October summary
Right, so October seems to have flown right over me! Through the half-term juggling, being under the weather and general life admin, it has been a month of momentum and collaboration, just look my communication breakdown below:
If you use Microsoft 365 at work and want know to yours, check out Viva Insights. Maybe this could become a work version of Top Trumps, let me know your numbers and let’s play.
Last month we shifted up a gear with our “content audit sprints” and with the public beta launch of Council Tax and Benefits on the horizon, the website project has moved from planning into active delivery. Here’s what we’ve been up to…
🧭 Strategic progress
I setup a monthly project board, bringing together senior stakeholders to review progress, unblock challenges, and align on priorities. We discussed various topics and confirmed:
- the project remains on track for a public beta launch in December (date TBC), starting with Council Tax and Benefits
- a prioritisation matrix is guiding content audit sprints, focusing on high-usage, high-impact sections
- seeking resident engagement on our website design concepts
🏃🏽♂️Content audit sprints
Our initial approach involved sending “homework” to service teams, getting kick-off meetings in our diaries and completing the sprint. We noticed this wasn’t getting the cut through that we needed and soon we pivoted to another approach that was more direct and to the point:
- rolled out Teams “chats” which virtually got everyone around the table and an open channel to share updates
- started on a URL mapping template to handle redirects for public beta
- targeted engagement to key service contacts on project and design updates
We have tried to connect with as many service teams as possible to discuss content audit and hopefully our outreach efforts will support our roadmap over the next 12-18 months. They have been open to change and supportive by offering ideas, feedback, and their time to help co-design content.
🔄Content governance refresh
In readiness for the full site deployment, we launched a refreshed content governance process and updated our intranet SharePoint site with guidance and a demo. The Digital service team (DSt) have moved to an agile approach and discovering our new BAU process.
Using three Microsoft platforms: Forms + Power Automate + Planner, DSt now have a standardised input, which means more consistent, faster outcome and clearer reporting for everyone. I’ll be diving deeper into the process for my session in this year’s LocalGov Drupal Week, so sign up to the event and hopefully it can help you plan ahead.
📣 What’s next…
- finalise designs for public beta (Council Tax and Benefits)
- continue service team engagement for upcoming content audit sprints
- prepare redirect templates and internal link mapping
- explore resident engagement for website design feedback
- confirm public beta launch comms and engagement plan
💭 My final thoughts…
A lot has changed, and I feel like we have jumped from first gear to third! During October, we held our staff conference and it was a great chance to meet in person the people we have been working with. DDaT had a few stands that people could demo and discuss various projects happening in the wider department.
What I did was run an unusual, closed card sorting exercise to outline the principle of User-centered design (UCD). It involved asking people to place mini animal assorted rubbers (that were respectively linked to key user tasks) into jars that represented the website section they would naturally go to first to perform that task. It sparked plenty of opinions!
Stay subscribed for more…
💯 Digital legends of the month:
- who: co‑founder of Google; co‑created PageRank search algorithm
- fun fact: Google’s original name was ‘Backrub’
- who: co‑founder of Netflix; pioneered streaming at global scale
- fun fact: late fees for a rented video helped inspire Netflix’s subscription model
- who: French telegraph engineer who invented the Baudot code
- fun fact: the term ‘baud’ (symbol rate) is named in his honour
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