Planning back office
Weekly update - 5 April 2019
Following last week’s Show & Tell, retrospective and planning, we’re now more than half way through our final sprint. ‘Concept creation and recommendations’ are the themes at the forefront of this sprint, alongside our sprint goal: ‘To get a concept into the hands of planning officers and tested for feedback’.
Watch a video of week 7 activities
Some of the activities covered by the team this week include:
Creating prototype concepts
Taking the outputs of last week’s co-design session with Planning Officers across Southwark Council to begin identifying possible early concepts, the team created four low-fidelity, early prototype concepts of back-office systems.
Testing prototype concepts with Planning Officers
The team took the four prototype concepts on the road, as an additional part of our ongoing user interviews, to test and get feedback directly from Planning Officers at Tower Hamlets Council.
Setting up a mock service assessment
To conclude this discovery, the team is assessing the phase against the Local Government Digital Service Standard, ensuring each of the relevant points of the service standard have been met through a mock service assessment.
A huge thanks to David Durant and Martin Chaney, from the GLA team, for their help in getting the wheels in motion for this assessment.
Attending Hackney Council’s ‘Submit my Planning Application’ Show & Tell
Some members of the team headed over to Hackney Council to attend the final Show & Tell of the ‘Submit my Planning Application’ project with Snook and Hactar. As a key project in the planning space, regular conversation and communication has been taking place between both projects, ensuring alignment.
Beginning to bring together insights and recommendations
With less than one week to go, the team has started bringing together and finalising insights gathered over the last seven weeks, across three core areas:
- user research
- technical exploration
- business case
These will then form the discovery report at the end of the phase.
What’s next?
Next week, the team is planning on:
- carrying out further user interviews and testing prototype concepts across more teams, with confirmed sessions at Lambeth Council, Islington Council and Huntingdonshire District Council so far
- holding the final discovery Show & Tell at 2.30pm on Thursday 11 April at Southwark Council, everybody welcome
- finalising the discovery phase report, including summarising Alpha phase recommendations and next steps
Keep up-to-date with progress across the project by joining the #southwark_planning channel in the PlanTech Slack workspace and following the #InnovateSouthwark hashtag on Twitter.
Thanks,
Jack, Boris, Celia, Graeme, Martyn, Paul and Wing.
Page last updated: 01 December 2020
