My last update of 2024 and the themes are networking and partnerships.
There’s no winding down before the Xmas period here, but it’s been nice to step back and look out for a while. Some exciting first steps were made on the partnership working front:
- I attended my first Industry Advisory Committee at the University of Bedfordshire where I learnt about the new AI Club set up by the School of Computer Science. It’s a really good opportunity to bring together local businesses and the best brains on AI to tackle social challenges as well as support Luton businesses to develop and use AI to improve efficiency, grow and improve. The ambition for Luton to be an AI native town (where everyone has a level of AI skills) is really exciting, and great for our residents. Although being back in a University lecture hall and meeting all the students with really innovative projects and ideas did make me feel a bit old!
- I also attended my first Bedfordshire Data Summit, with blue light partners, MoD, National Highways and the ICS. There is an existing Information Sharing Protocol (ISP) in place but we looked at the work of the Bedfordshire VERU, the needs of all the partners in terms of data alongside the data we hold, and will soon start work on evolving the ISP to a Data Sharing Agreement that really enables this.
- I met with Eddie Copeland of LOTI, and although we’re not a London Borough, we spoke about the learning from LOTI and the resources that are available to us, as well as an offer to support with the development of a regional OTI if that’s a path we want to go down. I also had email intros with my regional CDO peers Nana Barfi-Sarpong and Emel Morris, and really look forward to our first meeting in the New Year, so this might be something we can think about then.
On the networking front, these last two weeks, I:
- Caught up with Rob Miller, a really useful conversation about all the wonderful things he did whilst at Hackney and what he’s seeing in the local gov space currently. Key takeaway was thinking about what future readiness in the Cyber security space needs to look like. Keep an eye out for his blog post about this in the New Year!
- Caught up with Opama Khan (continuing on the Hackney theme) and Sarah Cullen at Croydon, both of who I had the pleasure of working with at Croydon. We compared notes around structures, challenges and ambitions. Opama’s invited me and my management team to visit her and her colleagues in January to provide some inspiration of what a different way of doing things could look like and Sarah has offered to mentor one of my team.
- Had a really good chat with Zakki Ghauri around his experience and insight into establishing DDaT teams post insourcing, as well as how at City of London he has mainstreamed use of Microsoft to not only improve productivity but also reduce the applications estate and deliver savings. Certainly gave me a lot to think about!
The other key thing we did this fortnight was have our first management team away day. Being only two months in post-insourcing, we looked at what staff were telling us in the staff workshops and how we might take the ideas that came out forward. We also thought about some of the challenges we are facing, prioritising these and developing a forward plan for the service. I also introduced the team to OKRs, whilst a bit mind-blowing, it was received well! Oh, and we also made paper snowflakes.
So, my head is buzzing with lots of ideas and information. Will be taking a nice little break to refresh and re-energise over the Xmas period and I hope everyone reading this also enjoys the holidays. See you in 2025!