Weeknotes — 2019 12 06
Week 11 — Strike Week init…
Well December is here, I’m lucky enough to have one of those beer Advent Calendars and whilst I’ve not fancied a beer at 0630, it’s traditional at Christmas so I have persevered… Just kidding, drink responsibly…
Feels it has been quite a challenging week or so as we try and ensure that we are thinking about and moving a variety of things forward across the Council.
Last week ended well, with the teams after work get together. They tend to do once a quarter, which I think is great that they make an effort to do this. My plan was to just pop along for a couple of shandies and then leave… Didn’t quite work like that but after the second tequila, that was my time to leave… ( you know who you are…)
The election is obviously taking a lot of the team attention at the moment and the change freeze kicked in this week to protect the infrastructure. I’m a count supervisor at the Count on Thursday night, which will be interesting on many levels.
Highlights
Met with David and Fin from the West London Alliance this week and chatted through what their aspirations are in terms of digital and beyond, and went through where we are. Reassuring to see that there are significant overlaps and think this is an area where we can deliver some real change to Londoners.
Also met with the CCG and started to chat through some opportunities to work together better here as well. One area that could be really interesting is Information Governance and ensuring that any data that is shared is done so securely and in the right manner, engaging the citizen and increasing the trust in that sharing.
Tuesday
Tuesday morning was the 1 Hounslow program sponsorship board. Where we talked about the different work streams. I took a paper on digital governance as we need to be more joined up across the Council. Governance is the wrong word as this is about getting stuff done rather than ‘computer says no’ but the word governance is an overly bureaucratic word. If anyone has any better words I’d be interested in hearing. The broad outline was approved at Board which was excellent.
Also met our Emergency Planning and Business Continuity lead in the Council, we talked through the emergency planning, business continuity and disaster recovery arrangements for the council and how Digital is engaged in all areas. Cyber security was a big area of discussion and how we can raise the preparation and awareness. We came away with lots of plans and ideas that we will put in place over the next year. Also ensured that we had each other’s mobile numbers… Just in case. I then woke up on Wednesday to the news of the fire in the Brentford hotel and that we had opened a rest centre. A reminder of the role of the local government in the community. Luckily no one was injured in the incident.
Wednesday
Had our monthly management breakfast meeting where we talked through plans for the next couple of months. Andy had been to the LOTI workshops yesterday and updated us on the excellent discussions around procurement and city tools. If you haven’t seen it look here…http://loti.london/citytools/
Sounded an excellent meeting and I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to go. It sounds like there are some really practical things coming from the session which will really help us.
Thursday
Had a call with MHCLG to discuss opportunities for fibre and internet infrastructure in Hounslow, lots of activity here that we will drive forwards as part of the Digital Strategy in the new year.
We also had the second of the Hounslow staff portal sessions. Was a smaller group than before but was still blown away by the amount of ideas coming from the group. Once again ideas coming up having nothing to do with the portal but other systems and culture for the council….
Went to a leaving do in Sutton after work on Tuesday, went across with Niall, so had the chance to chat to him. Was really nice to see colleagues from Sutton and Kingston and find out what they have been up to… Nice to catch up with Ian, Chief Exec of Kingston as well had a big catch up on all the things that are going on.
Look! I didn’t even mention the strike at all… Or one day where I left home half an hour earlier than normal and got to work 20 minutes later than I would have done normally. I did get to see this amazing sunrise though…
Tune of the Week — again a bit random and dancey! Georgia — Never Let You Go (MK Remix)
