Blog posts about Team post

At SocietyWorks we believe in transparency. One of the ways we live this value is by working in the open, and giving our team members space on our blog to write about what they’re working on, something they’re interested in or even perhaps a mistake or challenge they’ve learned from.

In this blog post our Head of Development, Matthew Somerville, writes about a new waste container generator for our WasteWorks solution which uses CSS to make it easier to generate waste images tailored to individual councils’ branding and bin types.

—

WasteWorks is in use by a number of different councils, all of which have their own types of bin, in various colours and sizes (you can see a large array of photos of bins in use by local councils at the lovely govbins.uk site). An image of each type of bin associated with a property is displayed to residents from the WasteWorks homepage.

Our designer Lucas came up with some nice simple iconography for us to use on bin day pages, including domestic wheelie bins, communal bins, sacks and boxes. When we’ve had a new client, whose bins are differently coloured to any previous council, Lucas has been providing us with new PNG images to match the bins the council uses, exported from the source vector images. As well as the right colours, each PNG had to be provided at two different sizes, to work with high-resolution displays, and so we’ve built up a small collection of such bin images over the years.

These pictures only vary by colour (and the presence of a recycling logo), so I wondered if there was a better way we could generate these images. SVGs are vector graphics – they scale to any resolution, and importantly for this can be styled with CSS, the same mechanism used to style a web page. CSS also has “variables”, where you can define e.g. a variable to be a particular colour, and then use that variable in a different part of the document (or SVG image).

Lucas and I worked together to come up with SVGs for the various containers, which instead of specifying any fill colours directly, used one or more CSS variables to specify the colours. For the recycling logo, we set a variable for the opacity of the logo – defaulting to 0, so invisible, but we can set it to 1 to have it appear.

We’ve added a page to our user manual where you can play around with the colour of our new bin images in real time:
https://www.societyworks.org/manuals/wasteworks/container-picture-generator/ :-)

More technical details

The header of our domestic wheelie bin SVG looks something like this:

<svg class="waste-service-image">
 <style>
  .wheel { fill: #333333; }
  .main { fill: var(--primary-color, var(--default-color)); }
  .lid { fill: var(--lid-color, var(--primary-color, var(--default-color))); }
  .recycling-logo { fill: #ffffff; opacity: var(--recycling-logo, 0); }
 </style>
 ...

See that the CSS uses the var() fallback parameter so that the lid colour will e.g. default to the primary colour if not specified.

We used CSS mix-blend-modes in order to have shadows and highlights that would work regardless of the colour they were placed on top of; here’s an example shadow:

<g style="mix-blend-mode:multiply" opacity="0.12">
  <path fill="black" d="M95.1227 90.7581L120.495 681.301H79.3654L50.9626 90.7581H95.1227Z">
</g>

Then when we embed an SVG in someone’s bin day page, the web page itself, outside the image, can specify what colour to use by setting the corresponding CSS variable, and the picture will then appear in the right colours. When we have a new bin colour, we don’t need to create a new image, only set the right colour.

Here’s the outline of an SVG on a bin day page, for a grey bin with a blue lid, showing the recycling logo:

<span style="--primary-color: #767472; --lid-color: #00A6D2; --recycling-logo: 1;">
 <svg class="waste-service-image">
  <style>
   [... style as above ...]
  </style>
  [...]
 </svg>
</span>

At SocietyWorks we believe in transparency. One of the ways we live this value is by working in the open, and giving our team members space on our blog to write about what they’re working on, something they’re interested in or even perhaps a mistake or challenge they’ve learned from. 

This blog post has been written by Bekki Leaver, our Head of Product, who shares her thoughts on the potential creation of a Local Government Digital Service. 

—

There’s been some chatter around what a ‘Local Government Digital Service’ might look like, what it could offer, how it might contribute to digital services for local authorities and how it could be staffed. As a Government Digital Service (GDS) alumna and current digital service provider for local government, I have opinions on where there could be value here and what is likely to ruffle some feathers.

GDS have had considerable success at delivering tools to support central government (and local government, come to think of it) in building better services. They’ve centralised resource heavy processes others can simply tap into, such as GOV.UK Pay, Notify and the future One Login, to make complicated features easy to add. 

The design system and service communities have gone a long way to helping create accessible, consistent services. But now every department has its own iteration of the design system, because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all compendium of components and patterns, which highlights very well the problem with an alliance of local authorities working on digital services.

Even when authorities share a common goal and have the same internal systems, their approach and configurations can be wildly different

As an example, take FixMyStreet Pro and its integrated street reporting, our flagship product at SocietyWorks. While it could be said we “built it once” and can then ship that product out to whoever might want it, what actually happens is we do considerable customisation and configuration to our product so it can fit within the processes and ways of working within an authority. 

The experiences I’ve had at SocietyWorks clearly exemplify that even when authorities share a common goal and have the same internal systems, their approach and configurations can be wildly different, influenced by service level agreements, other systems or applications, or staff delivering a service.

The institution and its services need to reflect the people whom it serves. What works in a metropolitan city environment won’t work in a rural one

I think it would also be fair to say there’s a sense of personality and identity embedded in local authorities, a sense of pride for the place you live, and even a bit of competition with the neighbours. It’s not the faceless behemoth central government can be perceived as; it needs to be local and relevant to residents. The thought of imposing generic service provision onto these entities feels almost cruel. The institution and its services need to reflect the people whom it serves. What works in a metropolitan city environment won’t work in a rural one.

We all want to achieve the same goals, and regularly come across the same problems, but to solve them in the best way isn’t going to be some great overseer. It’s going to be collaboration on the ground at the most appropriate time. I see this in the partnerships throughout the UK of authorities banding together to solve their problems in smaller, more local ways, and in SocietyWorks’ own User Groups, bringing together those who use our services to learn from each other within a specific remit.

Overall, I’m really impressed with the things I see from these smaller partnerships and alliances, and I’m not convinced a LGDS is needed. Smaller partnerships definitely feel more approachable than a centralised organisation when, as part of an SME, I want to get involved. 

We need to properly establish the problem(s) and context we’re working in. We have regional specific groups, problem specific groups, and publications, communities, and awards to highlight the great work coming out of them. Do we need more channels to come together? I’m not convinced, but I’d absolutely volunteer to get involved in establishing the why, what and how!

—

If you’d like to chat to Bekki about anything in her blog post, you can connect with her on LinkedIn.

—

Image: charlesdeluvio

At SocietyWorks we believe in transparency. One of the ways we live this value is by working in the open, and giving our team members space on our blog to write about what they’re working on, something they’re interested in or even perhaps a mistake or challenge they’ve learned from. 

This blog post has been written by Angela Dixon, our Managing Director, who shares her thoughts on financial forecasting and decision making in uncertainty.

—

As well as being Managing Director of SocietyWorks, I am also an accountant.

This is not a confession about my number crunching roots, but rather a reflection on how leadership’s approach to utilising financial information for decision making can either enable or inhibit teams. Our approach can either carve out pathways through difficult budget and resource constrained terrains, or reinforce walls that stop our teams from even glimpsing the potential of the land beyond.

I have been a chartered accountant for twenty years and served in a number of financial leadership positions across industry and the third sector. This experience has provided me with a unique lens through which to assess decision making at the most senior levels of organisations. 

At SocietyWorks, we are fast approaching our financial year end and have recently presented our analysis of the year-that-was alongside our plans and forecasts for the year-to-come to our board for accountability and scrutiny. 

While I am incredibly fortunate to work with a mission driven board that recognises the important financial and non-financial variables that matter for effective evaluation and decision making, ‘year-end’ has also got me thinking about the scale and complexity of the financial and bureaucratic challenges in the local authorities we serve. 

What follows are some humble reflections on year-end through a financial leadership lens, shared in full recognition that every organisation will have their own particular localised concerns, pressures, and complexities to navigate.

Reflections for public sector decision makers and financial leaders

When we operate in conditions of scarce resources, whether people or budgets, every decision counts. The bigger, more strategic, decisions we make in an organisation are the ones that have the most inherent uncertainties.

Uncertainty should not stop decisions being made, but rather challenge us to be more alert to the variables

All decision makers need to face up to the uncertainty in the environments we operate in. This should force us into meaningful collaborative dialogue about risk, proportionate mitigation strategies that may be available, and acceptance or non acceptance of risk that remains. 

Uncertainty should not stop decisions being made, but rather challenge us to be more alert to the variables in our internal and external operating environments, known and unknown. We should train ourselves and our teams to be alert to signals of potential risks materialising, and symptoms of those that may already have materialised, and be ready to respond swiftly through collaborative dialogue, problem definition and appropriate problem solving measures. 

Well presented financial modelling and indicators highlighting business critical variables can support the visualisation of potential future scenarios. This will support better quality decision making in uncertainty. While none of us has a crystal ball to predict the future, quality and iterative forecasting can help with futurecasting and the framing and defining of options. 

Monthly, quarterly, and year end financial accounts and analysis of historic reporting periods are useful for the recognition and evaluation of where we have been, but it is important to remember that none of us has the power to influence and change the past. We may think it is worth investing time and energy to change the overarching narratives that tell the stories of the past, but all that energy investment reduces that which could be spent on collaborating for more quality decision making to carve out a better future. 

Regular and iterative financial forecasting which highlights assumptions known and unknown, certainty and uncertainty, is more crucial to provide the critical information to inform decisions that will impact our future pathways. Quality financial analysis will support the revisiting of previously forecast futures and prompt collaborative reflection as to whether slight directional change, more substantial pivot, hold-our-nerve, pause or halt is the best response.

If experience has taught me anything it’s to experiment and take risks at scales that are acceptable within your own financial and organisational context and risk appetite

A financial year end is just a date. It is a line drawn in the sand. It is not tangible in the sense of a physical gate we pass through at a particular time. If a financial year end is treated as more than just a date when one reporting period ends and another begins, where an activity happening or budget spent on one day is so much more important than on the very next day, it will create perverse incentives that drive behaviours that will hinder effective prioritisation or distribution of resources. 

Days follow days and our planning, delivery, and evaluation cycles should be more fluid and responsive to our emerging operating environments. If they are not, then we will certainly waste time and resources and focus scarce energy on building narratives and past storylines that do not help solve our ongoing and future challenges.

Final thoughts  

I believe in failing fast and learning faster. If experience has taught me anything it’s to experiment and take risks at scales that are acceptable within your own financial and organisational context and risk appetite, and be happy to revisit past assumptions, decisions, and iterate or pivot when appropriate. 

At SocietyWorks our conversations are had transparently and in the open with our board which provides essential accountability and governance for a mission driven business. We speak about potential risks before they materialise and operate on a no-surprises basis. This has built open and trusting relationships between the board and executive team. We encourage critical challenge which is received with a spirit of openness, and responded to with collaborative dialogue and shared ownership for resolution. 

In this post, I have shared a handful of thoughts which I hope may be useful to prompt some reflection on the processes behind decision making in organisations. With leaders role modelling focus on the right things, we may open up the potential of our teams for better seeing the systems we operate within, and the different levers and variables that interact and influence our potential futures. This may in turn open up the space and creativity to work through pressing priorities in spite of challenging and difficult resource and budget constraints.

—

If you’d like to chat to Angela about anything in her blog post, you can connect with her on LinkedIn.

—

Image: Jordan Ladikos