First blog post of the new year! Whilst lots (and lots) of work continues on all fronts mentioned in previous posts, we’re really starting the year with a bit of a reset of our DDaT service. It feels the natural thing to do now we’ve had a few months of being in-house and through the service planning process, and it was something that came through as a clear gap from the staff workshops. This involves us developing a clear vision for the service, setting our objectives, our key results for these (my love for OKRs stems from Neil William’s introducing them at Croydon. If you’re not familiar with them, Radical Focus by Christina Wodtke and Measure What Matters by John Doerr are good reading), and developing our DDaT roadmap that will sit behind this. Having this in place will help us clarify our own roles and responsibilities, set governance, and create a more collaborative relationship with the rest of the organisation, as well as prioritise.
We’ve also started looking at what digital and data skills the organisation needs at different levels. Easy, I thought. But when it came to putting pen to paper, I’m finding it quite hard to articulate as its as much, well actually more, about culture, behaviours and soft skills as technical and data skills. Here’s my very first (working) stab at it:
The basics for all staff:
What else for service managers?
And for senior leaders:
My ask of anyone reading this – would love to hear your thoughts! What have I missed? What isn’t needed? Anything else?
I think this looks great. Thanks for sharing your work 🙂
I might add something around accessibility and inclusion. It’s implicit in some of what you’ve said, but it’s worth calling out specifically, I think.
That’s a good shout, thanks!
Good post Atika. One aspect that needs covering would be data lineage. This will provide an understanding of how the data flows through the organisation and any preventative/detective/corrective controls you may want to include at various points within the data journey. This could be the responsibility of the Service Managers.
With the Data (Use and Access) Bill re-introduced by the Labour Government, incorporating aspects such as data lineage within the organisation would be hugely beneficial and will also help with the overall data governance efforts.
Thanks,
Badri
Hi Atika, Something to consider adding – financing digital. I was really interested to see the conclusions in the recent government report about how digital and tech is funded, moving away from capex into opex and how this is causing problems with embedding things like improvement (such as what a digital team is usually doing) into BAU. But not all change and improvement is transformation, and to do digital and agile well we need embedded people who are looking at continuous improvement for services – from operations to people to tools, to tech and digital.
So there’s something in there for senior leaders about understanding the money side of digital and IT and where their capex and opex is going, something for service managers to have a real understanding of costs and funding for improvement, and for ALL staff to look at managing cost and how to use and spend on IT in a sustainable way (like returning kit when you leave – should be a basic, but does it happen?) and linking digital to improvement to £££ saving.
Plus with the Microsoft licenses now charging based on compute, what this means for orgs who are planning more use of the M365 tools, automation, power suite, copilot etc – the expense will be moving to opex – but should we be thinking about more capex for some of this when it leads to improvement and savings.
Atika. A good summary across many fronts and I agree about leaders needing to cultivate an innovation culture. Technology is changing rapidly and we are at risk of being behind the curve in relation to the technological knowledge held by some of our children and young people. I often find that we are so focused in fully utilising the technology we currently have that we miss the longer and forward sight we require to keep ahead of the game. The issue of AI is a classic example here where we are reacting and keeping up whilst children and young people are steaming ahead. Another separate, but linked issue is that of how we can utilise AI as a tool to support schools and young people recognise the difference between fact and fiction on-line and in social media, and recognise where they may be putting themselves at risk. This is the level of innovation and the culture of innovative use of technology we ought to be able to harness.