What did I enjoy?
A session in which Laura and Imogen talked us through the approach to prioritisation that they’ve been working on for our portfolio. This has been quite a long time coming, because there are several tensions to hold in balance. We need to:
- ensure we’re responsive to the immediate needs of a health and care system under pressure and have an eye to the future and more strategic initiatives
- empower our teams to make most decisions autonomously and maintain alignment of the big ticket items to our product portfolio and wider policy intent
- maintain and improve the live services for which we’re responsible and contribute to whole system transformation
The group that Laura and Imogen had gathered together has done a great job. We now have a set of criteria we’re ready to start road-testing. We won’t get it right first time, and will need to iterate the criteria as we learn how they work.
Separately, I was asked to join a new forum across government looking at the work of the Central Digital and Data Office Transforming Government Services work. Other participants in the group included people leading services in International Trade, Cabinet Office, HM Courts and Tribunal Service, Housing and Communities, and Driver and Vehicle Licensing. We all seemed to face the same challenges of applying CDDO-owned guidance to continuous improvement of services, and working across a large, mature portfolio. Several of us are embedding the Digital, Data and Technology Service Owner role and would welcome good practice sharing with this.
What was hard?
I had an allergic reaction to a well-intentioned proposal to define strategy across multiple portfolios, which I thought risked undermining the operating model for empowered product leaders in each of our areas. In my experience, central teams succeed when they convene the people responsible for different areas and facilitate conversations between them. I’m glad I challenged because the reworked alternative takes on board all my feedback and looks much better to me.
What did I learn?
I caught up on my mandatory learning for equalities, information governance, and fraud awareness. It’s easy to dismiss these e-learning packages as an annoyance, but they are important reminders of why we’re here: to serve everyone in England, to take good care of their most sensitive information, and to be alert to anything that doesn’t look right when we’re spending the public’s money.
What do I need to take care of?
As always, more reorganisation-related process this week. Some people will need more support than others through this process, and I need to make sure we identify those people and offer help when they need it – even if they’re reluctant to ask.
Matt Edgar writes here 