Weeknotes E23
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
- retrospective time
- planning for the next sprint
- getting help from procurement team for future pre-paid card procurement task
- was a user research participant, fun to be on the other side of user research
- helping PHE team with some resources that explain RCTs without using copy
- did some research into merchant IDs - these are things that help us to potentially restrict where you could use a pre-paid card
- SoS vision was published. Not every suggestion I contributed made it but I see bits of my input. That is rewarding. Next is delivery…
- public health interventions show and tell
- created a reading list for suppliers (*contract pending) all about Healthy Start so they can get up to speed asap
- getting Sam (new colleague) up to speed with a potential vitamins discovery
Thursday
- Talk to Frank alpha spend control form
- connecting CCS and DHSC procurement teams so we are all onboard the pre-paid card procurement train
- Healthy Start phone chat. Chat about our proposed inception phase with suppliers, vitamins, contracts, pre-paid cards.
- content crit and giving comments for an NHS Digital document
- Vitamins chat. Colleague Katie wants to be involved. The team grows further.
- discussion about working with policy professionals and how best to support them
- Healthy Start planning
- digging through the CCS pre-paid card terms and conditions. Enlightening!
- selling my yoga spot in November. Holiday alert, making plans.
- made another presentation for suppliers about recent experiment done by team in Cardiff on using vouchers for non-eligible items
- emailed the person that did the research to get more info and see if they’d like to potentially reproduce the experiment but with cards!
Friday
- finding old Healthy Start research
- doing the departments people survey - i said i was happy about most things.
- organise Vitamins discovery mini-chat
- mid-year review
- went to cross-Gov product unconference. Marty Cagan spoke - nodded in agreement with most of what he said. Basically hire competent people who are not toxic and empower them to solve problems.
Monday
- had an interview for an internal Civil Service scheme, never sure how these things go. Feels like I always have more to say. Was honest though so don’t think it went terribly.
- sitting with Healthy Start team going through tasks
- emailed and chased a bunch of people for answers to questions
- cycled over to see PHE crew and did a workshop with academics and team in the ‘measuring success of public health interventions’ work. Was fun. Like helping others and team.
- had a call with NHSBSA colleague. Sooooo kind and nice. Extremely helpful Geordie who talked us through tips and experience of getting a pre-paid card provider. One takeaway is to include in the contract that the supplier updates you about innovations in the space. So if they can produce a new version of the card which is better for users, better for the environment or cheaper then we can capitalise on it.
- read through future healthy start blog and made comments
- forwarded on reading materials that were unearthed for vitamins discovery
- discussing which platform we should use to blog
Tuesday
- did some 360 feedback for a colleague
- wrote a justification email about going to the Responsible Tech conference. Sounds right up my street.
- healthy start phone chat, updating team on great chat with NHSBSA
- on a call with DWP team researching healthy start awareness/signposting
- doing arts and crafts to create a physical board full of Brexit tasks
- going through survey results, 64 participants - ace!
- updated presentation and wrote first draft of blog to accompany results
What I’ve been reading
- Tim BL shares his vision for improving the web. I’m in Tim! Love the sound of a personal online data store.
- FT with an interesting article on the history and importance of booze and its positive health ramifications if done in moderation.
- Well told story on advocating for interoperability in the world of health and social care services, specifically the ambulance services.
- A long post on getting better data in healthcare with Wardley maps to sink your teeth into.
- The story of London Bridge moving to Arizona. Lovely photo essay.
- Life expectancy numbers are falling. Punishing effects of loneliness also making the news.
- Ex-colleague Michael discussing the perils of whittling down to atomised user needs. Michael’s a fabulous communicator when inspired to do so. Always worth readings/listening to even if you don’t agree with every opinion.
- Got a job recently… Want a bump up in the pay offer - there might be tools out there to help.Article reports that 50% of men and 70% of women don’t even bother to negotiate at all.
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: