On January 24, the Department of Digital Service and Open Government held their monthly all-hands meeting.
Highlights
- Mail services are soon moving from inside Room 207 to the end of the hallway in lockable cabinets. This will create more work space and reduce distractions.
- In February, we will start outsourcing all major printing jobs to the County of Marin’s Print Shop. They offer more printing services (door hangers, business cards, banners, etc.) and are more cost-effective.
- The network team is expanding into a larger space near the current server room, thanks to a storage room swap with the Police Department. Thanks, PD!
- Overall our infrastructure metrics are pretty healthy, but data usage is trending upwards. This makes sense given the transition towards cloud and browser based software that requires internet and our usage of more devices.
- We typically get between 300-480 support tickets each month. How does that breakdown? For December:
- 85 – Network (internet, speed, bandwidth)
- 75 – Hardware (break fix, replace, new)
- 69 – User Accounts (new users, passwords, additional access)
- 37 – Off-boarding from the network
- 34 – Microsoft Office upgrade
- 28 – Phone-related
- 17 – Print Shop requests
- Eric’s tips for how we can improve? Be proactive!
- Refer people to self-help guides and resources
- Think about how issues might affect others
- Document, document, document! Take the time to turn your ticket into an asset for the next technician that comes after you.
Tony Fortenberry, from Agile Government Leaders and CivicActions, joined us to talk about his experience with agile project management and digital service delivery at both the local and state government level. Some key takeaways:
- It takes a village! A strong digital service culture requires buy-in, alignment, and engagement with the executive level, the budget, oversight, procurement, legal, project management, technical team, and your users.
- To embrace a digital services culture, focus on empowerment, collaboration and products.
- Build services with users, not for them. Practice human-centered design and continuous participation.
- Small is the new big. Focus on a roadmap and capabilities, rather than a schedule and requirements. Spread out the risk by working in an agile, modular, and iterative way to avoid surprises at the end.
- Default to open. Public organizations should create public goods.
- Don’t get distracted! Create time and space to focus on what really matters and get the work done.