Weeknotes E13

Hi, I’m Colin a product manager working at the Department of Health and Social Care. Each week I’m going to keep a running update of the work I’ve done & things I’ve learned along the way.

My current priority:

Helping to procure a team capable of delivering the Healthy Start private beta.

Wednesday

• retro and sprint planning. Jolly but appeals for more people as team are asked to do a lot. Dreams of recruitment being easier too.
• chasing recruitment people.
• I’ve created a doc for colleagues in Healthy Start to stick words and terms they aren’t sure what they mean so can translate them. Jargon-busting.
• Lots of time adding to a tech strategy document. Interesting reading and love contributing.
• Chats about flexible working future
• chats about good tech examples task

Thursday

• chased HR and got good news!! We move forward with recruitment
• went through a future pre-mortem event with colleague from Healthy Start team. Next task is to get people for it.
• Spent some time thinking about re-working the name of Healthy Start. Asked team for contributions and explained what good looks like and why we need to do it. Also soliciting random colleagues to throw their hat in the ring and give suggestions. More the merrier. Will vote on best one and test with users.
• contributed to alternative interview questions. Quite enjoyed thinking through interesting questions to ask people.
• got a new pass for the building. They still use the picture from 2016 even though they made me take a new photo a few months ago. I look like a child.
• updating a new spreadsheet as requested with good tech examples in the world of health and care.

Friday

• annual leave in Newcastle. Eatin’ good.

Monday

• At Edinburgh Fringe! Highlight of the day was Police Cops in Space

Tuesday

• At Edinburgh Fringe! Highlight of the day was After the Cuts

What I’ve been reading BUMPER EDITION

I promised a load of links that I hadn’t shared yet last week. Here are 32.

1. Google AI principles.
2. Jon Ronson great podcast about a disruptive service that changes the porn industry
3. Singaporean GDS experience of delivering a jobs board from the beginning to delivery.
4. Fake news are old nes. Let’s worry about deep fakes.
5. How the Apple airpod foreshadows our future.
6. Example of a great Government form. Also good post on gender, diversity and inclusion in forms.
7. What walls are for blog post. Good to help you test out ideas & iterate them plus show off your work. Agree!
8. Measuring the benefits of your service advice.
9. Principles for a good unboxing experience. Perhaps more important than you realise…
10. Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government and their plans for improving a largely policy-driven department
11. Self driving cars and the problem in wanting to train the people not just the machines.
12. Stages of a service and how we might use them in service design.
13. 7 Facebook patents that serve to track your life and predict your future
14. When you don’t need a data scientist and what you can do to solve crap data.
15. Meat on blockchain. The pilot saw a slaughterhouse for beef share data, the next step will let farmers record data about individual animals onto the blockchain.
16. When not to do a Google Design Sprint.
17. The rise of ‘pseudo-AI’: how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots’ work
18. A review of outsourcing by the British Government. In sum, complex services might not be the best things to outsource.
19. The inaugural emoji research conference.
20. Toxic Technology and how legacy tech should be seen as poisonous to your organisation.
21. Why portals are bad and nobody wants them. Makes me think of the needs of intranets.
22. View on what should be on the next NHS England 10 year plan - argues to focus on the people and what they need.
23. The benefits of tiny vehicles, e.g. electric scooters. Quote: “Little Vehicles can offer a purer, simpler alternative to the automobile. They do one thing—provide mobility.” Citymapper recently included dockless bikes in their app.
24. Government’s output on the web just became a bit more extensive to wade through.
25. Good run through of the benefits and experience of accessibility testing with DAC.
26. How smart devices and the internet of things can be tools of domestic abuse. Quote from the article: “[He] controls the thermostat. He controls the lights. He controls the music… Abusive relationships are about power and control, and he uses technology.”
27. Amazon continues to invest in healthcare. Enters the pharmacy game.
28. Plenty of articles already exist about the diversity crisis in AI, not just in the training data but also the researchers. Excellent video highlighting an aspect of this as AI struggles to identify black women.
29. How to beat the algorithm that may decide on whether you get an interview or not.
30. Mayans used chocolate as money.
31. Babylon claims its chatbot beats GPs at medical exam.
32. The value of shipping data and what you can learn from it.

Shout out to others doing great stuff

Former colleagues in Parliament write updates on the work they are doing. They are fantastic and if you are interested in anything democracy related then check them out:

• The People team
• The Outputs team
• The Data and Search team
• Utilities team