Carol in her amazing term as President! So much delivered this year as the Charity and even more plans for next year!
And of course we were award winners this year as well. We were awarded an MJ Achievement Award for taking ‘a whole-team approach to tackling health inequalities’, for its Digital Inclusion for Social Health and Impact (DISH) project.
It’s been a challenging year for Local government as well, with the financial challenges really coming to the front to impact on Councils. Hounslow has really had to dig deep to balance the budget for next year and deal with massive in year budget pressures, and we are in a better position than others.
2025 looks busy…
Enjoy the festive break!!!
Tune of the week: (you know how much I like a remix!) — Last Christmas (Deep House Remix) — Remix Kingz
But them my fav Christmas song — Cher — DJ Play a Christmas Song (The Graham Norton Show)
