Weeknotes — 2019–11–08

Week 7

We have now entered the pre-election preparation period where there are restrictions in what we can promote, so….

Its been a fun train week this week — more or less running to time but it’s been my fellow commuters that has been more of an experience. I have certainly learnt lots about the commuter I do not want to be:

I do not want to be that person that was holding a conference call about a project in the middle of the carriage and thought shouting rather than talking in indoor voices was the way to go! It didn’t even sound an interesting project.

This was then in part combated by the person who thought then was a good idea to get his very smelly dinner out and start to eat it! I mean seriously! I do not want to be that person either.

Finally was the guy with his fold away bike, who, rather than waiting for the 20 people or so to board the train first and then get on, decided it was a good idea to be at the front of this causing mayhem and chaos in his wake.

I do worry about common sense and people!

So some of the highlights for me for the working week…

Monday

Arup came in to run a workshop with us as part of the work they had completed for reviewing the Digital Maturity for the Council. I consider it a success that we had so many people attend this that we ended up moving rooms twice to be able to accommodate everyone! (although was stressful at the time!)

Niall hosted the session and Arup gave some feedback on their discussions with staff formed into a number of areas that we will need to look at at part of the Digital Strategy. We then broke up into a three groups to concentrate on three areas: Place/Connectivity, Data and Digital Services. Lots of really useful information came out of these discussions that we will then weave into the future plans.

Tuesday

We had a Management Team Breakfast at the local Weatherspoons, a moment of inspirational leadership (I am calling it) as at least one of the team hadn’t been there before! It is really good to get out the office into the Community and have a think about what is going on and what we need to think about over the next couple of months. Already a repeating date in the diary… And just to confirm the refillable coffee is very good…

Thursday

The #1Hounslow Programme board where we went through the main themes of the programme. It was a chance to meet the new Assistant Chief Executive as well and welcome her to Hounslow before she starts.

The themes are all very different but it was clear that there is an enabling theme across all of them, Digital! The role that this will play at across all of these will be key for success. The work that I am doing on our own digital aspirations in the team will certainly help ensure that we have the right governance, capacity and capability to deliver!

We have had a couple of issues with the website this week, which is never good, although we have these resolved now, the impact of key services like this not being available is very real. With this in mind and Election preparation starting to ramp up as well, we will have a formal change freeze across the Council to ensure that the risk of any issues is minimised.

Tune of the week: Train — Drops of Jupiter