Sprint 47

Hi, I’m Colin a product manager working on beta.parliament.uk. Each sprint I’m going to keep a running update of the work we’ve done & things I’ve learned along the way.

The team’s current focus remains on helping users to:

• find a MP or Lord
• contact a MP or Lord
• understand how a MP or Lord represent citizens

What we’ve done

This was the sprint of Alan’s glorious birthday. Kinder treats were consumed. We also came to the end of members activity alpha and rushed to get Lords pages ready for release.

What we have achieved:

• Nas looked into written q’s and a’s on the current site and delved into the usage of ‘Daily Reports’. Great summary that spawned more questions!
• We had our 3rd round of research! Final of alpha. Lots learned and explored over the 3 rounds.
• We analysed the findings from the 3rd round of testing - insights discovered such as journalists place a high value on time stamped info since it aids them in finding the activity they are after so they can verify the info is accurate and reliable to report on
• We organised all of the alpha wrap up that starts in the next sprint (Colin went mad and booked rooms all around the estate - a tour of every building in Parliament about to commence)
• Write ups of findings and testing
• BA chats - Karol chatted to people in the business and a staff member for an MP came over for a chat > very interesting to hear how activity in Parliament is affected if the MP represents a place with devolved status (basically they won’t get involved with things around devolved powers, e.g. Health)
• Michael of data weeknotes fame popped by to tell us about Oral Q & A things and set up time with Bryony to look into URLs.

Wider team work:

• Lords photos work consumed some of the team. Mainly chasing and fixing things. Credit to Bryony, Alan and Jake for helping to do the following:
• Re-designing the Lords pages and adding media pages so users can download the new portraits
• Identifying and pushing for deceased, missing, ineligible & retired members of the House of Lords being accurate and up to date
• Fixing broken contact details on Lords pages
• Providing good service and making name changes that were requested by a Baroness before the photos go live
• Scrubbing up the content on the page to do with members of the HOL.
• Helping to make sure the count of members is correct
• Noticing, documenting and pushing for wonky crops and odd colour issues being amended.
• identifying measures of success before the release of the portraits.
• Colin went to show’n’tell with colleagues in the Lords Library
• Roadmap chats and team structure changes happened
• Changes to the roles pages is making progress
• Adding a banner to the old website + beta pages is done. Ready to pull the trigger post-Lord photo release - Naz also been thinking about maybe A/B testing where the banner is.
• Chats with Laurence about democratic values
• Chats about the future of A/V in Parliament
• Really engaging talk organised by ParliOUT

Random things we’ve learned or have been reading:

• Fake news game
• Long read but a fascinating insight into the American opioid crisis
• Code of Standards for Public Sector Algorithmic Decision Making
• The Rise of Virtual Citizenship
• Augmenting our intelligence and becoming a centaur. One finding is “AIs are best at choosing answers. Humans are best at choosing questions.”
• MPs to get pay rise 1.8% to £77,379
• Let the people decide the budget? Worked in Ancient Greece-ish
• Digital democracy and Welsh “e-voting” plans (one day it will just be voting)
• The challenges when working in goverment, same is true for Parliament
• A gender-based budget
• Predictive policing, also available in the UK
• Should we get rid of trending
• The wider implications of autonomous vehicles
• Becoming a GDPR data steward
• Juicy stories sexier than facts on Twitter. Basically… “false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.” Reddit and sharing news that might not be of the highest journalistic standards. Great quote: “I believe the biggest risk we face as Americans is our own ability to discern reality from nonsense, and this is a burden we all bear.”
• Advertising that tracks you
• “To attract a more diverse workforce, companies need to present themselves as diverse communities of professionals.”
• “The Like button is our new ballot box, and democracy has been transformed into an algorithmic popularity contest.”
• Cause chaos by hitting elections, finance but also healthcare?

Alan birthday special section

Alan’s quote for this sprint:

“The vague, living countryside, the moon, the remains of the day did their work in me; so did the gently downward road, which forestalled all possibility of weariness. The evening was near, yet infinite.” - Jorge Borges