Open Nouse — November 2019 Edition
Open Nouse is a monthly update from the Code for Australia Base Team, and is one of the ways we put our core value of working in the open into practice.
November was a time of consolidation for Base Team. Our energy has been spent evaluating recently completed programs, building on those learnings for success in the next round and applying the finishing touches to communications for some exciting things we have to share with you.
Here’s what’s been good (🌹), bad (📌) and what’s emerging for us (🌱) over the month.
📌 Thorn — another change in the team
After three years of amazing community building, storytelling and impact measurement for civic tech, both here and internationally, Grace has announced she’ll be stepping down from Base Team to focus on her own publishing and new opportunities. Grace has carried a lot of extra responsibility this year, relaying the history of how things are done to Cass and myself, and has been at the heart of our proudest moments including launching our Civic Makers meetup and helping us achieve B Corporation status. We’re going to miss her empathy and care for our community and are excited to see what comes next.
As a result we have an opportunity for a new Community & Communications Lead to join the team here in Melbourne next year—we’d love to hear from anyone looking for a role where you can inspire and organise people to make a positive impact on society.
🌱 Bud — Tech for Non-Tech continues to go global
Earlier in the year Lina shared an update from the Code for All Exchange in South Africa where we shared our Tech for Non Tech workshop with the teams from Open Up and Code for Japan.
Nao Myoshu and the Code for Japan team have now translated the content and recently ran their first Tech for Non Tech workshop. We’re delighted to hear how they’ve adopted the format and what they’re learning (I’m very impressed with the Lego analogy work from their participants!).
This “open sourcing” of ideas and practices between countries was essential to getting Code for Australia off the ground, and Tech for Non Tech itself came about through our friends at Enspiral in New Zealand. One of the most rewarding things about being involved in civic tech is seeing how proven concepts can be amplified by the network and this is a great example.
🌹 Rose — an exciting future for the Digital Maturity Indicator
When I last penned an Open Nouse update we were deep in the delivery of our new DMI program, and looking forward to being able to share the results. Since then we’ve wrapped up the first two assessments with another to be finalised in the new year, and our partners in the NSW Public Service Commission have committed to supporting a whole of state rollout of the survey component.
It’s a huge opportunity for the program, and being able to gather data from a wide range of departments and agencies will help us build a clear baseline for digital maturity and generate practical recommendations for improvement that can be applied everywhere in government.
The DMI team — Lara, Alex and myself have recently published the initial findings and recommendations from the program, as well as a “behind the scenes” dive into the methodology behind the work and what we’ve learnt from delivering it so far. We’d love to hear feedback from anyone interested in measuring and uplifting digital maturity in public sector teams.
Curious about something in our work we haven’t mentioned here? Leave us a comment or question in the comments or via Typeform, or reach out to us here, and we’ll be happy to answer all your burning questions!
