Weeknotes s04e02

TL,DR: Integrated Business Planning, Programme Board and Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) Workshop.

[W/C 23/09/2024]

For my last weeknotes view them here weeknotes s04e01.

Prologue

3 days of almost full day sessions this week, with a good flow of information to digest.

Who did you talk to outside your organisation?

• Attended my second workshop with NHS England’s Collaboration Services and Bytes — “CoPilot pilot: Build the plan”. We reviewed the list of use cases we pulled together last week to progress in a pilot. Looking forward to seeing some of the outputs when this pilot gets going.
• Caught up with our Account Director — Kieran from Tanium, to look at the collaborative options across the region and the possibility of undertaking a proof of concept. Keen to look at what we can do to consolidate toolsets, whilst improving visibility of assets and ensuring a high standard of cyber hygiene across the estate.
• Catch-up with NHS England’s Cyber Leads (Steve Shaw and Chris Quinn) to discuss what we could do about reducing some of our external attack surface. Was chuffed to see Chris Quinn in
• his new post as regional cyber lead for the north west region.

What would you have liked to do more of?

With 3 full diary days, and a number of pending audit action deadlines for the end of October, I didn’t get to spend as much time looking through the detail of our audit actions as I wanted. Although Lee made good steady progress and kept the daily updates coming, which was reassuring.

What do you wish you could have changed?

I was invited along to a weekly Digital Ordering Spend meeting. To add a bit of fun at the end of the week, this meeting is done without cameras but with Avatars! Besides the topic of discussion it was an interesting meeting 😂. I couldn’t get a decent Turbaned and bearded Sikh appearance that looked anything close to what I look like on teams! Only one style of turban! Come on Microsoft get with it! So avatar version of Jas will hopefully make his debut next week if I can figure this out!

What challenged me?

In between cars at the moment so making use of the train service from Birmingham, which is a bit of a first for me in my working career. Attending the Trust’s Integrated Business Planning on Tuesday, which was held at another site I had not previously visited. I found the local rail links were a bit convoluted and the transition to the local tram service from Manchester Picadilli was also a bit challenging. Although followed by a short but interesting conversation with the Uber driver before arriving at the venue. Did well to get there a few minutes after the registration. Was pleased to get there on time to hear our Chief Exec, Anthony Hassal’s ‘welcome and context’ for the day.

What did you enjoy?

Attending PCFT’s Integrated Business Planning all day session with Execs and other Senior leaders across all the networks covering Pennine. The session was the initial one to kickstart the business planning process for 25/26, running through the approach, time frames and practicalities, roles and responsibilities. The context of which falls within the period where the Trust’s Strategy will be refreshed, pressures across the GM ICS, whilst maintaining a focus on quality, safety and continuing to do so with a focus on keeping our finances in check. It was a great opportunity to hear more about activity across the wider organisation, their key priorities and also getting to meet some senior stakeholders.

What did you achieve?

• Went through our Audit Committee actions from previous audits with Lee. Quite a few to run through and digest. This is now a prioritised piece of work to get these closed down.
• Followed up on a brief from last week to start reviewing our build/deployment processes to ensure our sizeable device refresh programme was delivering a consistent, robust, secure and fully managed Windows 11 operating environment at pace. I ran a follow-on Windows 11 Problem and Vision workshop. We had several internal stakeholder teams and focussed on three key areas to ensure that our starting point was based on common ground. 1. Background and Drivers. 2. Our Vision and desired business outcomes. 3. Our current challenges and problems. I will be following up with subsequent sessions.
• Took part in a problem session to take a closer look at how we can improve our zero trust posture through suggested improvements we can make via ZScaler. This generally had consensus on the approach and will be worked up for change approval in the coming weeks. The second part foccused on transitioning access to our Civica EPR over to Zscaler — some challenges to still work through here with Civica.
• Catch-up with James Baggot, our Desktop Team Lead. Was good to hear about the great work that the desktop team do, the ongoing learning and development as well as some of the current challenges in being able to deploy endpoint device replacements at pace. The passion for delivering came across really strong.
• Catch-up with David Firth, Senior Technical Services Specialist, who has been with the Trust for quite some time. I gained some really useful background, and insights into what we have achieved around the network infrastructure and some of our challenges ahead to work through. Looking forward to working together.
• Digital Technology and Customer Support Board — first meeting. This is the formal assurance group established for all things that fall under the CTO remit. Ran through the framework as well as delving into the detail of some running programmes of work. Went through the forward plan for policies to be reviewed and refreshed over the next 12 months. Some focus areas to work on and develop over the coming months as well as regular reporting on service performance metrics.
• Workshop with Tech and Cyber teams to run through CAF Gap Analysis Outputs from a recent audit Phoenix undertook across the GM ICS Trusts. This work was undertaken to aide us getting ahead of this year’s DSPT requirements which are now CAF aligned. A lot of detail here, a few more sessions booked in to finish reviewing. Hoping to have some of the evidence areas and gaps mapped out ahead of DSPT baseline submissions to NHS England in December.

• Catch-up with Richard Vasey, Digital Programme Director. Was good to touch base following the integrated planning session earlier in the week as well as filling me in on more background to bits I’ve been picking up. Have had a steady flow of questions for Richard these first two weeks. Been amazing support and super patient.
• It was David Stalker’s last working week with the Trust. He has been our Network Architect for the last couple of years. Was a really great technical review of the Trust’s network infrastructure. The network has been a massive investment, addressing aged LAN, Wi-Fi and WAN connectivity.
• Network Programme catch-up with Shaun and David Stalker. Clear view of where we have got up to and what lays ahead of us including some of our challenges that will need to be addressed.
• Infrastructure Work plan and Risks with Shadrick our Infrastructure Manager. The team is spinning many plates. We discussed making the workplan more visible and utilising agile sprint methodology to prioritise and agree delivery objectives. So much of what IT infrastructure teams do in the NHS is hidden, yet so critical to do many operational needs.
• Catch-up with Keely to get some feed back from an asset team perspective following the Windows 11 workshop earlier in the week. Was glad to hear it was received well.

What did you learn?

What are you looking forward to next week?

• Catch-up with Chris Booth from IT Health.
• Meeting to discuss Cyber T-Level placements & apprenticeships,
• Technical Design Authority
• Catch-up with Jenny, Service Desk Manager.
• Few 1:1's
• Digital Oversight & Governance meeting — focus on Audit actions.
• Catch-up on the voice infrastructure migration to 8×8

Epilogue

Another packed out and enjoyable week. Lots of useful information soaked up and felt like I had a better view of the journey ahead. Looking forward to getting stuck in.

Originally published at http://jwsingh.wordpress.com on September 29, 2024.