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Blog: Defra digital, data, technology and security

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Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Environment Agency, Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Natural England, Animal and Plant Health Agency

Why senior service ownership matters at Defra... and why now

Photograph of a Dell laptop displaying a digital project management board with color-coded task cards in green, purple, and blue arranged in columns labeled with different project stages. The board includes user icons on task cards, indicating collaboration, and is viewed in a well-lit room with windows in the background.

Why senior service ownership matters at Defra... and why now

Senior service ownership could help Defra become more service-led, efficient and user-focused. Laura Churchill shares what her team learned while testing the concept, why plans had to change, and how they’re building the right conditions for more joined-up, accountable services.

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What we learned about our users when we went fishing in their shoes

Posted by: Phil Baird, Posted on: 17 August 2017 - Categories: Defra digital, Defra services, Digital transformation
Members of the rod licence team on a fishing trip to learn more about users

Being a Product Manager is about championing the needs of the users of a service. Our team, responsible for the “I want to fish” service (of which buy a rod...

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What we’re doing to make video more useful across Defra

Posted by: John Seglias, Chief Digital and Information Officer, Posted on: 16 August 2017 - Categories: Defra digital, Digital transformation, Smarter working
Defra is unblocking access to online video

We're committed to smarter working in Defra, and we are starting with small fixes that make people's lives easier. One of those is about opening up access to online video.

Read more of What we’re doing to make video more useful across Defra - 3 comments

What we've learned about preparing for discovery

Posted by: David Thomas, Posted on: 7 August 2017 - Categories: Defra digital, Defra services, Digital transformation
Animated gif with the words "Pre-discovery" replaced by "Preparing for discovery"

...discovery, which leads into alpha, beta and then live. My own recent experiences make me think that while the preparation work done during 'pre-discovery' is incredibly useful, the name “pre-discovery”...

Read more of What we've learned about preparing for discovery - 4 comments

Why we care about data architecture

Posted by: Sarah Burnett, Head of Data Architecture, Data Transformation Programme, Posted on: 4 August 2017 - Categories: Data Transformation, Defra digital
Head of Data Architecture for the Data Transformation Programme, Sarah Burnett,

We’re beginning to tell the story of how critical getting data architecture is to 'getting data right' for the Defra group.

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A film about the flood digital service

Posted by: Dominic Burton, Posted on: 3 August 2017 - Categories: Defra digital, Digital transformation
The flood digital service is used by the public to check for local flood warnings by location as well as current river and sea levels

The Environment Agency’s flood digital service is used by the public to check for local flood warnings by location as well as current river and sea levels. We spoke to the agile team that developed the service about how they are continually …

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Time to talk, time to think, time to help

Posted by: Betsy Bassis, Posted on: 2 August 2017 - Categories: Defra digital
A poster about health and wellbeing in the Civil Service

...coat it: there’s a lot going on at the moment. Political changes. Organisational changes. People changes. Change has become the new business as usual. That’s why we’re working to become...

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Better access to data to tackle Bovine TB

Posted by: Steve Wilkinson, Head of Innovation, Defra Data Transformation Programme, Posted on: 1 August 2017 - Categories: Data Transformation, Defra digital, Digital transformation, Software tools
Cows

Bovine TB is a complex and costly disease in cattle. Bringing Defra’s data together and providing better access and tools will really help us to tackle it.

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Email less, talk more

Posted by: Colin Banno-Thorton, Posted on: 27 July 2017 - Categories: Defra digital
Photo of someone holding a Defra sticker that says "Email meetings conversations" (the words "email" and "meetings" are crossed out).

I want to talk about the subtle shift in communication approach within teams. Effective digital teams are good at trust and openness. It takes time to build behaviours like these,...

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Smarter working means making Defra a better place to work

Posted by: Betsy Bassis, Posted on: 24 July 2017 - Categories: Defra digital, Digital transformation
Thomas Hind from the PMR team, doing their show-and-tell

Read a blog post from Betsy Bassis, Defra Chief Operating Officer, explaining what it means to work smarter and why it's important

Read more of Smarter working means making Defra a better place to work - 3 comments

Collaborating, reflecting and iterating

Posted by: Stefan Janusz, Communications, Defra Data Programme, Posted on: 21 July 2017 - Categories: Defra digital
Iterate poster

We teamed up with our friends in Digital Transformation to show what #datacando... With the help of Defra Leaders and Data and Digital experts, we showed off some of our work in data and digital services and made the case that transformation is about people, processes and culture...

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