Day 171 – 9 October 2014
Yesterday’s ICT Awareness Day wasn’t the rip-roaring success that I’d hoped for but it was far from a disaster. We had a fair number of people come through and some nice compliments. Bob said to me that if we can influence even a small number of people then it is worthwhile but it was a big investment in time and resource.
That was yesterday and today has come along. This time we are trying a different attack, something different and something that has come to be known as a MOT day. I don’t really know why but the name was used last year and it has stuck. Basically the idea is Guerrilla Working in action. A small team descends upon an office and talks to each person offering to solve those small problems or answer those queries that we never get around to asking. It’s all planned in advance of course so that people can get their heads around the opportunity. If the people won’t come to us then we must go to them.
Last year we tried this with HR but this year we are doing two locations in Children and Adults Services, the morning in the Durham Business Centre and the afternoon in Priory House. Lee has done his homework. Apparently the team want to talk to us about accessing and saving documents, SSID (the social care system), remote access, laptops, encrypted memory sticks (please no!), secure email alternatives, mobile computing and spreadsheets – to name but a few. I went to the afternoon session.
In the morning we had this month’s North East ICT Managers meeting but before that Graham and I attended a cyber-security event at Gateshead Northern Design Centre. Our stand didn’t get that much action, partly because we weren’t giving away any free stuff. I did take the opportunity to speak to Judy, the chair of Cyber Security Challenge. We talked about Dynamo and the role of women in ICT. The more I think about this though the less it is to do with gender and more to do with making the use of all the talent we have within the region.
Chris took over once we had to go to our NEICT meeting which started off with a conversation about the relative merits of working in the public or private sectors. We always have a good session to chat about what is really happening within the councils in a so-called safe zone. The main topic of the morning was the skills agenda, apprentices and Dynamo (again).
At Priory House there were lots of little thing to look at, especially drive mappings. Some of the issues were beyond my ken but with others I was able to impress myself. Being the Head of Service was useful when I had to pull in some favours from the Service Desk. It was quite a scary experience but I think we made some new friends.
Learning points for today: Fly Tipping is not a book by J R Hartley; cyber security floats some boats; there is some news you really don’t expect; it would help if we told our customers what we were doing and; I could do with some ICT training.
Today’s enjoyment rating 9/10 – the MOT session was fun in an odd sort of way.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 