In Summer 2017 councillors approved a 4-year Organisation Strategy for Essex County Council. This included adopting the full set of Service Standards, central government’s criteria to help create and run good services. Since then we've been working hard to make the ambition of the Service Standards a reality in Essex.
We're incredibly fortunate that many other public sector organisations have already started down this route, so we didn't need to start from scratch. Our approach in Essex is to copy and reuse as much as we possibly can. This means we can apply our scant resources to the problems and challenges which are either unique to Essex, or don't have a recognised solution out there that we can use.
When it came to working in the open, which we believe to be an essential part of our working culture, then blogging was naturally an important tool to have. Again our needs weren't unique, so we could just reuse what others have already built, enabling us to get a robust solution up in a fast and cheap way. Nic Ward has blogged in more detail how that was done.
We are just at the beginning of our journey, and we're busy building teams to help us explore and deliver what a council of the future should be. We believe that by focussing on service design, putting user need at the heart of our thinking, then we can bring a real focus and impact on the challenges facing Essex. We're passionate about working in the right way, in collaboration with others, so that we avoid duplicating work across local government and focus on making a difference.
If this sounds interesting to you then do take look at the jobs we're recruiting to which include Head of Service Design - find out more at www.workingforessex.com and register your interest to join our talent pools. You can also visit our strategic advisors FutureGov for more information.
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