2022–18 snuffelfiets

As autumn arrives I’m realising that office/shed life also involves sometimes being trapped whilst you wait for the rain to stop and a morning commute through the various spider webs. Overall these last couple of weeks have mainly been about innovation, in one way or another including a new air quality monitor for your handlebars. . .

So, what’s happened recently*?

1. I had a great chat with Eddie Copeland from London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) thinking about ways we can support local government and health and social care create bold and innovative services to meet the societal and public sector challenges we’re facing.
2. I hosted a lean coffee for the women in public sector innovation network — lots of great conversation about defining and explaining innovation to others, without using jargon and using examples that resonate. I really liked Onyeka Onyekwelu’s description of the power of echo — showing not telling so that organisations can see for themselves what’s blocking change. The OECD definition of innovation is useful I think and I summarised it in my notes as — new to your context, implemented (not an idea on paper), and (for the public sector) has an impact on public value.
3. On our digital board programme we tested out some new content on digital inclusion and spent time IRL with a board talking about why it’s ok to be a ‘polished sweeper’** of innovation.
4. **I went to Interesting a couple of weeks ago where someone talked about polished sweeping — the idea that taking what someone else has done already, giving it a polish and an update (and importantly doing the hard work to make sure you’re meeting your user needs in your context) is valid innovation.
5. Worked on a blog post with Matt Stibbs on the challenges of interoperability in the NHS.
6. Matt helped unblock me when I got stuck before I’d even started on creating a some prototype content for our digital boards programme for integrated care boards. His advice was spot on — just start, focus for no more than an hour and write down all the thoughts. I now have a very bad set of slides which I can iterate and improve. . .
7. Connie and teams’ work on reducing racial inequalities in sickle cell care was featured in the independent — this is massively important work, the work that matters — that I’m so proud we’re doing.
8. We had our quarterly review at Public Digital where we talked about what continuous development and learning looks like, which led to an interesting conversation with Amanda about growth mindsets. (NB all conversations with Amanda are great, just one of the many things I like about my new job is getting to work with her and Audree Fletcher amongst others)

What did I read/listen to?

This interesting article on estimating the social costs and benefits of cycling infrastructure (Copenhagen has done huge amounts of really good work in this space too), which highlights how and why we have to start thinking differently in our business cases around public value.

DCE - Investing in Bicycle Parking Saves Cities Money

This blog post from Lisa Talia Moretti on designing for relationships not users which in a health and social care context is so important and made me think about the whole ethos and model of buurtzorg.

Some reading around anticipatory innovation governance (sparked by the conversation with the network) .

This lovely piece reviewing Rebecca Solnit’s Orwells Roses book, which I loved reading:

Rebecca Solnit on Writing, Gardening, and the Life of the Mind

And finally this article about about air quality using a monitor for bike handlebars. I am completely charmed by the idea of a snuffelfiets but more importantly it’s about creating and sharing data openly so that we improve our lives.

*a short weeknote hiatus occurred, so these are more like ‘round up the month notes’