information

It was a beautiful day for a train journey.  I was off to London for my very first Local CIO Council meeting with Socitm.  Despite the length of the journey and the lack of sleep (I can never sleep if I need to get up early) I was looking forward to my trip. There is … Continue reading A beautiful train journey

There was a bit of the wisdom of Solomon about the conversation I had with Lee.  I’m trying to let go.  I’m trying to get operational decisions made as close to their point of impact as possible and this means that I don’t want to make operational decisions.  I don’t want the Leadership Team too … Continue reading Get out of the way

The other question that I got to ask at the extended management team meeting was ‘how much of a meetings culture do you think we have?’  There must be some irony there.  The point was to see how people felt about meetings, were there too many, were they any good and that this would naturally … Continue reading A meeting culture

I’ve just been given some additional services to look after, on a temporary basis that is.  We use the word interim in such circumstances.  I am a stop gap and how long for I have no idea.  It may even be a permanent arrangement, in as much as anything can be permanent these days. I’m … Continue reading An interim position

When we bring people together to look at the issues we have, they come up with all sorts of crackpot ideas.  Why is that?  Perhaps they are working blind.  Perhaps they don’t know the scale and complexity because they don’t have access to the underlying data and information.  They simply don’t know.  Perhaps we overcomplicate … Continue reading Is our data good enough to give away?

Dawn showed us some picture or rather she didn’t.  She handed them out to us face down.  It was all part of a warm up exercise for our day talking about elephants, the ones we all know are there yet somehow can’t get round to talking about. The rules were quite simple.  You were not … Continue reading From a crown to a pale blue dot

I owe this one to a Twitter conversation. I get involved in them from time to time.  This one was with Mark and Steve and Mark and Peter and of course, me.  It started with a response to one of my blogs on report writing though it is a subject that has come up before. … Continue reading Let’s become a craicocratic organisation

I don't think I have ever been the world's greatest report writer.  I much prefer to talk ideas through than to write them down.  That may seem to be an odd thing to say as a blogger yet I think my writing style is more conversational than formal.  My blog attempts to speak to the … Continue reading Open Data Report

I see you can get an in-ear translation device.  It is called the Pilot from a company called Unilad.  It reminded me very much like the babel fish from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Life is imitating art?  It goes in your ear like a hearing aid and a person can speak to you … Continue reading Language translation

I’ve been using a Tiger Woods story in this round of presentations.  I lifted it from the Happy Manifesto by Henry Stewart.  Apparently plagiarism is the finest form of flattery. Back in 2009 he was asked in by Fortune magazine what the best piece of advice was he ever got.  He said that ‘When I was … Continue reading A sort of golf story