My first 100 days as Head of Product for Westminster City Council, part 2

My name’s Scott Colfer and I’ve joined Westminster City Council as their first Head of Product. I asked what would be interesting to share from my first 100-days on Twitter and got some great suggestions, thanks folks. In Part 1 I shared who I am and why I’m here. Here’s Part 2 – where I started in my role. 

Incremental change (that adds-up to evolutionary change)

One theme to the questions on Twitter was ‘where do you start?’  

Inspired by the kanban principle, I’ve tried to start with what we do now. Recognise the value that already exists. And find opportunities to improve value. I’ve learned over the years that when Digital is a disruptive force, ‘moving fast and breaking things’, it can set itself up to fail. My approach is more one of gentle improvement, working with and respecting existing people, roles and process. The aim is ‘incremental change (that eventually adds up to evolutionary change).  

Westminster City Council and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea have a joint IT department for another couple of months. After that they’re going to separate and each run a local IT department. Westminster is taking the opportunity to pivot from an IT team to a Digital team. Aruj Haider, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, has been working with her Transition Team and the Executive Leadership Team for a long time now to set Westminster’s new Digital team up for success. I joined back in late-March to support the work already in progress and take a lead on developing our ‘product way of working’.  

The overall challenge and opportunity is to ‘rewire the house while keeping the lights on’. We need to make sure we can keep everything running smoothly in a couple of months when we officially switch from a Bi-Borough approach to a local approach. We also need to design a new, digital way of working that focuses on users and has empowered, multidisciplinary teams at its heart. It’s an exciting opportunity to help start something from scratch as part of the leadership team.  

Local Government is a breath of fresh air

This approach of gentle, incremental change also applies to what I’ve learned from Central Government Digital. Joining Local Government - specifically Westminster City Council’s new Digital and Innovation Directorate - gives me a chance to take everything I’ve learned about Digital Transformation of public services, keep what’s great about it, let go of the things that haven’t worked so well, and improve the things I’ve wanted to do for a while.  

Here’s one example, around use of standards. If you look at the Technology Code of Practice and the Service Standard for long enough something becomes clear. The Technology Code of Practice sets the standard for the quality of technology. The Service Standard sets the standard for the quality of solving a whole problem.

When we’re beginning Digital Transformation, we’re starting with work in progress and existing commitments. They’re normally packaged as traditional IT projects and, in all honesty, don’t solve a whole problem. And that’s OK - let’s start with what we do now. Technology Code of Practice is a great, incremental step for making this type of work more user-centred whilst working within existing constraints. This is where we’re starting.

Over 6 to 12 months we’ll build our broader understanding of the overall problems we’re solving. And start to use the Service Standard to assess how well we’re solving the overall problems, across user-journeys and across our channels. It’s hard for a team to make this leap all in one go, it takes time and support to shift to a problem-focused way of working. So we’re going a step at a time.

We’re about to build three in-house, user-centred, multidisciplinary teams. They’ll pick-up work in progress and existing commitments and work to the Technology Code of Practice to ensure it’s user-centred, accessible, inclusive, safe and secure.

Over the next 6 to 12 months our teams will uncover the underlying problems we’re addressing and design a joined-up approach to solving them. At this point we’ve earned the chance to use the Service Standard to its full potential, helping us measure the quality of our overall approach to solving our users’ problems. 

There are other examples of me learning from and adapting Central Government's approach to Digital. These include tweaking use of the Digital, Data and Technology Capability Framework, user research, defining what ‘Digital’ means, defining what a ‘product’ is . . . all of which are blog posts in their own right.  Shout if any of these is of interest. Overall, we’ve got the chance to start from the sum-total of what we’ve learned about digital transformation in the public sector to date. Keep what works. Take-out what doesn’t. And make tweaks and improvements as we go, together. Let me know if you’re interested in any of these and we can share more about them. 

Up next

I had Twitter questions about the product strategy I’m developing and how we’re deciding ‘where to play’, along with the support and space for user research. I’ll share more in a future post.  

More importantly, the founding members of our new Digital and Innovation Directorate will share their experiences in the coming months and we’ll aim to work clearly and creatively in the open. We’ll also share details about opportunities to join our first user-centred, multidisciplinary teams. 

We'll soon be recruiting for lots of roles. If you’re interested to help me and my colleagues build Westminster City Council’s first in-house Digital department then please keep watch for what they are and how to apply.