Day 42 – 3 March 2014
It’s the start of another week and another month. It’s just a short week this time as I have a couple of days off at the back end. I’m catching up on the last of this year’s holiday. Use it or lose it springs to mind.
My quest to go paperless took a minor setback as I needed to claim my expenses for February. We have an electronic process for claiming mileage, car parking and subsistence but these need to be substantiated by receipts. We also need to show that we have paid VAT on fuel to allow the Council to claim it back. Where can you buy fuel without paying VAT? I made my claim, printed it out, attached the receipts and gave them to Pam who knows what to do with it all. Lee is looking at a way of using the scanners in our multi-function devices (MFDs) to store the necessary information electronically and so sanity may prevail.
I did manage to leave my fountain pen at home but it was more by accident than design.
My first meeting was to meet the new head of one of our BSF schools. With the large number of schools as customers there is always some movement and it is important that we make sure that relationships are in place. I get wheeled out every so often when it’s a big customer. All went well.
Next was the ICT Strategic group where we discussed developments to the main systems. Once we’d discussed the last minutes I gave an update on the prioritisation process. This is the mechanism we use to make sure we only develop what the Council sees as important. These are the smaller projects outside the main core.
I got myself into a bit of a knot by trying to be too clever with the report. There are several time in the month when I need to provide similar information to different audiences. My plan has been to use the same report to satisfy all circumstances. Develop once and use many times. The problem was that I’d ‘cut’ the report several weeks back and things had moved on since then. Also parts of the report had been updated and others had not and so it all looked a little out of kilter, mainly because it was.
We did talk about our digital strategy and big data. Both of these are starting to get some traction which is going to help.
After lunch I had an ICT Customer Group meeting in my calendar. I asked Pam to let them know that I would be a little late as my previous meeting was bound to overrun. It turned out that I’d got a little ahead of myself and that I was a whole month early. The meeting wasn’t until 3 April and even then it was in the morning. Somehow it appeared in my calendar on three separate occasions. After it’s evaporation I was able to get on with the Digital Strategy and a Digital Durham event planned for next Monday (assuming my diary is right).
Learning points for today: For all my super-efficiency drive I can still get caught out from time to time; Document version control is harder than it seems and; Paperless can work.
Today’s enjoyment rating 8/10 – A little unnerved about my system faux pas.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 