Week 92

With the public holiday on Monday in Canberra, a shorter week.

• Very excited to have Adrian join us this week as our Design Lead. Adrian joins us from the Digital Transformation Agency where he has, amongst many other things, led the Australian Government’s Design System.

  Speaking of design systems, we’re looking at how we can do our bit to sustain and improve the Design System as we use it to build our new services. If you’re using the Design System to deliver services in a federal government agency and you’re open to sharing and collaboration, please get in touch.

• There’s been some great work done this week by the team building our Export Profile product, which will be a shared view across our different services for exporters. The team are prototyping how this could work, including how it fits with both our new services and existing systems, and quite possibly services outside our department.

  One conversation about naming the Export Profile prompted me to dig out this great 2015 article from FutureLearn on the use of ‘yours’ and ‘my’ pronouns in digital services. (Is it ‘your account’ or ‘my account’?)

• I’m not the only one writing week notes in our team: this week, Brigette shared week notes on what’s happening in ResearchOps.

  If you’re working in our program, I really do encourage you to write and share week notes about what you’re doing. (Caveat: we’re working in the open but you do need to stick to the agency’s rules on social media. If you’re unsure, let’s have a chat.)

• We had the second showcase for all our digital teams this week. It’s a 5-minutes-per-team rapid fire run around the program with a big focus on ‘show the thing’. It’s exciting to see so much delivery underway. Of special note: a standing item at the end where anyone can give an #aweThanks to others in the team.

• I walked from Bondi to Coogee on the public holiday - it was a beautiful day with a decent ocean swell. Here’s a couple of photos: