LG/WWW

In the past ten days we ran four council meetings completely remotely. This included our special Full Council meeting on 29th April, with over 40 councillors in attendance, you can watch it below. We're using Zoom Webinars and live streaming through YouTube, but this piece isn't about the technology, it's about the wider approach we took to enable us to deliver fully remote council meetings. Here's what we did: Involved everyone from the start It needed a team effort to enable this to happen. Officers from Democratic, Legal, IT, and Digital teams, and senior councillors were involved in various aspects, including research, drafting guidance, drafting policy, deciding which platform to use, deciding how that platform should be used, and testing. Researched and built on existing knowledge We'd already live streamed council meetings before starting in 2015 , and some councils were already ahead of us enabling remote meetings . This tweet by Peter Fleming,

I've been formulating some thoughts about modernising libraries for while now, and this tweet from Neil Jefferies Libraries looking to get back to "normal" after this. Realise that this may well be the new normal, the library needs to become a virtual rather than a physical space. Funders, this also means that digitisation is back on the map. Big time. — Neil Jefferies (@NeilSJefferies) April 3, 2020 and a need to take my mind off current work around the coronavirus pandemic for a few minutes has given me added impetus to write about them. Whilst there's an obvious need for libraries to be digital, offering access to their catalogue, ebooks, and other services online, I disagree with Neil's view that they should become a virtual rather than a physical space. I do however think libraries need to change, and here's why. Let's start by asking, what are libraries' physical spaces currently utilised for the majority of the time? The answer to thi

A few years ago I was the discussing service redesign with a senior member of staff where I work. Some of the services they managed were changing from delivery by a member of staff to self-service and online. There were other changes in the pipeline too and they joked, "there'll be none of my service left soon" as if they saw the services they managed as being defined by the people who delivered them. This isn't the case of course, and whilst we should never downplay the role of dedicated staff who deliver a service, the service is the product of what is delivered, not who or what is delivering it. Why am I telling something you probably already know? Over the past couple of couple of years I've noticed some with a "digital mindset" have the same approach as my colleague, albeit about a different medium. I've seen some awful online services offered by central government and councils alike, and it's great we're starting embed a design