Day 40 – 27 February 2014
Last night went well. Everyone listened and there was lots of interest as well as questions and a few laughs. I nearly messed up big time though. I thought I’d sent the wrong presentation to Mid Durham Rural. Pam sorted it out though.
Only seven meetings today.
We have been offered another dollop of money to increase the penetration of superfast broadband across the Digital Durham area but there are strings attached. (By the way why do we call it superfast broadband when it goes the same speed as ordinary broadband? Should we not call it supercapacious broadband in a sort of Mary Poppins way? No doubt someone will now tell me that there is a slight difference in speed of an electron wave across copper and a pulse of light through fibre and that this depends upon the ambient temperature etc.)
There are always strings attached and Tony was down in London yesterday to find out what they are. Firstly the money has to be matched pound for pound and to get this will require us going through a cabinet cycle. Each authority will need to know what it is going to get for its money and so we need to have the detail at local level when we only have it broadly at programme level. It’s like three dimensional chess at times. Tony and I tried to make a start on working it all out and we will be meeting with our colleagues next week to take them through it.
Later on I met with Sheila, my latest Tier 4 manager. She is the Strategic Manager School Places And Admission and has the responsibility to make sure that there are sufficient school places in the county for the expected and actual numbers of children. She works very closely with the varying information teams to look at birth rates, nursery places and movements in and out of the county. There is a formula to work this all out. If ever there was an application for Big Data this is it.
Schools admissions are moving more and more online and it is a very seasonal business. Applications for primary places closes in January for announcement in April while secondary places close in October for announcement in March. There are also in year transfers but no close season.
Sheila also looks after the schools capital programme to ensure capacity or the future. She is working on projected pupil numbers to 2020 but really works on a 3-5 year window.
Her key priority is the child and making sure that they are appropriately placed in the right school.
I had a demonstration of the new service desk portal. It’s looking good. John and Darren have been working to make it easy to use for our customers. They’ve stripped out a lot of the unnecessary text and put information where you can find it. Eventually logging calls will be icon driven and will make sure that an incident goes to the person who can best resolve it. There is a lot of self-help in there as well. We need to get this out into live as soon as we can to let the customers tell us what works and what doesn’t. Agile development!
Learning points for today: Don’t ask the canteen staff what they have got which is hot. You might get a clip around the ear; It’s best to read where I’m supposed to meet before getting in the lift; It’s permissible to use the word education again and; Going paperless uses more battery.
Today’s enjoyment rating 8/10 – Bit tired from last night and got better as it went along.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 