How did you get here: Interview with Odette and Hannah from the UK Home Office

Welcome to the Sheffield Digital Podcast hosted by Sarah Lister. This episode is a root inter-tech interview with Odet McKenry and Hannah Turner from the UK Home Office. Find out what automation is, what their individual job roles involve doing and their unique career stories. Thanks to both Odet and Hannah for telling us how they got here. Well, thank you very much for coming on to the Sheffield Digital Podcast. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about your individual journeys, inter-tech. Odet, could you please share what your job title is and what's involved in that role? Good morning. So I'm Odet McKenry. I'm Deputy Director for Automation and Innovation in the Digital Data and Technology Department. I'm Dean D. Datt for short. We're in the Home Office based in Sheffield. I'm responsible for automation and innovation strategy and as part of that I've built an automation centre and an innovation lab with the aim of improving our services and increasing efficiency in the Home Office. And Hannah, what about yourself? So hi, Hannah Turner. I'm the head of commissioning for automation and AI, so I work within the Automation Centre that Odet has just talked about. So really what that means is I oversee all of the new work that comes into the Automation Centre, the triaging of those opportunities and also transitioning those into delivery. I've also got responsibility for our programme management office, service management function and our benefits management function as well. So all the different components of the team that support that delivery function. And I've also recently been leading on the work we've been doing on artificial intelligence and our pathfinder projects that we've been learning. Thank you very much. So can you begin by helping me to understand what automation is? I don't mind going there, so I think for me automation is about how I reduce the number of manual steps in a process that are performed by people. An example of that is something we call double-keying where somebody might receive a document from one system and then have to retype it into another system because those systems don't talk to each other. So that's for me is automation. And just, well I'm here, I think I do get asked quite a lot what's the difference between automation and artificial intelligence. And what I think is what interested is I see the automation really reduces the number of manual steps in a process. But we're finding that what AI is particularly good at is structuring data in order to enable quicker decision making. So that's how I see automation in AI. Yeah, I think my view is very similar to what a data is already said. So using technology to reduce the amount of manual human intervention required in a process. But particularly those more mundane and repetitive tasks. So taking those away so that humans can really then focus on the high value activities. So decision making, innovation, that sort of thing. In your main day to day roles, what are the main sort of tasks that you're doing? Well, I was thinking about just today, so today we're recording a podcast. I've also got quite a lot of engagement with other directors around issues. I've just commissioned a large piece of work. I'm sitting on a, actually I want to pay steering group later on. I'm talking to a part of the business, potentially about how they might fund some work that we're doing because they want to grow. And I'm meeting the new head of a particular department and also planning a ministerial visit. So that's just today. Every day is different. I think as Hannah says, lots of meetings, lots of meeting good people and lots of activity to drive outcomes. I think similar for me. I mean, it kind of goes with the job, but there's lots of engagement usually required and commissioning type roles. So I tend to spend a lot of my week engaging with different areas of the business and our counterparts and other areas of DDA. But yeah, similarly today for me has kind of gone from prepping for some international conferences next week that we are speaking at around the work we're doing on artificial intelligence, kind of meeting with my team. So I kind of want to ones with a team to check in and make sure that they've kind of got what they need and this is forward. Similarly to a diet kind of prepping for some ministerial visits that we're doing, we also have our delivery board today. So that's where we kind of get together and as an SMT look at all the projects we're doing kind of check that they're on track and approve kind of various requests and move through stages or extend timelines, things like that and also kind of having conversations about some strategic design decisions that were making on to a background automation project. So yeah really varies day to day but a real broad scope from you know planning ministerial visits and speaking to press office to having one to one with the team to kind of making you know project level decisions on whether that be designs or timelines. So a really varied mix. And do you feel that you were drawn to this type of role because of that? Is it something that you you enjoy and value because you like variety? Essentially yeah. I think we're both agreed on that. I get I get bored easily so the variety is good. How did you get here? What's been your career story so far? I'd say I definitely haven't had a straightforward trajectory to get to a technology role and the and the deputy director role that I'm in today. I didn't come up from a traditional technology route but then I am now in my 50s so those routes weren't there when I was younger. In fact a BBC basic computer came into my school the one computer on my very last year and I wasn't even able to touch it or I did get to see some of the best clever boys at maths get to use it. And so I've been my career is about 30 years now. I spent the first half in policing roles. Started off as a 999 call handler, starting working business planning and project management. I actually joined the home office for the first time in 2009 working on the Olympic security program and in fact I've now worked on three government major projects in project and leadership roles within those projects. So I would have said my career focus has predominantly been projects and transformation but each of those projects and programs had increasingly more technology at the heart of the transformation. And then effect I think I became a technologist by default. So I moved in to D-DAT in 2019 so five years ago now into a new role to create our technology innovation capability and to maximize our automation technologies that were emerging at the time it was very much about robotic process automation and the emergence of chat bots. So I've essentially created the role that I'm in now and I've created the capability in the team that we have. I actually started that role outside of D-DAT in a transformation program in a limited way and then have kind of expanded to look at automation beyond that particular function which at the time was in finance. So now running a team of about 140 people, 10 squads, delivering automations and an innovation lab experimented with new technologies. So you don't always have to come through for a technology route. And do you feel like it was a big career shift for you or do you feel like it was quite a sort of natural transition? It feels quite it felt like quite a natural transition actually because so many transferable skills that you can take into these roles. And would you be able to maybe share just a couple of those core skills that you think you've brought across with you? So leadership, project management, delivery, transformation skills really highly transferable into the sector. I'd say I've brought an innovation mindset and by that I don't mean I'm the inventor although I am curious but I don't mind sharing stories about things that've gone wrong and I kind of would like to encourage that sharing of learning, financial management and people skills that you don't need that to be in technology, you need that to be anywhere. I think that point you said earlier about change and variety, it's that being flexible and adaptable to change which given the absolute pace of change of technology really key. You've got to have that kind of ability to cope with that change in your own team. And I think that's really important in technology now. The reality is most of the technical work is done by my team so I've kind of built the capability, set the vision and the culture and there are lots of sort of leadership in enabling roles in technology departments such as running apprentices schemes, program management offices, roles, running professions themselves, private offices, business change. So it's not all really technology roles within a technology department in order to run effectively. And Hannah, how did you get here? Similar to a diet in the sense that I didn't come from a kind of tech background but you know a slightly different kind of route to where I am now. So I joined the civil service straight after my A levels as an apprentice. So I did do STEM subjects at A level actually but that's because I wanted to be of that at the time not because I had had tech on my kind of career vision board. I think interestingly at the time I didn't really even know that was an option. I don't think when I was studying my levels careers in tech and doing things like computer science and software engineering we talked about. It wasn't as common and people weren't as aware of it. it as they are now. So, you know, I've always enjoyed, you know, kind of stem subjects and done well in them, but, you know, didn't kind of go into it with the ambition of working in tech. So, yeah, join the civil service as an apprentice when I was 18 and actually ended in a HR role. So, we were kind of placed wherever there was a vacancy. So, I ended up working in one of the government department and a HR role to start with, kind of particularly looking at talent and senior talent and how we kind of nurture people that we already have in the organisation but bring new people in. And from there, I moved about quite a bit. So, you know, I kind of wanted to explore all the rows of government. So, I did some time in kind of project delivery and moved into some other kind of operational delivery type roles and then joined the home office back in 2018, actually, in one of those enabling function roles that I was actually just talking about. So, I joined the home office to work in DDA, put to run our internship scheme. So, at the time, we had a kind of really immature internship scheme that was bringing about one or two people in a year. So, came on board and expanded that across five different professions to the point where it was bringing in about 40-50 people a year. And that was an award-winning scheme that we, you know, we spoke to lots of other government departments about to share our learnings. And that for me really got me into tech. It got me learning about the different roles and how technology is delivered within the home office and within wider government. It moved around some other roles in DDA after that. So, kind of some more project delivery type roles and my last role prior to coming into the automation centre was actually chief of staff to our chief technology officer. So, that was a really interesting role. And for me, gave me such a broad knowledge of tech and how technology organisations work and function and, you know, kind of getting visibility to those kind of conversations at a really strategic level was really, really useful for me. So, yeah, that's kind of how I ended up here again, a bit of a very journey and certainly didn't come from a kind of tech-focused background. It sounds like you've been learning quite a lot within your roles. Yeah, I think for me as a person, that is, I am one of those people that I'd like to learn by doing. That is where I get the enjoyment and where I learn most. So, that certainly kind of suited well to me really. I like to kind of just be thrown in and figure it out and learn as I go. I think that's absolutely right. I'm very much an active learner. As I said, effectively created this job when we advertised the job that Hannah replied for, we kind of had a job description, but it was part of the interview was very much about your ability to adapt, change because the job description you have now is probably not the job description you will have in the years time and that's pretty much come true. I think that we've probably got a lot of team, our team has made up a lot of people who really enjoy the sort of change and the flexibility and the dynamic work that we have. And have you noticed any big changes since you started working in the industry? Yeah, I'd say in my earlier projects, both in policing and in the home office, there was probably definitely a male bias. I was often one of the only women in the room, whereas actually my nearest member of my leadership team starts next week and when she does, we will actually be at a 50/50 balance on male and women on the team, which I think is really positive. I certainly see a lot more women at leadership and tech events now particularly I find in AI, the AI space, there's a lot more women in it than I used to see in the early day of my event. So indeed, I've probably seen more diversity generally, I definitely think there's still more that we can do. The other change is obviously the pace technology just trying to keep up with it now is incredible. Also, when I first started off, it was all very much waterfall projects, big structured programs, but now things are moving to more agile building, building minimum viable products, iterating products that live and improve, you don't build things and then chuck it over the fence and hope that somebody is going to maintain it. And I think there's also big changes happening really fast in the AI space, which was predominantly a data science world, but generative AI is really opening it up now. So it's much more accessible for people to build with a lot of software engineering profession. And increasingly, I think we will all be able to build AI solutions over time. And with that, it will come more opportunity for more diversity. So it's just trying to keep up with that change now. It's so fast. Yeah, I think for me as well, one of the things that I've particularly noticed is the access to tech roles now as well. I think there's so much more accessible than they were even five ten years ago. The amount of career change schemes, apprenticeships that are available, not only in government, but across industries is massively increased and you don't need to have done computer science at university or studied STEM subjects to get into tech nowadays. And I think that's great. I think it's a really great step forward in the industry. And why did you choose to work in the public sector instead of the private sector? Initially when I was younger, I wanted to be a police officer. And before that, I did think about being a teacher. And I kind of need to know that I want to see that we're delivering something that's good. I think for all civil servants, it's all about purpose. We all resonate with the reason we are doing the job, the types of work you get to work on as well, so the policy areas, especially in the home office, we look at things from immigration to counterterrorism and policing. There's such a broad range of policy areas that you just would not get the opportunity to work on outside of the public sector. So I think for most civil servants, you ask them this question. I'll give you a very similar answer that it's all about purpose and just kind of resonating with the mission of the home office and the organisations that we work for. A debt you've already touched on this about, the skills that you brought with you and that you've adapted throughout your career. What about you, Hannah? What do you feel that you've brought with you to the role that you're in now? Yeah, so I think similar to a debt on the adaptability point, I think I am a really adaptable person. I think that is super important in tech roles. As a debt, as mentioned, tech is constantly evolving and changing, so you just need to be able to move with that change and be comfortable with it. I think people and leadership skills, I think definitely my time that I spend in some of the kind of talent and development type roles have been really crucial to transition across and transition to all roles really, but being able to bring together more to different teams and lead people and set their action is crucial. I'm also a very organised person as well, which is probably again shown in my chief of staff type days and again, is super important in any role, but particularly in this role I've found and that appetite to work at pace, I love working at pace, I like when things maybe aren't going as smoothly as they could be doing and I think definitely in tech delivery it's really important to be comfortable and happy working in those environments at time. Do you feel that these are skills that you've learnt or do you think some of it comes with personality type? I think definitely a bit of both. I think there is certainly a bit of personality type in there with liking the pace and the change and some of the organisational side of stuff. I'm certainly at home as well as at work, but I would definitely say for me personally that some of that has come with learning on the job and quite an introverted person. For me, work and moving around careers has certainly brought out some of that more kind of people leadership side of me and kind of given me that kind of confidence and being comfortable in doing some of that kind of day to day. So yeah, a bit of both for me. Could you please tell us about any exciting projects that you've been working on? If it mean over our career in general, I was involved in the Olympic Safety and Security programme from start to finish, from the initials business case in the police force where I was at the time, right the way through to having an operational games time role in Scotland yard and to being part of making recommendations around how we could make. Oh, what's the word? Make money back, I guess, from the learning, from working with other countries. So what's a legacy? So effectively details. So I went for business case right the way through to legacy and an operational role. As a retired hammer, thrower and an athletics fan, I can also say it will be really difficult in my career to top that, to be right the way involved, right the way through, a major transformation programme around something that happens in this country, it's happened three times ever. So I think it would be pretty hard to top that, but I think one of the things that's excited me recently is we've delivered a technical solution that will enable international cooperation. It's the first digital tool of its kind, which we've built in the UK. And so the scale of potential there is exciting. It's really early days and I can't go into specific fix, but to build something you know is going to have such an impact is, yeah, I mean, that's what you get at a bed for. And you've both said that you really value the sense of purpose that you feel in your jobs. What would you say that you value most about your job or if it is the sense of purpose, then is there anything else that you really value? Yeah, I think for me, and it seems we've touched on earlier, actually. And variety, huge amount of variety in this role, and I really enjoy that. That's the sort of thing that I kind of look for out of a job. Being at the cutting edge, and I think particularly with what we do on automation and innovation, kind of being at the really front end of change in technology and seeing how that develops and evolves. And then, yeah, the purpose point that we've touched on already, so having that opportunity to work on really significant issues that impact so many people across the UK, and you really couldn't have the opportunity to work on anywhere else. I think for me, we've mentioned obviously delivering things that you can see have a direct impact on the public. I think one of the things that our team does that I also particularly enjoy is enabling other teams to have a more direct impact on the public. So by helping teams reduce some other, I guess, ineffective bits of their process, the bits that we're annoying, to allow them to have more time to be able to focus on dealing with customers. So although it may not be direct, seeing the joy when we've put some of the solutions in that it's made lives easier for our people who work in the home office is also really pleasing. But I'm also going to say quite selfishly, I like the autonomy and the freedom to solve really sticky problems, I like that. What's it like working at the office in Sheffield? Noisy, is that fair to say? No, I think it's noisy at times because we've got a lot of people who are really creative and collaborating. Collaborative, and really big creative and collaborating. I think it's a good energy. It's also noisy because we're part of the way through refurbishment and the building. And that's deliberately so we can have more creative and collaboration spaces rather than so many desks. And so that, you know, we can, you don't always need to book a meeting room if you just want to get 10 minutes and sit together and work on something. But it is friendly. We do charity coffee mornings, charity bakes is nearly always cake in the office. So our team is quite spread. So I've got people in Liverpool, in Croydon, in Manchester and in Sheffield. So often I find myself in lots of different offices too. Oh, OK, so you moved? You actually physically moved to different offices? I did. Yeah, I mean, I came to Sheffield. So my father was in the Navy, my husband's a former military family as well. And we always moved all our lives. And we were working in London. And I could see that there was an opportunity to move to Sheffield because we had an office here. I loved Yorkshire. I loved all the music gigs. I like the big walking, big skies, being so close to the pink district, the culture here. You got theatre and great restaurants. And also, we're not that far from anywhere with me. When I first got this job I was based in London. And I asked, you know, could I move to Sheffield? Because it's two universities here. And I was going to be building in the UK for a tea. And I thought I would take advantage of that. And I thought at the time, it also supported the direction of travel of moving more civil servant roles outside of London. So it was a personal and professional result, really. I'm hoping we can grow some more ways here, given our focus as on efficiencies. And we know at the moment the financial climate is not brilliant. And how do you not base in Sheffield, are you? That's not where you live. No, so I live in a town in Nottighamshire. So I'm not too far away from Sheffield, but yeah, I'm very used to commuting for work. So prior to working in Sheffield, I worked in Nottigham for a little bit. But my past couple of roles have been in the Sheffield area. So yeah, it's somewhere that I've kind of been working for, I've probably been over eight years now, maybe a little bit longer. So yeah. But I think, you know, the Sheffield office, particularly, we've got a lovely community. It's a really nice atmosphere in the office. And people do always comment on that, actually, when they come to visit the office from other locations. You know, we've got a Sheffield mural that somebody in the office is who kind of is an artist in their spare time. We've been drawing up, you know, we have a tea and coffee kitty. We got for kind of coffee catch-ups when we can. So it is a really nice team spirit that we've got in the office. I think it makes it all that nice, sir. And do you get out to tech events in Sheffield or closer to you, Hannah? Not as much now. So we do go to some tech events. They tend to be more, I mean, we've done some stuff in Manchester and London. I haven't done as much in a Sheffield area, but I know that a debt has done a little bit more. I think you've been to some of the Sheffield-based tech events, haven't you, Adette? Yeah, that's right. Sheffield digital events. I've been to a couple of the Sheffield digital senior leaders, Dennis, which has been really great network with my peers across Sheffield. It's resulted in some follow-up chats too. And I also recently spoke at a joint British computer society and Sheffield digital event about AI at one of the universities. And I think my favourite bit of that was when a couple of young women in the audience came up to me after it's all infused and asking lots of questions because actually I'm seeing the next generation of people coming through and they are more diverse, which is brilliant. What do you feel most excited about in automation and AI at the moment? I think for me, it's about the transformation it can bring. I think it's going to have a massive impact on how we work over the coming years and where we're very much particularly with AI at the start of that journey. So yeah, I think for me I'm excited to see how that plays out over the next couple of years and just really how it does change the way that we do things now. Yeah, I think if I look wider than the home office, what I'm really excited about is a potential for AI and quicker diagnosis of health issues and being more preventative care. I think that's quite exciting. But if we look at our current, I mentioned earlier, our financial climate, there's so much demand for public services and not enough money. And I do see potential for things like automation and AI to help us manage increased demand. I'll go to the challenge we've got is having that investment up front, but you can see the change that's needed and will happen over the next few years. Do you have any advice for someone who's interested in working in automation? Yeah, I think there's lots of different roles within the teams. So if I take the automation center, you could come in as either a business analyst or someone working in business change, test analyst, software engineer, delivery manager. There's lots of different roles there. We also have various schemes, I think Hannah mentioned some earlier. We've got digital development schemes as apprenticeships, which you can look out for. We've also done internally some career switches, so moving people from operational roles in case working into software engineer roles. And if you're in another organisation, perhaps you might have similar within your organisation if you're interested in that switch. I think if you are in a role, I've got some advice. If you're in a role in automation and that will be just don't automate a bad process, always try and improve that sort of process first. And choose the right tool for the job. One of the things that we find in the automation centres, people come to us and say, "I want an RPA for this, robotic process, I want a chat bot, whereas what you need to ask is, what is the problem the trying to solve and then apply that most appropriate technology?" There are lots of free online courses available, particularly for why'd call low code suppliers, which is probably an entry route into software development. I'm obviously not going to endorse anyone's supplier, though, as you can imagine. But it's worth looking out for some of those free academies, which you can find online. What about you, Hannah, have you got any advice? I think Adet is just going to very, very good job at summarising it. I think the only thing I would add is just give it a go, I think often, especially if you're not already in a tech role that can feel really daunting, thinking about trying something new or getting into a new career. I think the three courses that Adet has mentioned are really great. There's some amazing courses out there now that people can spend bits of spare time just getting themselves familiar with. And certainly looking at the different schemes that are available, there's so many career changes schemes, apprenticeship schemes now that make getting into automation specifically and tech so much more accessible. Definitely some of the lower code technology as Adet's said is maybe a good area to start. If you are new to technology and you're keen to get into it, maybe starting by looking at some of the low code technology, especially some of the stuff that we use in the automation centre is a really good way in. But yeah, just give it a go. I don't think you're going to regret it. So sometimes taking that first step is the hardest. Great. Well, thank you very much both of you for sharing your stories and for some really great advice as well. Thank you.