The title of this post is actually a question we've been asked multiple times in just as many different contexts, and is an appropriate question to ask of Project WIP as a whole considering that we've had a bit of a dry spell when it comes to writing new posts.
So, what has been going on with us? To provide a quick synopsis for the 'tl;dr' types - "a lot". For those who are looking for a bit more information, I've broken it down into easy to read chunks, so read on..!
A change of location
As part of cost-cutting exercises happening across the council, we, along with the other teams in Customer Services, have moved out of our previous home (a rented building on a business park) and back to into the Shirehall.
This has worked in our favour as we are now in a large open-plan office which also contains the Communications team. Being close to them makes it much easier to discuss ideas and work together to get the information we need quicker. Another benefit is that we're now in the same location as a lot of the teams behind the main council services, so arranging meetings (or just popping up to see someone) is not so much of a hassle anymore.
Some new recruits
As you may have noticed, back in January we advertised for a new developer, and this resulted in Luca Colella joining the team. If the name seems familiar to you, there's a reason for that - he previously worked for us on a placement that formed part of his university degree and we wrote a nice post to wish him 'au revoir'.
As it turned out, the end of his degree coincided with us placing the ad, so he put his application in and hoped for the best. Fortunately for us both, the skills he learnt whilst on placement with us, coupled with the new skills he learned during his final year met (and occasionally exceeded) the requirements of the role, and so we happily welcomed him back into the team.
Over the last few months we've also had the pleasure of having Liam Northwood join us as part of his apprenticeship with the council. Originally working with the Family Information Service, we were asked if he could spend a day or two with us each month to shadow us and learn some new skills. We obviously did something right, because we were asked if he could join us full time until he finishes his apprenticeship in September. We agreed, and, as of February, he's been working on the content side of our team with Jane and Mark, carrying out a full review of all of the pages on our website and intranet. Keep an eye on this blog to see his story in his own words!
Redesigning and launching lots of web services
The new.shropshire.gov.uk project is still going strong, and we've seen the launch of numerous new services over the last year, most noticeably those that came under the Fulcrum project, and most recently, the first phase of our Early Help work. Some of these have allowed us to stretch ourselves creatively (we were asked to come up with a completely non-corporate look for Pest Control), and technically (the variety of things you can apply for with our Licensing service meant a challenge to create multiple ways to make the numerous types of licences easier to find, understand and apply for).
We've also been working on a number of revamps for other services, such as Pensions, Connecting Shropshire and the Shropshire Newsroom - each of these taking into account the ever-changing needs of the services running them and the customers who use the websites.
Sharing knowledge and working with others
One of the biggest reasons behind the creation of Project WIP was the desire to share knowledge, and that still applies. Although our blog posts have been conspicuously lacking recently, what we're doing in the 'real world' is still holding up this principle.
We've had other councils visit our team, either to see how we create and manage the services we run, or to chat about how we use Umbraco to create and maintain our websites. Sometimes it's just been a case of exchanging emails or having a chat over the phone, and it's never one-way, as we've often learnt valuable information about their wins and losses in the work they've done.
A few of us have attended or helped out at various digital/government events, locally and nationally, and I've put on my best brave face and stepped up to the challenge of speaking at a few (for those who saw me, thank you for ignoring my obvious nervousness!). Each of those events has helped what we do by opening our eyes to different ways of working, continuously learning new tricks from those trailblazing a way forward, and inspiring us to try new ways to improve what we have.
We're also part of LocalGov Digital, which is a network of digital practitioners in local government organisations from across the UK (see http://localgovdigital.info/about-us/ for more information). The main members of this group have been responsible for organising some of the events we've attended recently, such as LocalGovCamp, and more importantly, the group as a whole is striving to improve the skills, tools and resources we all use, which means creating even better services for the public. Which brings me nicely onto the next point...
Local Government Digital Service Standard
One of the best examples of collaboration we've been involved with is the creation of the Local Government Digital Service Standard as part of the LocalGov Digital group.
We had all been in awe of the Digital Service Standard - previously known as 'Digital by Default' - that the Government Digital Services (GDS) team use to help build services that make up the gov.uk website. As the standard was a proven method of success for building simple, intuitive and helpful online services, it stood to reason that having a similar standard for local government would help to improve the way we work, and allow us to freely share what we built with each other, or collaborate on systems we can all use.
With this in mind, Phil Rumens, vice chair of LocalGov Digital, arranged for a group of us to visit the GDS team back in February to find out more about how it all worked, and have a discussion on how it could be adapted for our use. The day itself was incredibly interesting, as not only did we collectively come to the conclusion that it was possible, but we also got to hear about the highs and lows that led the GDS team to reach the version of the standard that they currently use, which gave us a lot to think about when it came to creating our own version.
After a lot of discussion (often involving some glitchy Google Hangouts), the first incarnation of the Local Government Digital Service Standard was launched in April 2016, and is slowly being adopted by councils. The interest in this standard is very high, with the first summit - taking place on Monday 19 September - running out of tickets within days of its announcement. A second batch of tickets was release shortly after, which again were snapped up.
What's next?
All of this has given us even more ideas for how we can improve the website further, and we'll continually be making improvements as we redesign and launch more new services.
Our biggest aim is to create a brand new homepage for the council, which will effectively signal the beginning of the end for the old "www" version of the website. We're looking to tie together some of the geolocation features within new.shropshire.gov.uk to create a more 'personalised' experience for each visitor, and make it much easier to find services through categorised links and search engine optimised content.