🕰 A long month, and lots going on. I’ve been thinking lately of the concept of the ‘breaking change’ in software evolution and how useful it can be to apply it to organisational change.

In the context of where ‘digital transformation’ may be seen solely as a ’technology thing’ (it rarely is), I wonder in presenting it as a ‘breaking change’, if we could frame things differently. Inherently this type of change requires users/stakeholders to do something themselves to reap the benefits. The ‘break’ is positive, leading to better things, but needs collective commitment to work. Pertinent thoughts as I move through the month and plan for change across our mahi(work).

The work

🚀 We continue to progress in our planning for the future. Informed by our technology strategy, my service line design is really taking shape and is an exciting opportunity to really move forward as a team to deliver what our business, customers want and need in 2025 and beyond. It is especially poignant as the future census model becomes clearer, it is good that we are on a firm footing.

Essentially we need to produce and share more relevant, up-to-date data and statistics in ways that make it easier for everyone…sounds easy?…it kind of is, and it isn’t!…it is a multi-faceted problem we need to address as an organisation, in tandem and with resolve. I truly believe we are committed to that which pleases me. 😄

The rest

🎤 The month revolved around a GovTech conference at Sky Stadium in Wellington, where I was part of a speaking panel talking about ‘Sustaining Transformation in 2025: Aligning Digital Innovation with Public Sector Priorities’ talking about amongst other things:

• Maximising efficiency and managing costs via optimisation strategies
• Deploying low-cost, high-impact automation tools

The talk itself went well I feel, and generally positive feedback afterwards, and as always at these things, some of the most interesting conversations happened at the sidelines, meeting new people doing really interesting work, including a great conversation with the team behind great recent work in launching a prototype chatbot GovtGPT.

Though I talked a lot about challenges in NZ in the all-of-government space, it is important that we do not get arrested by them, and I see there are a lot of talented, energetic and passionate people wanting to make things better for people through the services we build with them. I’m hoping the pace at which we deliver those services sometimes, doesn’t lead to fatigue and disaffection, killing any culture of innovation.

In terms of the other talks, I really enjoyed Angus Deacon’s (Worksafe NZ) talk about ‘The Digital Shift: How Storytelling and User-Driven Change Delivered Results‘; something we can do better in our technology service design space. I feel we over-utilise the Solution Architecture Design Document format as the complete picture in addressing business and user needs when, of course, this is not the only picture. Techniques like storyboarding really invigorate discussions, illuminates, and invites feedback faster, earlier, which can only be a good thing.

The ‘The AI Legal Landscape: What Every CIO Needs to Know‘ talk by Tom Maasland on AI regulation was also interesting, outlining the relative lack of coherent legislative regulation globally, with the EU at the forefront. Tom outlined how a lack of global consensus on how to approach AI, could be problematic as production, consumption patterns spread across diverse jurisdictions make it difficult to construct guardrails - damage reverberates via deepfake, mis/disinformation dynamics…a lot to catch up on.

The play

🎵 Had a really nostalgia tinged listen to a wonderful podcast with Brendan Murphy of The Four of Us talking about their album Classified Personal - lovely to listen to wonderful songs I’ve not heard in far too long, and to learn some of the stories behind them.

It is one of my favourite Irish albums of all time, and just oozes Belfast-ness(!) for me, having soundtracked a lot of good life times there!

✏️ I also went to the Disney exhibition at Takina Wellington with the kids. I think i was just as excited to see the craft behind the art, and perhaps some work ponderings in that Jungle Book sketch too. 😛

🆒 I’ve used this a couple of times of late; a very handy outline of accessibility guideline goodness.

🍰 Finally, another nugget from the GovTech conference referred to by one of the speakers, the ‘start with a cupcake’ approach - resonates as always.

Sin e an scéal (that’s the story).

Laters.