Culture is a key element of the Loosemore definition of digital and councils that embed this culture tend to be far more successful in their digital endeavours.
Digital culture means working in the open, always learning, being collaborative, and seeking to reuse and improve work wherever possible. It is about being curious about the world and the work we do, and always seeking to make things better.
Indicators of a strong digital culture are doing innovative, experimental work, having teams blogging, running different communities of practice, lunch and learn sessions, evidence of regularly iterating on work to improve it, and strong collaborative working in multidisciplinary teams.
“Most blog posts about communities of practice cover the first couple of years. I had the unusual chance to lead one for six (the product management profession at the Ministry of Justice). That gave me a front-row seat to how…
What is this recipe? A Digital Advocates Network (sometimes called Digital Champions) is a group of volunteer staff from all parts of the council who are enthusiastic about improving ways of working. They are not necessarily technical experts. They are…
“There’s been a lot of work to define what a good digital service looks like (see for example the government’s Digital Service Standard). It’s less obvious what to do if you want to make your whole organisation digital, and there…
“If you’re a leader or a manager of people, part of your job is telling them that they’re allowed to think and behave that way. Most people, in most organisations, will be nervous of doing so unless they have permission…
“The Tacit community of practice kick-off canvas helps get your community started or reset using a canvas framework that guides you through six questions.” An archived PDF of this page can be downloaded if the original is inaccessible.
“There’s lots of ways of working in the open, blogging is just one of them.” An archived PDF of this page can be downloaded if the original is inaccessible.
“Our definition of digital says: “Applying the culture, processes, business models & technologies of the internet-era to respond to people’s raised expectations.” Once they’ve heard that, the next thing people always ask us is: “OK. But how? How do I…
“The traditional approach to comms is to do a lot of planning up front. Many teams will embark on a “comms strategy”, or perhaps write a set of “comms principles”, and then set about filling a calendar or grid with…
“Over the past year, our journey towards bolstering our innovation practice has been both rewarding and insightful. As you might expect, our focus on innovation is not merely about adopting new technologies or data platforms, but about creating a culture…
Join me for a light-hearted hour of sharing challenges, ideas, and experience about innovating in local public services. Localise Live! takes place on the last Thursday of every month at 12pm until 1pm and is open to public sector people only.…
What is this recipe? A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a common specialism or profession and come together regularly to learn from each other and improve their skills. Think of it as a club…