risual engaged with a rapidly changing county council looking to increase efficiencies whilst moving to more agile ways of working, enabling them to meet the needs of their users, prioritise digital and technology transformation initiatives and commission internal and/or external solutions (e.g. digital platform). They also required support in the creation of new governance structures and operating models to support the change. The new service the client required was an integrated, user-centered Digital and Technology Service that supported their organisational change initiatives. It needed to include:

  • Digital and technology service leadership.
  • A service that could meet growing demand.
  • Delivery of highly sought-after skills and expertise.

Initial priorities from an implementation point of view included designing a user-centered early engagement service, working with the client’s IT department to improve self-service and support, and ensuring the digital platform team was ready to meet the demand created by modern ways of working and a shift to Digital thinking. As identified above, the new service needed to feature an improved Early Engagement capability to support rapid user-centered response. The early engagement capability needed to provide:

  • A highly visible entry point to filter tasks appropriately.
  • Faster access to digital and technology specialists.
  • Support for identifying user needs.
  • Rapid collaboration that could inform business case development by service areas.

risual’s approach was to provide a framework to enable collaborative working between resources within the Digital and Technology Service the client had introduced. risual to ensure a shared understanding of strategic objectives and the goals of the wider organisation. This included individual directorates and the underlying principles that would enable the service to facilitate ‘fit for purpose’ and ‘fit for future’ digital and technology-enabled process. This enabled the client to deliver effective and efficient, economic and meaningful frontline services and administrative support processes. In addition, we evaluated and refined a central government model, processes and systems that identified what was required to deliver effective digital services, but ,ore importantly, an environment that fostered and supported the development of digital skills, capabilities, culture, and behaviours.

In parallel to designing the tools and templates for the Digital and Technology service, we completed a review of all projects and programs within the organisation and engaged with stakeholders to pilot and share our knowledge and experience of delivering end-to-end services.

Realisation of benefits was integral to the approach and risual will facilitate a Benefits Dependency Mapping (BDM) workshop for the project to map the cause and effect between delivery work-streams, through the anticipated outputs and outcomes to the expected measurable benefits. Benefits profiles and trajectories are then allocated ownership within the organisation to drive accountability whilst ensuring a high degree of rigor and accountability to validate the client’s return of investment.

The introduction of the new Digital and Technology Service to increase efficiencies was catalysed by an increase in contact points for the client’s employees requiring a digital or technology solution. These contact points included:

  • Support Works.
  • ICT Helpdesk Business Partner.
  • The Adoption and Change team.
  • The Digital Transformation team.
  • The Digital Communication team.

We identified over 15% of projects that were not delivering significant value or addressing recognised user needs which could be stopped, freeing up resources and allowing the organisation to increase efficiencies to us their time on more valuable activities.

  • Collaboratively worked with the Digital and Technology service to design, rollout and embed governance processes and procedures enabling strategically aligned prioritisation, escalation, and timely decision making.
  • Validated the vision for the department.
  • Developed a current vs future skills and capabilities matrix based on the GDS/DDAT framework including personal development plans.
  • Development of the Digital and Technology leadership team towards agile working, through dedicated and focussed Agile coaching.
  • Introduced a strategic and thorough organisational engagement strategy and approach that the Digital and Technology team could understand, with buy-in from the wider organisation.

For more information contact risual.

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