Discovery · DTC Connected Service (Hiring + Procurement)

Service Designer:	Tess Good
Discovery Phase:	February-March 2024
Research Phase:	March-April 2024

The aim of our capacity building, as aligned to our Digital Plan, is not to move from “outsourcing to insourcing” but to strike a better, and more intentional balance across all the ways we can access and build digital capacity.
That is to say we will always need to hire and procure – but we need to do that differently.
Jordan Samis via email to DTC Staff

Discovery Session A: Knowns & Unknowns, Goal Setting

KNOWNS

UNKNOWNS

KNOWN

Things we are aware of and understand

often but not always the same people building teams - procuring and hiring
sometimes accessing MAS support
may be interacting with multiple procurement products, hiring services
Product is rarely once and done - must be supported/maintained and updated
the transition from capital to operating funds can impact maintenance/sustainment
Some clients they do not have knowledge and capacity to build new Agile teams
contract renewal point - short term vs long term considerations can be bumpy
Standing up Agile Teams is costly to business areas
Not enough support in some areas for modernization, often people take a half approach
In practice, business areas don't consider the entire life cycle of the product team when bringing in team resources (creates HR/Procurement Debt)
short term focus (speed, urgency) - can have longer-term tradeoffs
Procurement is slow and clients want to go as fast as possible (poor planning/lack of resource availability)
some business areas may have questions about digital roles, sequencing of hires (early hires vs. full team), org design, team formation
Misalignment right now between our services (no fee) and Procurement Services Branch (fee)
Current free services also incentivize some behaviours - some not good.
Opportunity to build mobile agile teams we can deploy to mitigate and respond quickly to changing requirements
Given pressure for delivery, people make decisions based on whatever is fastest, easiest, and/or least resource intensive to do. Which might not lead to a good decision.

Things we are aware of but don't understand (research)

We don't always have an understanding of budgets for others, this impacts services they can access
What drives decisions: Budget spending urgency? Actual Solution need?
How does the cost of a procurement/hiring process drive behaviour?
Decisions seem to be made based on financial and delivery risk - also avoiding HR risk (easy to defer to contractors)
People making decisions based on budget available
People unsure or unaware of how long the product will in play, or if successful to allow permanent staffing
Short-term resourcing may impact long-term sustainability of products
People make decisions based on (sometimes unrealistic) timeline commitment for product delivery
Do classification gaps exist that would favour procurement?
"complicated" dynamics between contractors + employees
Many business areas are extremely cost-conscious - may drive behaviour
I suspect that a lot of Gov teams aren't used to managing a "software production" team and thus prefer to contract as needed for specific deliverable vs hiring digital talent permanently
Digital talent = production. If a "buyer" doesn't have experience with a backlog approach, it may be hard to envision having full time staff (gotta keep everyone working)
HMW uncover underlying motivations of folks making decisions
Risk for union involvement for ongoing work positions not being filled.
Commitment level of Sr Execs, ADM, DM etc,
Hiring entire product team without long term work
Risk of people not wanting to use recruitment services, as this impacts budget when they can hire using their own resources. This may provoke shoddy practices and impact our image as an employer.
Contractors may not have insights into complexities unique to government
Opportunity to connect to MAS for a more structured and planned approach to modernization and priority initiatives.
Budget cuts around April, election year ahead, lots of cost conscious decisions.
More flexibility with Procurement than recruitment when it comes to enforcing Agile teams and building products.
is it intimidating to think about the longer term when this is all so NEW
what are the PERCEPTIONS vs REALITIES of sourcing talent?
PSB don't charge us for their services. If we engage in cost recovery will they do the same?

UNKNOWN

What might people in our ecosystem know, that we don't

Other SMEs - WLRS, PSFS, AG…
DIO, MAS, BAT/Scrum Inc.
DIO/OCG may know more on the amount of IT staff costs
PSA - Workforce Planning
IMIT Key Workstream strategy working group - bring evidence to ADM group about problems & opportunities - evidence for creating change
What are the rules for hiring/creating a new position?
Leaders who pioneered Digital Modernization/Transformation in BC Gov
Higher level information about what may be coming down the pipeline that could impact hiring/procurement
Their own level of commitment and budget
alignment with union - they would like to see more talent insourced (better balance)
Ability to merge qualified lists to centralize and increase consistency for vendors and buying group across government; better corporate intelligence on needs

Things we are unaware of and don't understand (risk, fear)

Alternatives to the team-focused approach (is this a blind spot?)
Do our cients want a more connected service?
Bias towards certain technologies (e.g. OpenShift) creates procurement risk if those technologies are mandatory. Impacts choices/hiring longer term
Union impacts for positions that are ongoing for more than 52 weeks/continuous nature
Level of fear in new areas, often lots of new to agile folks or at the start of their modernization journey.
If we and MAS both consulting services, how do we define the boundaries?
Cost of Success - if this takes off, can we scale up to support?
What is the comfortability of spending vs doing themselves.
Identifying which roles should generally be permanent employees, and which roles need not be.
What is the employee and contractor experience in blended teams. Does that feel good or unequal?
How can we move ( poach, hehe) contractors into permanent positions within?

Goal and Expectation Setting

Q4 will be a WIN if:

Identify assumptions for connected service and validate with users (gov business areas)
Some sort of artefact to inform user's decisions (hiring vs. procurement) + debunk myths/misunderstandings
Identify our "users" for this engagement
Understand things we are aware but unknown
Define cost recovery model, and "cost" structure
Users provide us feedback on whether this is valuable or not
Discover more unknowns to further explore
Develop/identify a feedback/user group across BC gov

In Q4 our work intersects with:

e.g. any IM/IT strategy milestones we could inform?
OKR around DO ability to support partners - does this help us rapidly resource for teams and sustain the capacity.

Q4 will be a FAIL if:

We identify that people would be deterred from using our services if there is a cost implication
We don't have a clear plan and vision for how Procurement and Hiring can work together (or not)

Important metrics or signals:

how would we know, decide, prioritize - what's a signal that we're making things better?
Our users can articulate their decisions (hiring vs. procurement)
User engagement (IMBs, hiring/procurement managers) with the process

Discovery Session B: Ecosystem & Connected Services

DTC Connected Service - Foundation and House.png

Connected Services

RECOMMENDATION

Bigger picture SD opportunity: how might we support optimal wayfinding and service experiences through the Digital Office?

Would recommend a DO-level investment here, vs. bottom-up through one Branch / one Designer - at a minimum, resource this as a standalone scope of work, it will involve a lot of calendar wrangling, workshop time, user research, and service analysis with folks whose capacity is tight across busy services
e.g. transformation-journey mapping x strategy initiative to capture the typical services and supports folks need, assessing if we’re showing up at the optimal time in their process to have the intended impact, and if there could be efficiencies created across DO silos
- discovery conversations with DIO generated a hypothesis that our services may be accessed too late - when folks have already committed to a certain way of doing things

DIO Digital Advisory Services (DAS)

Modernization Advisory Services (MAS)

DTC - Talent

DTC - Marketplace

Assists ministries with investment cases, looks for alignment with digital principles and standards.

Hypothesis: Funding is likely to intersect with org design, team formation (DTC).

Goal: alignment (e.g. clients get consistent advice), clear governance/ boundaries, healthy collaboration, efficiencies.

Risk: could too many “advisory services” teams create confusion for clients?

DIO Digital Demo: Feb 22, 2024

Discovery outcomes:

Discovery chat with Andrea Hill (Director of Digital Advisory Services) and Mackenzie Kitchen (Senior Digital Analyst) on May 14th
Technically the DIO folk are Analysts, not Advisors
Success metric = digital projects successfully funded
They see all the funding cases and what folks are up to, aim to spot red flags with a supportive, light touch and connect folks to DO services (incl. ours)
Typically folks have their minds made up when they reach the DIO (e.g. no org design advice)
Working on: Digital Investment Assurance Framework to increase oversight and support post-funding
Will be conducting Project Health Checks chaired by a DIO Analyst:
1. progress, delivery, successes, value delivered
2. money spent
3. roadmap review
4. anything project team wants to talk about
5. rubric tiers: https://intranet.gov.bc.ca/assets/download/B3BDBB3395AC48C1A952D8D6D085DC70
Governance/contacts: this creates a new point of contact: the responsible ED, program side. Very rarely may be an IT person. The framework sets down roles and responsibilities - MCIO, DIO, Ministry CFO (operational, capital, sustainment), program area ADM/project sponsor
They have a goal of digitizing their service and making their data more visible, open to partnership and collaboration with us
Note: 3 analysts supporting 12 ministries - tight capacity
OPPORTUNITY: earlier intervention points with DO clients “how could we (relevant DO services) show up when there is a transformation-twinkle in the eye?” e.g. support before many decisions are locked in, to set up for success
OPPORTUNITY: how might DTC leverage DIO insights to predict demand on our services, e.g. number of clients/digital funding cases in play
REQUEST: as we evolve our service, let DIO folk know so they can direct clients accordingly

Assists select priority partners toward rapid delivery.

Likely to intersect with org design, team formation.

Goal: alignment (e.g. clients get consistent advice), clear governance/ boundaries (do we help the same audiences, different ones, some overlap?), healthy collaboration and support for the hard work, sense of team-across-teams?

Risk: could too many “advisory services” teams doing similar work create confusion for clients?

MAS Digital Demo: Feb 8, 2024