Agile: the writing's on the wall
Two of our project managers went undercover in an agile Service Design team. Here's what they found.
About the team
Show ho ho and tell 19 December - the 2018 wrap up
Bing Crosby is playing through some laptop speakers, there’s a stack of mince pie boxes on the secure document disposal and if you squint your eyes, there might just be snow in the air. In Chelmsford, it’s beginning to feel …
The new Service Design team - we're recruiting!
Hi, I’m Vicki and I’m Head of Service Design at Essex County Council. Over the past few months I’ve been working on what the new service design team will look like. I’m pleased to say we’ve settled on the structure, …
Stockport and Essex working together
In Stockport and Essex we’ve both been on journeys that brought us to an important conclusion: Flexibility of our content offer and collaboration across Local Government are key to how we redesign our services and engage with citizens.
My first 2 weeks at Essex County Council
I’m John. I’ve been a content designer at Essex County Council for two weeks. As a content designer, my neighbourhood is essex.gov.uk, and along with the rest of the Service Design team, we’re committed to making it better.
Show and tell notes: 12th Sept
We had a break from show and tells over the summer and this was the first one of the new ‘term’. Good to see you all! While people have been on their holidays, the service design team have been beavering …
Measuring our progress
I'm Chris Babajide and I'm a digital analyst in the Service Design team. It's my job to help ensure we use measurement in a meaningful way. In this post I'll talk about how we developed a measurement and KPI framework …
Show and tell notes - 23 May 2018
At this week’s show and tell we heard about 2 pieces of work that showcased the ‘test, learn and improve’ approach that we try to take to all of our work.
Why we focus on ‘Service Design’ and not ‘Digital’
This post talks about why we’ve changed the way we describe our team and the work we do. One of the main issues we’ve had with having a ‘digital’ team is that it suggests that designing and building online services is the responsibility of a select group of people in a corner of the organisation. We also found that colleagues found it hard to understand what ‘digital’ really meant: can you ‘be digital’ or ‘think digital’?
Hello world - come work with us!
We are just at the beginning of our journey, and we're busy building teams to help us explore and deliver what a council of the future should be. We believe that by focussing on service design, putting user need at the heart of our thinking, then we can bring a real focus and impact on the challenges facing Essex.