Introducing Poss Apostolou
Hi, I’m Poss and the Head of Commercial Operations here at dxw. I provide guidance to both dxw and client teams to help them build better public services.
This is my introductory post, it’s about 3 months’ late (sorry!) so it might also include some early reflections of my move from the public to private sector.
Same same, but different
Well, first things first, things here are not that different from central government. I came from a forward thinking government organisation, the Government Digital Service. We were leading (by example) an agile and collaborative approach to business management. This was something that challenged many of the existing Civil Service governance structures like finance and assurance reporting. But ultimately, it was simply a way of working that’s on a par with many modern businesses, such as dxw. So in this respect, my transition was pretty smooth.
Another similarity I’ve found is that dxw shares many of the core principles of the Civil Service. At dxw we advocate a set of values where, amongst others, we believe staff should “be honest, helpful and reliable”. After 10 years in central government, this resonates well with my interpretation of the Civil Service Values of integrity, honesty and objectivity. This is partly driven by dxw’s mission to help the public sector make good technology decisions and build better services, but also because 9 years of collaboration is bound to rub off on us too.
Sharing the scars
You may have seen recently that we’ve just celebrated our 9th birthday. In this time, dxw has helped public sector teams build great digital services that meet the Digital Service Standard. I joined dxw to help client teams navigate some of the obstacles that are not necessarily in the standard, but that are equally as important to meeting their desired outcomes. As we only work with the public sector, every client we work with will have at some stage:
- a conversation with its finance director about funding
- a need to report progress to a project assurance team about benefits realisation
- or a conversation with its procurement team about why the digital marketplace is the solution to all their problems.
Having spent the past 5 years in the GDS navigating the grey area between strategy, policy, delivery and operations, I’ve got a ton of experience (and some scars) that I want to share with public sector teams at their various stages of transformation.
I’ve had a great start to my dxw career, and feel fortunate to have joined an award winning organisation. I’m looking forward to helping teams in local government, housing, the health and emergency services, and of course, my good friends across Whitehall.