September 10th, 2021
By: Service Transformation, Env, Bc Gov
Tags: Agile Transformation, Digital Govern, Service Design

In the spirit of transparency and candour, Kevin and Jill publish weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for their team.

Jill’s notes

We are 6-months old! It’s really 7-months since I started in February, but I affectionately like to take a soft average since Kevin joined us in late March. We’ve embedded ourselves within the ministry, built trust with staff and delivered.

“Try not to become a [person] of success, but rather become a [person] of value” — Albert Einstein

We’ve done a lot in a short time so forgive the length. It seems minimal to put each of these in bullets when they represent tens if not hundreds of hours of work, but here goes my attempt to summarize the value we’ve delivered via some key targetted outcomes — beginning with our guiding principles.

Target 1 — Modernize internal communications tools

The first step in this journey is to modernize and triage the information on our aged Drupal platform and move it into the corporate CMS Lite offering. Working in collaboration with web staff, Sam Terani has led the charge. Our approach was to understand the needs of staff, identify fit-for-purpose technology solutions (e.g., internet, teams, other?), and tackle ongoing governance and maintenance. The result — thousands of assets transferred, new ownership, improved communications, and platform to iterate. This includes:

New Deputy Minister’s Office and the Environmental Sustainability Divison Sites.

User feedback on the Climate Action Secretariat (CAS) and Strategic Policy Division — publishing soon.

BC Parks and Environment Protection Division (EPD) sites planed, with portions published.

Sam also leveraged our internal Common Hosted Forms tool (agile IIT Common Services team product via Christian Evan and Matt Hall as product owners) to launch and support several EPD priorities internal and public-facing. We are on track to finish the majority of this work by the end of the calendar year.

Target 2 — Set a cohesive direction

We need to articulate why we need to make our services easier, more accessible, and put more focus on using data to drive our decisions. We started with an application inventory, knowing what we have early in the calendar year. Working over the spring with the IIT and Elevate Consulting, we produced a ministry digital strategy. We conducted dozens of engagement sessions across the ministry, drafted, iterated, and in June received executive endorsement.

The digital strategy has its strengths and limitations, bridging strategy with a technology plan — but the highlights are clear:

We have to shift from the ground up, program-specific, app by app technology delivery model we default to, to building services based on what our users, the public, need. Leading in a digital era requires new/different competencies, and we must embed them to support ongoing change.

This month we are looking to define an action plan with our IIT colleagues and ministry leadership for a Fall 2021 launch.

Target 3— Build internal digital and service transformation capacity

As mentioned above, we know we need different skills to deliver. We’ve taken action to begin building that capacity and awareness inside the ministry.

Art of the possible — We hosted the first cross-ministry MEGA-THON in May — an environment-themed hackathon. We set out to encourage fun and innovation, give people time and space to tackle new challenging problems and build relationships across teams to inspire new collaborations. We did that, and the result was the delivery of simple solutions and conversations that created new opportunities to work together. For tangible benefit, we saved a quoted investment of $50k in a legacy system by using a form created during the event for free.

— We hosted the first cross-ministry MEGA-THON in May — an environment-themed hackathon. We set out to encourage fun and innovation, give people time and space to tackle new challenging problems and build relationships across teams to inspire new collaborations. We did that, and the result was the delivery of simple solutions and conversations that created new opportunities to work together. For tangible benefit, we saved a quoted investment of $50k in a legacy system by using a form created during the event for free. Governance and leadership — Our ADM’s cross-ministry have created space for Service Transformation with a standing Friday update on their agenda. They’ve invited us in to speak at their leadership and all staff tables. We’ve re-pointed the Systems IM/IT Planning (SIP) committee with all the Executive Directors across the ministry to drive our digital strategy. We are now re-evaluating our challenging policy problems recognizing that they all have a human-centred digital element.

— Our ADM’s cross-ministry have created space for Service Transformation with a standing Friday update on their agenda. They’ve invited us in to speak at their leadership and all staff tables. We’ve re-pointed the Systems IM/IT Planning (SIP) committee with all the Executive Directors across the ministry to drive our digital strategy. We are now re-evaluating our challenging policy problems recognizing that they all have a human-centred digital element. Embedded talent — We’ve hired two new Senior Product Managers / Product Owners into the ministry to lead emerging product development. ESD and Parks have both committed through action (and $$$) to change.

— We’ve hired two new Senior Product Managers / Product Owners into the ministry to lead emerging product development. ESD and Parks have both committed through action (and $$$) to change. Digital Era Leadership — In partnership with The Exchange and the OCIO’s Digital Academy, we facilitated multiple instances of the Digital Era Leadership course supporting well over 100 aspiring leaders to learn some good practices and how to lead multi-disciplinary teams in our new reality. Part of this included a specialized Parks session, where our Deputy Kevin Jardine opened the day with a re-articulation of how his passion for service has shaped his career and often tied into using data and technology to improve decision making and outcomes for users.

Target 4— Learn and lead with delivery: BC Parks

Our work with Parks has certainly been about learning as we go and defaulting to delivery. It’s taken a lot of our time and involved a significant commitment from Parks’ leadership and staff at all levels. It started with an attempt to create a coordinated multi-product roadmap. As we dug deeper, we realized we had some hard work to influence the development of a new culture and empower staff before that roadmap would be possible.