A year of work in progress – day 8

Day 8 – 13 January 2014

Today started with an absurdity.  I had to prove that I am who I am.    I’ve worked here for over four years now but have had to bring in my driving licence and utility bill as part of the Baseline Personal Security Standard (BPSS) that we have to adhere to.  I’ve already been cleared through the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) which has now become a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) but that is not enough for our friends in the Cabinet office.  We have to demonstrate that I have the right to work in this country and that I don’t have any unspent criminal convictions.

I don’t want to go all existentialist on you but I have a hard job proving that I actually exist, yet I need to go through this to comply with the Public Services Network (PSN) requirements.  If you haven’t heard of this, where have you been?  Being complaint took a huge effort at the end of last year.  It was a big distraction from our core work but we came through it as a more secure organisation and finally I think ICT security is on the corporate map.   We only have a few months before we are checked again and we don’t want the rush like we did the first time.

I managed to be convincing enough and am still reporting for work which is good as I had another fun day ahead.

My first of four meetings was with a recruitment company.  They persist in ringing me in the hope that one day I’ll make use of their services.  I haven’t yet but you never know.  Persistence can pay off and it can be useful to find out what is going on in the market.

I don’t intend for this blog to be a record of everything I do, just some highlights or interesting bits and so I won’t go through every meeting and will skip to the last, the Core Group.  This comprises representatives from each of the service groupings across the authority and acts as a communications vehicle so we can share what is important in our and their worlds. 

One thing I must get sorted this year is how we deal with Out of Hours (number 5 in my ten things I’m going to do in 2014).  We don’t have anyone on call but every so often things go wrong and we are expected to fix them.  This is a part of working in ICT and everyone accepts that, it just needs to be put on a formal footing.  So, big discussion about what the services want and what they are prepared to pay for.  You can imagine the way that went but good progress was made.

We also had a demonstration of OneNote, a Microsoft product that I’ve never used but has been lurking on my desktop for some time.  It looks interesting and I think I’ll take it for a test drive over the coming weeks.

Started a new book Transforming Health Care, I’ll let you know how I get on.

Learning points for today:  There are so many acronyms; A vision board is a good idea and fun to make; OneNote looks interesting; Might have to lose the beard; People I hadn’t expected are reading my blog.

Today’s enjoyment rating 8/10 – not every day will be fantastic.