Sprint 41
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 Lordcontact a MP or Lord- understand how a MP or Lord represent citizens
What we’ve done
We are at the end-point of our ‘Members Activity’ discovery. It’s been brilliant. There are so many opportunities that it’s borderline overwhelming. I can’t compliment the team enough - really nice atmosphere and great diligent work.
What we achieved in the discovery thus far;
- 1 full week of interviews with journalists, campaigners and public/voters - blogs will follow. Marttiina you ace’d it
- multiple days of analysis of our findings
- doing secondary research and sharing with the team
- discussion with 3 Lords about our work thus far. Really really really encouraging. Even got to have a quick chat with Lord Kirkwood about the beauty of Northumberland.
- more investigations into the data and systems that make up members activity
- investigations into the content around members activity
- thoughts on ethics and potential risks of the work
- more chats on business needs
- added to our list of activities and Ben popped over to help us out with explaining what happens in the House of Lords. Ed also deserves credit for always being around with guidance
- heard updates from the team that created the record for the Welsh assembly - very useful
- great explanations about questions and answers and creating ontologies from Michael - thoroughly deserved ovation from audience
- writing up findings and prepping for finishing off our discovery. We are following this practice to wrap-up our discovery phase - days/rooms/agenda prepped.
Wider team work;
- visited the Department of Health and spoke for 5 minutes about the work of the team
- blogged about a recent product people event we hosted
- blogged about website links
- team were out in force at silicon milkroundabout trying to recruit people to come work with us
- Jenna you will always be a part of the gang, Jake welcome
Random things I’ve learned or have been reading
- interesting how people can shape events in all sorts of ways
- why connecting constituents and their representatives is important
- need to consider more than just people?
- 18/01/2017 to have your say on the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA)
- tech can’t save democracy, we all must take collective responsibility for our behaviours
- investigating the hype
- could we use this one day to record what happens inside the Palace?