To achieve our purpose and vision, progress our priorities and continue to live and breathe our principles we have set 6 strategic commitments.
1. Revise and streamline our governance processes
Goal:
We have streamlined governance processes which enable us to deliver at pace and pivot when priorities change while still providing the required assurance.
Commitments:
- Mature our DDaT Governance function, working to embed streamlined governance with sufficient and appropriate controls in place for the level of change.
- Establish the necessary DDaT Governance framework to enable quick decision lines and streamlined paths across delivery.
- Embed a comprehensive delivery framework that standardises our approach across the full lifecycle of products and services.
2. Improve communication and visibility
Goal:
We have clarity of purpose, vision and priorities across the directorate. Key messages are communicated meaningfully and consistently ensuring all colleagues are aware of important decisions and changes. Colleagues are easily able to find the information they need when they need it.
Commitments:
- Publish and communicate this strategy.
- Place a focus on transparency of priorities, decisions and changes.
- Ensure our DDaT roadmap is visible and current.
- Ensure service plans are visible and current.
3. Make things repeatable and predictable
Goal:
We deliver consistently high-quality outputs efficiently and enable colleagues to move from one delivery to another seamlessly by making our processes repeatable and predictable.
Commitments:
- Create clear and defined strategies including enterprise architecture, data, people, technology and communications.
- Expand our playbook to include all appropriate standards and best practices.
- Enhance our focus on documentation ensuring critical knowledge is not lost.
- Create well defined, tested and repeatable processes.
- Implement defined KPIs and measures across all services and report on them.
4. Design and embed strategic workforce planning
Goal:
At any given time we can see who our people are, what they are working on and when they will be available to begin something new. We have the workforce we need for today, the capability to scale it quickly and are continuously developing and growing new talent to be able to meet the challenges of the future.
Commitments:
- Ensure the DDaT establishment is known and visible within a workforce management tool, identifying our people, the skills they have, what they are working on, and when that work will be complete.
- Design and adopt processes to be able to quickly scope, size and shape work/teams needed when new work comes in.
- Introduce a seamless process to book and bring in teams.
- Ensure every colleague has a comprehensive Development Plan in place which speaks to their personal as well as their professional development.
- Continue to invest in growing our own talent through development opportunities such as apprenticeships, student placements and work experience.
- Develop and embed a succession planning framework for DDaT.
5. Deliver efficient, value added DDaT services
Goal:
We focus on delivering value for our customers as quickly as possible, we know what our services cost and promote a culture of innovation and continuous improvement to deliver efficiencies and add value wherever possible.
Commitments:
- Enhance our use of measures and metrics to drive excellence across our services and enable evidence-based decision making.
- Increase transparency around what services cost us so that we can invest to improve the efficiency of those services.
- Streamline our delivery processes with a focus on reducing duplication, waste and error.
- Stop work at the right time when it is clear the benefits or the project is not right for the business anymore.
- Continue to invest in reliable, modern technologies and provide expertise to the organisation to help deliver wider efficiencies using technologies.
- Scale appropriate training around agile mindset, creativity, fail fast, etc. for colleagues at all levels across the directorate.
6. Support the organisation to reduce system debt
Goal:
We know where systems debt exists and have a forward plan to address it. Our delivery approach minimises new debt and empowers us to regularly review and revise where necessary.
Commitments:
- Establish a Technical Debt Steering Group.
- Establish a Technical Debt Programme.
- Establish a continuous approach to identifying and addressing system debt across our estate to deliver efficiently and consistently across the service lifecycle.
- Ensure our delivery approach includes time to review and, where necessary, enhance what has already been delivered, reducing the level of debt being built into services.