Leaders Unscripted

Conversations with leaders about the challenges they’ve faced and what they’ve learned.

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3: Transforming a 300 Year Old Institution in Four Weeks with Matt Stutely OBE, Former Head of Software Engineering at the UK’s Parliamentary Digital Service

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For 300 years, UK politicians voted in person as a matter of tradition. Then covid gave them just 4 weeks to change all that…

Leading a team to create an entirely new remote voting platform for MPs was the challenge bestowed on the Head of Software Development, Matt Stutely.

Matt shares how he took on an impossible task, earned an OBE, and reinvented the voting system on this fascinating episode of the Leaders Unscripted podcast.

This Episode Covers:

  • Creating a system for Parliament to vote remotely for the first time in history
  • The huge accessibility and cybersecurity challenges faced
  • Pressure and personal struggles as a leader, where nobody is looking out for you
  • Advice for leaders with a seemingly impossible deadline

Episode Highlights:

“We had done some work over the past couple of years, I had a strategy in place to start offering the option for doing some things remotely, but it was only for what I would call the transactional business.” - 3:30 - Matt Stutely OBE
“The single biggest challenge was the situation we were doing it under. So the fact that everybody in my team had gone from a world where we were all working in an office together, to the fact we weren’t anymore. We were spread out across the country.” - 9:45 - Matt Stutely OBE
“The biggest challenge technically would have been the cybersecurity aspect, because obviously, that's a very interesting target for a wide variety of nefarious actors.” - 15:55 - Matt Stutely OBE
“It had to work well, and we had to build that trust. That only came through showing people how it worked and getting them on board. It was showing some very, very senior officials and ministers and things what took place.” - 20:00 - Matt Stutely OBE
“Leaders are there to make sure you’re okay, but who’s watching over you? Nobody. You’ve got to suddenly make sure you’re taking care of yourself.” - 22:50 - Matt Stutely OBE
“It's really nice to be nominated for an OBE. It reflects on the hard work of everybody who was involved. They obviously can’t give them to everybody, because that wouldn't work, but it's really nice to be recognised for yours and your team's work.” - 28:20 - Matt Stutely OBE
“First of all, trust yourself. You're in the position for a reason. You know you're there because you're trusted to be the person to deliver this stuff in normal times; you can deliver it in a crisis as well.” - 30:00 - Matt Stutely OBE

Links & References:

Constellary: https://www.constellaryhq.com/

Suzan Bond: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanbond/

Matt Stutely OBE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattstutely/