Digital

New start? Feels like home already – Scottish Digital Academy

November 27, 2019 by Enoch Kabalo No Comments | Category Digital Scotland

In September 2019 I joined the Scottish Digital Academy from 25 year career in NHS Scotland yet coming to SG is less of a new start and more like a home from home.

Way back in 2006, I’d spent a couple of years working closely with the SG as an NHS communications manager on new ways of measuring hospital waiting times. A year after that was delivered, I found myself at St Andrew’s House, this time as an embedded communications lead on the delivery of the 18 week referral to treatment standard. And five years after that ended, I was back as part of a joint SG/NHS challenge for CivTech 2.0 which led onto to joining the Scottish Public Sector Analytical Collaborative developing user focused design resources.

But even though the SG was a ‘well-kent’ place to me, why move from a long standing career in health data communications to agile coaching? That might seem like a bit of an unusual step so I wanted to share with you what I think is the golden thread that joins these two seemingly very different roles together and that is a personal passion for translating complicated ‘stuff’ – doing the hard work to make it simple for the user.

Associate Agile Coach, Joyce Dalgleish at the CivTech Public Entrepreneur course in November

Having previously worked on a Digital Transformation programme, I had seen how staff often switched off when faced with unfamiliar and unexplained terminology. And that’s why I wanted to come to the Scottish Digital Academy, to help translate Agile for a public sector audience so that colleagues and ultimately citizens will benefit.

In the Academy, we explain what all those strange words and phrases mean, share the mindset, values and principles that underpin Agile as well as tools and techniques that support user centred, iterative ways of working and we do that of all through a public sector lens.

Agile is… post-it notes.

In December I’m looking forward to delivering my first solo training session ‘Demystifying Agile’. This short session is a bite-sized introduction to Agile, what it is and why we use it in government. It would be lovely to see you there or at one of the many other courses that the Academy offer – from a one day discovering agile days to the ten day agile foundation.

Be first to hear when new course dates are released by following the Academy on Twitter @ScotDigAcademy or visit Scottish Digital Academy.

And if you want more of this agile / communications / public sector / data / tech type chat you can find me on Twitter @joycedalgleish

Tags: Digital Scotland, digital transformation, Scottish Digital Academy, Scottish Governemnt

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