A skilled procurement person who can help get stuff done whilst maintaining a sustainable and viable level of bureaucracy is worth their weight in gold.
I finished a draft of some service principles which are strongly inspired by the Centre for Digital Public Services digital standards. I had an ongoing internal debate about whether I should make modifications to it, because why change something that is a standard? I think I convinced myself that there’s value in modifying principles to acknowledge the relative maturity of the organisation they’re being applied to and how much change you want to embark on as part of trying to practically apply them. My gut feeling is it’s about trying to find the balance between something that’s just enough to get headed in the right direction whilst also not diluting it to the point of making it useless.
Imposing structure on the complicated can be helpful in making sense of things, but can become harmful when the desire to simplify ignores that something is inherently complicated. Eg. Treating something that benefits from human interaction or discretion as a transactional process.
Is there some sort of scaffolding required to help different organisations meaningfully work on stuff together? Perhaps a shared digitial pipeline for housing? I started capturing some thoughts around this. I should probably do this in a series of smaller posts to avoid getting hung up on not yet having everything figured out.
Because I’m between social media networks, I’ve been experimenting with posting in different places. Short version, in terms of reach Twitter and LinkedIn joint first, followed by BlueSky and Mastodon.
I was delighted and confused in equal measure about the result of the Wales vs Austrialia game.
I just finished paying from my 2 year old iPhone. I have zero desire for the new iPhone. It’s a great (If very expensive) bit of kit, but they feel iterative to me at this point. I am resolved to run my current one to the end of its life.