Sprint 51

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:

Make written questions and answers easy to find, easy to comprehend and a trusted source for re-use.

What we’ve done

Short week as I’m handing the keys over to Alan to continue these sprintnotes. Typing this up on my last hour in work! [insert sad face]

What we have achieved:

• Written Q and A pages are alive and kicking and are available on our dev environment.
• we’ve noticed a few things to fix including some content changes, the way tables look and issues with links
• Bryony continues to be a trooper and wrangle SPARQL queries
• Marttiina ran two sessions - one on findings from our a survey we sent out about what types of contact MP’s receive in their constituency offices
• The other was all about going through previous research to do with the contact journey which was a ton of fun and loved the intro activity!
• we had a fantastic retro by Victor
• We moved! Proud residents in Richmond house now. Some of us may of been on a wander around the building and found a number of secret rooms.
• Fixed social media and names for MPs on beta
• Ministerial change updates
• Lots of effort into how to get to the Questions and Answers

5 most visited Member pages on beta between April 19th and May 2nd:

1. Diane Abbott
2. Grant Shapps
3. Sajid Javid
4. Amber Rudd
5. Jeremy Corbyn

Wider team work:

• a retrospective about how we delivered the new Peers and bishops pages with portraits!
• Bryony wrote a blog post!!
• Naz finished a blog post. 5 blogs in a few weeks. Blog-tastic.
• we held a secret sandwich event and made each other lunch. Lots of smiling and chomping.

Random things we’ve learned or have been reading:

BUMPER EDITION

• “One of the first things Liam Fox ever said to me, back when he was Chairman of the Party years ago, was: “You have to be absolutely clear about what your loyalty is. Your loyalty first and foremost, before anything else at all, is to your constituents. They’re the ones who employ you, they’re the ones who voted for you, and they’re the ones that you must look after. Number two is your loyalty to your country and you’ve got to think about the national picture. Only when you’ve satisfied those two things can you then be loyal to your party.” It was an interesting bit of advice which I’ve never forgotten.” - Mark Garnier interview
• Also similar in depth interview with ex-Transport Sec of State Patrick Mcloughlin. Enjoying these Institute for Government chats.
• NFL player data to be shared amongst teams. Ethics considered.
• Writing for the web advice. Basically most important info first, everything else is secondary.
• Ada Lovelace Institute founded. Looking into the ethics of data.
• Cambridge Analytica model - might not be as terrifyingly good as the media first assumed
• “Fictionalising the future can be an effective way of realising it and making it familiar” - does science fiction point to energy use in the future?
• Ethical challenges of self-driving cars. Also interesting study.
• KAIST in hot water over researching autonomous weapons.
• Report into China’s social credit system
• Thematic roadmapping
• Another attempt at unbiased news
• Windows and Microsoft’s evolution
• 2 ideas to open up data for the common good
• Using communities and local institutions as the foundation of trust online
• Interesting insights into affiliates on Facebook
• Some classic reasons why personas fai
• Tim Berners-Lee interview, discusses how monopolies hurt innovation.
• Alexa and Google Home looking into new ways to listen to your interactions
• Pothole gets a birthday!
• Voter ID trial in upcoming local elections. I worry around those without ID - while at DWP learned about it’s surprisingly common for the most vulnerable people in society often don’t have a passport, drivers license or other form of ‘official’ ID.
• Online voting event in the palace on the 8th of May about lessons learned from New South Wales (NSW) in Australia introduction of remote online voting since 2011.
• Jeremy Hunt faces up to social media giants with new child-protection laws
• The opportunity & challenge facing DCMS who are now the responsible Government department for ‘data’
• Content clean-up at Facebook and how it enforces what stays available and what gets banned
• Small change to nudge people into signing up for treatment at places with a shorter queue
• Fascinating article on what all the markings on ships mean and a bit of history of why they are there. - this is premium geeky.
• The dangers of measuring performance. ‘Metric fixation’ can get us focused on short-term inappropriate goals.
• The future of the scientific paper.
• If we give robots ‘personhood’ will that help manufacturers shirk responsibility if things go wrong?
• Article looking into the severity of how being unable to speak English affects your democratic participation
• New Gmail redesign with confidential mode
• Loving the visualisations of the growth of Amazon. Simple and effective
• Policy options when facing the platform economy
• How Facebook is going to deal with future election ads
• Paid for reviews on Amazon - sellers will try game the system if there is only one shop front.
• How Facebook news feed shapes our public discourse.
• Interesting case of how China adopted online payment systems and why they diverged from the United States
• Op-ends have the ability to change people’s minds about issues. Interesting for civil discourse.
• History of the pineapple and its cultural importance. Once a status symbol, now in cans and on top of pizzas!
• Hansard report about engagement in politics and Parliament! Well worth checking out.

Check out!

More updates from my colleague Fred!! Keep it up!

Goodbyes

So this is my final sprint notes and goodbyes. To the team - you were an absolute joy to be around and made it a pleasure to come into work each day. Still more interesting things to achieve and keep fighting the good fight. To wider colleagues, I learned a lot and will look back with fond memories of my time here. Shall miss you all!