Week 9: a building opposite Parliament
This is my weeknote for week two of our Barbados engagement. I won’t go on too much about what we did in Barbados, except to say it was amazing and exhausting. I feel exceptionally privileged to have been asked to come back and work on this. Meeting the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, was amazing. Honestly, the work Public Digital does is on another level.
We’re doing a few things as part of this engagement:
- coaching the CEO, who’s the only employee at the moment
- an alpha team to build GOV.BB
- an institution: GovTech Barbados
- a roadmap
- building capability for the org
- some exemplar services
This week, I’ve been focusing on developing the roadmap for GovTech Barbados, or the Barbados Digital Service, which is our preferred name. I haven’t made as much progress on it as I’d hoped, so that will continue into next week.
I’ve also been talking to former colleagues and others in government about the roles in the alpha team we’re building. Very positive noises from everyone I spoke to. Mentioning Public Digital, Barbados and the Prime Minister has sparked a lot of interest. The pitch revolves around our meeting with the Prime Minister last week. She wants us to build a team to digitally transform government services. Our initial strategy includes setting up ALPHA.GOV.BB and creating some simple digital examples, like digitising forms and making sure data is accurate.
We’ve had a few calls with the CEO of GovTech Barbados. They feel more like friendly chats.
I also set up a blog for GovTech Barbados. The CEO will be writing weekly updates there, which shows quick progress.
This project is an opportunity to apply lessons learned over 15 years across governments. We aim to fast-forward Barbados to where other governments are now. We’ll help the CEO prioritise amid demands from various departments, and build frameworks for him. We also need to show people outside the digital service how to do discovery work.
Everyone we met in Barbados was engaged and forward-thinking. The Chief Licensing Officer had even written a paper on digital driving licences.
I noticed a derelict building opposite Parliament that could house the Barbados Digital Service. It would put digital services right next to the politicians and make a strong statement about how important they are.
Lastly, there are a lot of potholes in Barbados. Driving around them is tricky but manageable. Someone suggested an app for reporting potholes. I think non-digital solutions might be more effective, since potholes are easy to spot.
It’s been a manic week. Everything’s happening at once, and everything seems important. I found and edited this Siri shortcut for adding things to Trello. My head’s been bursting with ideas, and it’s been a great way to get them out. We finished the week with a brilliant planning session.
Have a great weekend, everyone!