Hopping back on the weeknotes train. Choo Choo. but seriously, I am actually on a train.

I started working with NHS England digital prevention in November last year and I’m heading back after a day in their London office. Notably I had my office induction, so now I can use the lifts unaided. Next step entering the building the un-escorted.

My initial reflections are that the work is fascinating and incredibly important. It has a justifiably high profile. The shift to prevention is touted as fundamental to “healthier people, a healthier economy and healthier finances”. It is one of the three planks (pillars?) of the 10 year health plan.

The work the teams are already doing is essential, it enables millions of people to be vaccinated, screened and tested at home for a wide range of things. But its clear that the ambition is huge, and there is a lot of work to do.

I’m still working out exactly how I can add the most value, but I’ve joined as part of a cross-cutting team that has a few emergent priorities:

1. Make it easier to get work done within the organisation (reducing admin burdens, making assurance processes more efficient, improve knowldeged sharing across teams etc)
2. Smoothing the path outside of the org (do the pre-emptive stratehic policy work to increase the changes that services will be successful when they launch)
3. Better define the expectations of how ‘prevention’ will be delivered via the NHS App (based on understanding how people actually use it, rather than simply the promises that Ministers have made).
4. Oh and of course, respond quickly to immediate requests to slides, stats, reports, quotes, prototypes for people to take to their next speaking engagement.

The overriding feeling is that its an incredibly impressive array of people that have been assembled, many of whom are actively writing weeknotes or blog posts about their work. The team’s design history pages are also worth a read.

But of course, as anyone who’s tried to work within digital teams, as part of a big complex legacy org, talented people is only half the story. Currently I can see that an awful lot of energy is being expended on telling the story of the work externally, trying to create the headroom for teams to be able to operate, both politically and financially.

Not a lot of that *feels* like the work, but without it – none of the work is happening.

That’ll do for now…hopefully more to come.

In other news

I recently caved and set up LinkedIn and Insta accounts for my un-hustley side hustle of silly prints, stickers and memes about design and whatever else takes my fancy. Mostly creating it to avoid people having to put up with them clogging up my feed which otherwise is extremely professional of course. Always be meme-ing.