If you could just wish it into existence, what would you wish?
In 2017 I wrote an article that was a review of another article I wrote in 2013 throwing up some ideas about potential Future Stuff we might as a sector start to introduce into our service provision.
In this exercise, you will each spend about 20 minutes quietly imagining a New Thing to include as part of the improved online service. This does not have to be limited to features to benefit citizen users - our council users are users too, with needs comparable to the needs of a king, and a king of England too.
Do not feel constrained by budget, management cooperation, or technology - the point of this exercise is to simply imagine things into existence. No idea is too ridiculous or too unimportant, or indeed too boring. This is not a competition for people to try to outdo each other as to who thinks they're more creative or wacky, it's an opportunity for people to think about how the service provision could be better with the addition of just one more feature, big or small, easy or complicated, important or trivial, could make somebody's day if only they could do that specific thing online if only we were able to imagine a feature into existence.
For the purposes of this exercise, every user a feature might benefit is individually the most important user in the world, including council staff users; for the purposes of this exercise, a feature which can provide direct benefit to just one user is as worthy as a feature which can provide benefit to thousands of users.
Write the ideas down on the sticky notes, and after the 20 minutes thinking time, have people start reading them out and adding them to a space on the wall. Do not go round the room in order, allow people to speak as and when they feel. It will be nice if everybody feels their idea is sufficiently worthwhile for them to read out to the room, but nobody should feel pressured to read it out if they've had creative block that day - but it should still be the case that everybody has at least written an idea down.
Go to lunch.