Day 22 – 3 February 2014
Another month starts and I have a couple more presentations. Meadowfield first and then Seaham which means I have to drive down past Durham and then back across to the East. This doesn’t make sense except that the engineers who work in the schools find it very difficult to get away during the day and so an 8:30 slot is required.
Over the weekend I was reminded that we had toyed with videoing these presentations which may help in covering the distance but ironically we have not been able to get the technology to work. I must try again though there is a lot to be gained from having these presentations in person.
If you want to get to know someone then take them for lunch. Our Service Desk is always under pressure to perform and is under relatively new management and so I offered to buy lunch for David who manages the team. It was a great opportunity to catch up with each other and understand what each is thinking. It is too easy to think that a log and flog operation will serve our customers best, that is taking the calls as quickly as possible and passing them onto ‘experts’ to deal with later but this is never what I wanted to have and am sure that in the long run is not what our clients want either. Our focus needs to be on reducing the need to contact us by making things work better but when people do need to get in touch that we handle these calls in flow.
How we continue to get there was the subject of the majority of our chat. The rest was about football but with a Manchester United fan talking to a Newcastle fan it wasn’t the most optimistic or exchanges.
After lunch (which was very pleasant though the dumplings in the cobbler did look like cheese scones) I had another presentation but this time to the Tier 4 managers group. They meet monthly in two sessions (remember there is over 100) and as they are important to what we are trying to achieve I try to have something on each agenda to talk about. This month it was the Public Services Network (PSN). This one will run and run.
I followed Alan from Zurich who came to talk about business continuity which was portentous as security is a key to its achievement. PSN provides an assured platform that enables government to share data and services by creating a network of trust between connected partners and sets a minimum standard for the protection of data and digital assets. So now you know. It is an organisational issue and not just an ICT consideration. So far it has been applied to local and central government but health, blue-light and schools will follow.
There is a lot to look forward to.
Learning points for today: There are some back stairs that take you from the lower ground floor car park to reception at County Hall; I should check the contents of a presentation before giving it and: Meadowfield was not the best place to be after a 3-0 drubbing by Sunderland.
Today’s enjoyment rating 8/10
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 