Day 37 – 24 February 2014
This morning I woke up with the clock saying 2:22. I then woke up with it saying 5:55. How weird is that? I just had to get up.
This morning started with a meeting to look at a Digital Strategy. This is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time but I have never been able to convince myself that it is a good thing to do. Should we have a separate approach to our approach to using digital or should it be embedded in everything we do? Then again, should we have a customer strategy or should this not be treated in a similar way?
It turned out to be a good meeting and the three of us (Alan, Roger and me) agreed that we should write a joint report that would act as a statement of intent like our customer service strategy. It will bring together a set of principles, aims and objectives which outline the road that we are on and recognises the local, national and global pictures in which we are and will be operating. It will also need to set out clearly how we will address the digitally excluded. I think I’ll make a start on Friday.
Next I met with Joanna from HR to talk about how to get more women into senior positions in ICT. We have quite a lot of women within the service but the numbers thin out as the grade increases and it is something that I would like to address if possible.
My home town is the birth place of the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison. A hundred years ago she ran in front of the King’s horse ‘Anmer’ during the Epsom Derby with the intention of placing a sash in support of the suffragette movement around its neck. You will have seen the old footage showing the horse colliding with Emily who broke her skull and died four days later in Epsom Cottage Hospital.
I’m not planning anything quite so dramatic but I’m doing this with Emily in mind. We agreed to try a few things: Is there a role I could play in helping to raise this issue across the authority?; Is the culture of ICT preventing women from coming forward for promotion and; How can we get more girls to apply for an apprentice role that we have? Joanna and I are going to meet again in a few weeks.
Over the weekend I finished ‘El ocaso de Roma’ by Valerio Massimo Manfredi which sounds much more grand than it was and returned it to the library in County Hall. Scott there is my literary agent. He feeds me a constant supply of books in Spanish which I persist in trying to learn. I used to get them out one at a time but when I started to scrape the barrel of what the library had from their own stock he cast the net further afield and now gets me them by the half dozen. I don’t ask how he comes by them. I’m down to my last two from the latest batch but they are quite chunky and should see me through for a while.
The whole afternoon was spent taking the Portfolio Holder for corporate services around each of the main sites where we operate from.
Learning points for today: I can’t make it around every building we have in an afternoon and; We have a good story to tell.
Today’s enjoyment rating 9/10 – A bit of driving but well worth it.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 