The FCO has an ambitious change agenda to bring the organisation fully into the digital age. Our Digital Transformation Unit was set up in February 2014, bringing in the specialist digital skills and expertise that we need in our core digital team, but we also need to ensure the FCO’s diverse network of staff increase their digital capability. That’s where my role as a digital training and upskilling officer fits in, along with my colleagues Elizabeth Flinter and Claire Collins.
There are some fairly big organisational and technical challenges to overcome (e.g. a dispersed network of posts overseas and secure IT systems). So we started by drawing up a digital training strategy for the department. The aim of this was to set out our overall approach – including capturing these challenges and deciding how best to join up our work with other teams involved in staff learning and development (HR, departmental training teams, GDS etc.).
We then set about comparing what teams do now with where we want them to be – helping us outline what we wanted staff in the FCO to do differently in relation to digital. This meant we could then turn “what we want staff to do in relation to digital” into a set of digital capabilities, for key teams and roles in the FCO.
Several complicated spreadsheets later we had a mapping of digital capabilities to teams, which we then used to design a digital curriculum divided into modules which are based on the needs of different roles and teams. This means that staff should find the training relevant to the work rather than having to complete one-size-fits-all training. The different modules in the curriculum are also divided into “foundation”, “practitioner” and “expert” level in line with the FCO’s new Diplomatic Academy, to make it easier for staff to plan digital into their longer term development.
Designing each of these modules then involved fleshing out the detail about what we wanted the module to achieve (learning objectives), the target audience teams, recommended delivery methods, other relevant digital learning opportunities and more. With those designs agreed we then set about developing the materials for the modules themselves, using a “toolkit” for consistency, and “alpha” testing the materials with our digital team and other stakeholders from key teams.
And that brings us to where we are now.
We are now “beta” testing our first set of training modules with volunteers from across the FCO. We have 11 different digital training modules, available in four different formats:
• pilot training sessions run by a member of the FCO digital team in London
• pilot training sessions run by our regional digital hubs around the globe (Washington, Madrid, New Delhi and Singapore) – either in person or via virtual meeting
• group learning sessions run by volunteers with their colleagues, with materials provided by us
• self-study materials available on our intranet.
Because the modules are designed with the needs of different teams in mind the training for different roles looks quite different. For example, for FCO policy officers we have modules on monitoring social media and how to use digital tools to develop policy in an open way. For staff who are responsible for public services we have modules that look at understanding user needs and designing digital services that will meet these most effectively. For staff in communications roles the modules focus on creating digital content, handling official social media accounts effectively and running digital campaigns.
We are also raising awareness about digital training with an internal communication drive to recruit volunteers to pilot the new training and using our networks such as our digital champions to raise awareness, understand demand from different teams and gather feedback. It will be really important to capture feedback from training recipients and facilitators to see where we can improve things like content, training delivery, module names, how we target certain teams or roles, and how often we should provide certain training.
What’s next?
We plan to evaluate how the “beta” training has gone and use the feedback to improve our digital curriculum and decide on the best way to roll it out across the FCO before going “live” in early 2015.
Finally, let’s not forget that going live doesn’t mean the end. In true agile fashion we will be measuring whether our digital training is effective and continuously improving wherever we can.