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

DIO Digital Advisory Services (DAS)

Modernization Advisory Services (MAS)

Talent

Marketplace

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

Likely to intersect with org design, team formation.

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

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

DIO Digital Demo: Feb 22, 2024

Status:

Tess has a discovery chat with Andrea Hill (Director of Digital Advisory Services) and Mackenzie Kitchen (Senior Digital Analyst) on May 14th

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, healthy collaboration

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

MAS Digital Demo: Feb 8, 2024

Status (May 7):

Tess has had prelim async touchpoints with David (Product Owner), and a lovely 1:1 with Gurkamal (Scrum Master)
Seeds have been planted - in the future let’s collectively sense if there are opportunities to do a more formal discovery around ways we could collaborate, support each other, and align overlappy elements of our services
- mindful this can introduce other complexities
MAS team: feel free to use the commenting feature here to drop thoughts, ideas, questions!
- and pls correct my framing above about your work, there has been lots of change & growth!

Clients we support:

SDPR - 25 digital talent hires
AT Gen & JEDI - 2 In progress via X Min
MOH - 2 Hired talents via X Ministry
CITZ - 34 Hired Talents via X ministry
NRM ( 5 Ministries) - 6 - Hired Talents via X ministry
SPDR - 4 Hired Talents via X ministry
TRAN - 2 Hired Talents via X ministry
AEST - 1 Hired Talent via X Ministry
PSA - Classification modernization - product development support + hire full team soon?
Job Profile approval to use.
Other IMIT Branches on Org design/Alignment, role development and transformation
Applicants through outreach opportunities, such as BCIT Career fairs, clinics etc.
Candidates - Coaching and advice for applications & career development.
Clients looking for a TA initiative - 'Rapid Hire Program'

Clients we can’t support:

GBAs who want to use the DT job profiles but do not fit into them
Clients that have needs but timing of when we run our comps (driven by capacity and CI) don't align
Clients that need more help with Job Description work rather than talent acquisitions.
Clients that would like to do it themselves but would like to understand best practices and/or access resources (i.e. can you share learning with me so I don't repeat mistakes)
Who just need some additional support to expedite, but want to run their own. - We often now provide advice.
Clients who don't agree with our Service Agreement policy, i.e. can't commit to process or time commitments.
When we don't have resources to support their requests. i.e. Unable to run another competition .
Clients who require IT roles, (Or general) that fall outside of DT Roles.
With specific requirements for roles, that require a stand alone competition.
Who have larger requests.