A roadmap for Labs, Learn by making
During November and December 2022 we ran our first series of Labs, Learn by making.
This is our high-level roadmap for how we imagine it being taking forward and the areas that need to be explored further.
Provide public servants the skills and confidence to build better public services
Labs aims to provide participants with a variety of practical tools, resources, and experiences that they can apply within their day-to-day work.
There are elements of Labs that are repeatable, but its value comes from providing participants with a hands-on approach that relates to the challenges within their organisation.
Now
- Improve Labs content based on lessons learnt from the first series of Labs sessions
Next
- We have a pool of expert speakers that CDPS can call on
- We’ve explored different shaped problems to learn what works with Labs
Future
- We know the types of challenges that work best for Labs
Support Labs alumni to take forward what they learnt within their organisation
For Labs to be considered a success it needs to do more than to teach participants new skills. They need to be empowered to apply what they learnt back within their organisation.
Regardless of appetite organisational change won’t happen overnight but incremental change through starting to work more in the open to building improved services in better ways is an indicator of Labs success.
Now
- Weeknotes and blog posts are being written by Labs alumni
- We’re able to stay in contact with Labs alumni to reassure and encourage them that they’re doing the right thing
Next
- The Labs, Learn by making website is actively maintained to include latest resources
- There is an active community across Labs alumni
- We learn what support is needed post-Labs to help maintain momentum
- We learn how to measure the impact that Labs has on organisations and teams
Future
- A service improvement initiated by Labs goes into beta/live
Make Labs available for all public sector organisations in Wales
Labs has started with a team supporting a single organisation tackling a single problem. We need to demonstrate that the concept of Labs can scale in a number of different ways that are viable to both operate and fund.
Now
- Identify an owner or stakeholder within CDPS
- Agree the next cohort of Labs participants
Next
- Build a pipeline of organisations who could benefit from participating in Labs
- Run Labs with multiple teams within an organisation
- Labs tackles a problem shared across multiple organisations
- Experiment with different funding models to see what is viable
Future
- A funding model has been identified that works across organisations
- We’ve run a labs session that supports both Welsh and English language