Socitm Blog

This meant of couple of other external meetings needed to wait till later. One of the meetings I really didn't want to miss, but had to, was with Peter Tinson of UCISA (our oppo in higher education). However, I think he got a better deal because Ellen, our Head of Membership, stepped into what proved to be a very useful meeting. I will report more about this developing relationship as there is more news. We are quite excited about a number of relationships that we are developing with universities on a number of levels. I did manage to meet with NCC this week to discuss some interesting work they are doing around accreditation for IT departments...another space to watch!

 Wednesday was our monthly commercial board meeting, which is rapidly becoming a focus for much activity. For those who are not aware, Socitm generates its own income to support and develop its membership programmes and services from a wide range of services, products and growing consultancy - see www.socitm.net Obviously the content of this meeting is for the most part confidential but suffice to say we are extremely encouraged by the opportunities we have and particularly the recent appointment of Karl Grundy as Head of Commercial.

If you are a supplier to the government or third sectors and are interested in knowing more about how the Society may be able to help you please contact Karl : karl.grundy@socitm.net . Following this meeting it was straight up to Leicester to meet with Jadu, our CMS partners, to plan out the next major phases of our new site - the transactional functionality....then back to London to meet with our FD in preparation for a meeting in Brum on Thursday with our new legal advisors, Anthony Collins Solicitors. Now I have to confess that, based on my experience with lawyers and legal advisors generally I have gained the impression that they always like to make an industry out of whatever issue you bring to them...possibly a little stereotypical, but that is my impression. What a pleasant and unexpected surpirse I got, a two hour meeting full of straight questions, straight answers and no nonesense advice..I'm looking forward to our next meeting. There is at least one other lawyer I have met who also fits that description... Simon from Sprecher Grier Halberstam  : see ./info/161/membership/17/benefits/2 . I had to rush away from this meeting - well pleased - to get back to London where we were having a meeting with our third sector colleagues to give details of the new Socitm Third Sector community . The meeting went extremely well with a welcome from William Hoyle of CTT and presenations on our new proposed membership structures from Ellen Jessett and an overview of Socitm Insight from Martin Greenwood. There was a really good level of participation and range of questions, which continued into the bar afterwards.

 Unfortunately I had to leave early to get to the CIPFA Annual dinner at the Intercontinental...and that is where it all began to go wrong..I left London Bridge at 6 pm and by 8.20 pm I had still not reached Park Lane - in fact I was only just at Covent Garden. I had to give it up as a bad job because the meal started at 7.30. Having e mailed my profuse apologies I ended up in an Indian on my walk back from Covent Garden to my hotel. Still, in the big scheme of things a minor glich in an otherwise great week.

 Remember the 'good ol' days? http://www.shoeboxblog.com/?p=15314

Monday was pretty full, and began with a meeting of our full 'management' team. This team includes the various heads of service, our business managers and marketing /PR and is very much the 'workhorse' of the Society in terms of getting stuff done. The remit of the group is broad and generally informal but focussed upon making the most of our combined resources to offer more effective service and support to our members. We looked at key messages from Insight and Consulting as well as the central policy themes and messages for the coming year. There are some interesting, if slightly worrying trends coming from our study of local authority web capability, but watch out for the launch of Better Connected on March 1st for more information on this.

We are continuing to develop our work on 'Tomorrow's (local) public services' and are focussing particularly on the links between this over arching policy and the Council of the Future work that is being developed and refined. Our National (spring) Conference on April 22 (https://www.socitm.net/events/event/87/ ) will pick up and further develop some of these themes. you can subscribe to an RSS feed and receive information about all Socitm Events

 We also discussed some significant moves towards new membership and grading structures within the Society that will be a great step in our pursuit of professionalism. work continues on these and will be put before members at our AGM on April 22 (at the National Conference). We are continuing to develop a 'corporate membership offering' for both public / third and private sectors so watch this space for more news on these initiatives.

Talking of the Third Sector, Socitm has for some  time now been developing its relationship with the third sector through our merger with CITRA (http://www.citra.org.uk/) and this week this particular alliance has been rebranded as Socitm Third Sector - see http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/it/news/content/6003/charity_it_alliance_announces_steering_group

There is a lot of important and exciting work going on within this sector and particularly our ability to speak with a common voice over issues of mutual concern (note our comments on the Government ICT Strategy coming up later .....)

With the start of our Head of Commercial, Karl Grundy, (karl.grundy@socitm.net )comes a renewed focus on our supplier member community. As full members of the Society we acknowledge the different, but often overlapping, needs of this sector and are now actively developing new opportunities for engagement, partnerships and high value opportunities. Our Head of IA, Mark Brett, (mark.brett@socitm.gov.uk ) is very actively involved in many areas - but apparently he can't tell me what they are or he will have to kill me! Seriously, we, through Mark, are deeply involved with work in this increasingly important area on behalf of our membership. Security issues will feature 'large' in some key initiatives such as PSN and G Cloud.

We have also published our response to the Government ICT Strategy this week and you can find it here

 If you would like to subscribe to Socitm News feed click here 

Following the managers meeting it was straight into a meeting with the Socitm Consulting management team to discuss our ongoing business development plans and particularly how we can develop our work across the Society in a less silo'd more integrated way. I am hopeful of real progress here.

Then it was straight to Waterloo for a workshop that was run with Socitm Consulting in conjunction with Cap Gemini looking at future service delivery. The event began with a meal somewhere near France (I think it was Weybridge!!) at which Andrew Stott shared the honours of speaking along with Pierre Hessler . It was a good start to what turned out to be an excellent workshop the following day. We were hosted by Cap Gemini at their Woking HQ, in their ASE - Accelerated Solutions Environment and it was without doubt one of the most effective and productive workshop environments I have encountered. One of the many interesting areas we considered was that of ICT delivering real benefits out in the frontline service areas, the value of which, in terms of effectiveness AND savings generated was not realised within the core ICT function but, where it should be, at the front line. This is great - but only if there is a means to measure and attribute that value and ensure that the 'cut the ICT service to cut costs' brigade doesn't have its unsophisticated way. There will be opportunity to share the outputs with members very soon so I will keep people informed.

Returning to London I prepared for our Membership Board the following day. This turned out to be a very important meeting in which we made some great strides towards clarifying our new membership structures. The debate was stimulating and very beneficial. I believe it will, in the future, be viewed as one of the key milestones in our development as a professional organisation. At this meeting we also heard good news about our mentoring scheme and our ongoing work with the Cabinet Office and the GITP.

And that, other than trying to deal with a staggering backlog of e mails, was pretty much that......now it's time for the weekend. to end on a light note, have you ever wondered how the stock market really works? See:

http://www.burnabrain.com/how-stockmarket-works/

Readers of this blog will be aware of the web skills framework Socitm is developing as part of its wider plans to develop a web professionals group that will offer public sector webbies an attractive professional 'home'. The initiative has also been well covered in Sharon O'Dea's blog from the UKGovCamp a couple of weeks ago.

Thanks to its work in the web arena, principally the annual Better connected report, the Website takeup service, and this community, Socitm Insight is in regular touch with a large constituency of web professionals, and is aware that many of them feel undervalued, misunderstood, and mismanaged by their employers and colleagues.

So, behind the demand for a professional 'home' for public sector webbies lies a strong drive to define what web professionals do, to demonstrate how their roles relate to other professions within employing organisations, and critically, specify the levels of skill and professionalism at which web professional in relation to the national skills framework.

Thursday 4 February saw the second of two planned workshops to support initial definition of a web skills framework, in a project being led by Mary Wintershausen from Socitm Consulting.

An enthusiastic bunch of web practitioners and managers, plus some individuals with backgrounds in professional development and accreditation, assembled the CLG offices in Victoria . Local government, central government departments, CoI and Directgov were all represented, and among the group was a good cross section of professional web skills, ranging from the technical, through editorial and publishing to the wider arena of internal and external communications.

The group picked up the threads from the first workshop, which had ended up with the compilation of a large and wide-ranging list of possible 'web professional' roles and sub-roles, covering four broad areas including web management, technical development, editorial and content development, as well as web-based communications. Within these roles, a total of 128 skills or activities was identified, running alphabetically from 'accessibility' to 'writing for the web'.

In between the workshops, Mary reviewed our list to see the extent to which elements on it were already included in existing skills frameworks for related professional areas, including the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), developed by the IT sector, Skillset modules developed by the film & TV sector, and digital communications and web publishing modules developed by marketing and publishing professional bodies.

She'd also looked at the range of skills specified in the large number of web role job descriptions sent in following our appeals to web managers and others who've have been following what we are doing. Added to this mix were the 'core skills for government communicators' defined by Whitehall's Government Communications Network - recommended to us by a number of Whitehall webbies - and material from Business Link defining the skills and accreditation required by editors in other organisations publishing directly onto businesslink.gov.uk.

It's pretty clear from our investigations through this project that the only way that web professional skills are going to be fully identified, documented and recognised is for us to draw up a new, web-dedicated framework. We did start out thinking we might be able to add web skills to an existing framework, but the scope and range of what webbies do is just too wide, and touches parts of too many different professions, for this to be a feasible option.

So the task last Thursday was to get started on assessing bits of existing frameworks that were relevant to webbies (mostly those identified above), identify gaps we'd need to fill, and consider how descriptions of specific skills would need to be adapted to reflect the specifics of what web professionals actually do. We split into three groups to cover editorial/publishing, communications, and technical web skills.

Huge progress was made, and Mary will now collate our work and fashion it into something we can circulate for consultation - hopefully early next month when the core group of people who've attended workshops have seen the result and had its chance to comment and provide feed back.

Back from family holiday in Oz to snow beginnings, but this month my world would go ballistic!

Local CIO Council met (virtually) by telephone conference, when Martin Bellamy began our journey into the clouds ..... well, G-cloud to be precise - see my blog entry on Cloud matters ..... in which I have set out Socitm's commitment to helping to specify the shape and contents of G-cloud from a local public services perspective.

Our work on envisioning the shape of Tomorrows (local) public services kicked off with a joint workshop with LGA, IDeA, CLG and Socitm colleagues. This will link with some of the emerging thinking on the future of public services e.g. CIPFA-SOLACE: After the Downturn, Demos: The Power Gap, Commission on 2020 Public Services and the Institute for Government. Our particular focus will be innovation and improvement in information handling and the underpinning ICT infrastructure to support that vision. ­

To put it more succinctly this is about breakthrough delivery of public services.

So, what's next?

We will be distilling our thoughts in preparation for:

• testing them with a group of leading councillors brought together by the LGA
• further testing them with senior figures from the wider public services
• preparing briefings for ministers, advisers and local politicians
• developing guidance for our own members.

Karl Grundy came on board as our new Head of Commercial Development. I began the process of handing over some of the supplier contacts that I had made in recent months.

Talking of returning from Oz, I gave Scott Mansfield, Socitm's latest Graham Williamson Award winner some contacts in Australia to build his intended programme, one kindly provided by a former colleague at IDeA, Mary McKenna who leads the flourishing business that is Learning Pool.

I met with Cath Anley and Simon May of the Society of Chief Librarians (SCL) appropriately at the British Library. We talked about areas of common interest, particularly the advent of social media and the reluctance of some Head of ICT to permit its use. Cath and Simon explained that this is seen as a flawed position by librarians who are keen to see its exploration to facilitate learning and information exchange in the increasingly networked world in which their users, and non-users, live. For those who haven't seen it yet, do get hold of a copy of our Socitm Insight report on the use of social media in the wider public services and mirrors SCL thinking.

Socitm Futures met and reviewed progress on our priority policy areas:

• Envisioning, championing and shaping tomorrow's (local) public services
• Information handling
• Efficiency and sustainability
• Shared infrastructures
• ­Citizen and staff engagement

Paul Davidson of the Local e-Government Standards Body (LeGSB) gave an overview of progress in development and adoption of standards. My sense is that after too long a period of gestation, people in important places are starting to 'get it' with respect to standards. Certainly, they feature strongly in the Government ICT Strategy (of which more below). Of particular interest are proposals for defining and specifying standards for the nature of linked data sets, and to determine rights and responsibilities in relation to specific data sets to facilitate proper sharing which is vital for trusted, joined-up, local public services.

Gill Hitchcock of Government Computing Magazine interviewed me about my policy role for Socitm. The article, which sets out Socitm's policy priorities and expanding influence, has appeared in the February 2010 issue of the magazine.

The Government ICT Strategy was published, generating a wave of activity for me in producing a policy briefing and response from a local perspective. The draft briefing is currently being considered by members of Socitm Futures and the Local CIO Panel. Socitm will be playing a full part as critical friend in the strategy's implementation. Indeed, I will be serving on the Implementation Steering Group and endeavouring to ensure that the local perspective is respected and 'designed in' to the proposed infrastructure proposed in each of the strategy's 14 strands of activity.

Jos Creese (Vice president) and Tim Allen (Local Government Association) attended the first meeting of the Local Data Panel late in the month. This coincided, of course, with the launch of data.gov.uk. At Jos' request, I consulted Socitm Futures and Local CIO Council members to develop some thought leadership about the publication (by local authorities) of public data. This briefing is now in preparation - watch this space!

IT Trends had its press launch and we were delighted to have John Suffolk, Government CIO present to discuss the findings.

So was the month really 'ballistic'? Well, I ended it with a presentation at the governmentIT 2010 conference in the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, a few floors above the Iraq Inquiry! I reckon we had the bigger audience (on-site, anyway). I shared the platform with Bill McCluggage (Deputy Government CIO) and Martha Lane-Fox (Government Digital Inclusion Champion). Bill gave an overview of the Government ICT Strategy, Martha enthused the audience about the prospects for digital inclusion and raceonline2012. I spoke about the findings in our latest Customer Access Improvement Survey and the enormous potential for simplifying and improving our website content to support 'channel shift' towards digital delivery of public services.

I then crossed the road to HM Treasury for a meeting with Oracle at which they set out their ideas (to a large and varied audience) for a proposed OGC public sector product and services agreement.

Finally, I had a useful discussion with William Barker of the Department of Communities and Local Government about our continuing work with LGA and IDeA on information handling and the prospects for sharing our developing thinking with colleagues in Whitehall who are charged with implementing Smarter Government and digital delivery.

It looks like the next few months are going to be even busier and certainly varied!

However, as an aside, part of my old role, policy, has been taken up with energy and skill by Martin Ferguson, Head of Policy, who is steering it, and the Society, exactly where we have wanted to be. Martin is, so to speak 'putting himself about a bit' so much so that there are weeks when I am fairly sure he must have a clone as he appears to be speaking or meeting in at least two places simultaneously. If you would like to learn more about the Head of Policy role and its importance for our members at the coalface there is a great double page interview with Martin in this months GC magazine. To remain for a while on my detour, Martin is ably aided and abetted by Mark Brett, Head of Information Assurance, who seems to be equally committed to the quest of omnipresence. Mark will be at the CIPCOG event in York on Feb 24th and 25th so if any of our members are going and want to collar him, why not give him advance warning mark.brett@socitm.gov.uk .

As I looked out from the beginning of this week it dawned in me just how much of my role involves attending internal meetings, getting into the details of running a company and very little getting out and about in government. That's not a complaint at all, as too many companies suffer for lack of attention to the running of them, it's just a difference to which you need to adjust. Tuesday saw me considering the details and implications of becoming a charity, something we have often considered in Socitm but which is certainly not yet the right course of action. I caught up for a one to one with Mark Brett on Wednesday morning, before going to the Insight steering group. The group is held at Seimens offices near the Old Bailey, for which we are incredibly grateful to Seimens as they are our regular hosts for a number of Socitm meetings. ( http://www.siemens.co.uk/entry/en/ )

It is going to be an exciting and fairly bumpy ride over the next few years right across the public sector but IT is still ideally, possibly uniquely, placed to enable the delivery of significant efficiency savings. There may well be a wave of pessimism, but those who focus upon the real business benefits that appropriate and properly implemented IT can deliver will reap rewards. The Insight programme, as with other initiatives across the Society will have more to say about these issues as the year progresses. As a Society we will be looking at the realities and issues around achieving 'better for less' (we are not too taken with 'more for less' as it contains no qualitative element) our overarching policy framework looking at 'Tomorrow's public services' will begin to examine future options and opportunities in the light of a better understanding about psn, G Cloud etc. Of course with our expanded corporate vision we also have a remit to consider the interests and requirements of members from the Third Sector who often get a pretty raw deal when it comes to national government initiatives. Their names are often scattered throughout a strategy document but with precious little practical detail so they can easily end up with the responsibility of service delivery without the resources or infrastructure that we may take for granted. We have a lively and growing Third Sector group from whom I am sure we will be hearing quite a lot.

After Insight I rushed up to 1 Alfred Place (quite a find, check it out: http://www.onealfredplace.co.uk/) to meet with a guy called Bill Wells (an introduction made on Twitter.....) who has a company called 2dot0.co.uk (www.2dot0.co.uk )and they have some phenomenally clever visual technology that can enhance and add value to any digitally streamed video...I was well impressed and will certainly be exploring this further. I am considering how it may be used in conjunction with Socitm TV (www.socitm.tv )Watch this space.........

Thursday was the monthly board meeting...and it was a pretty big one - in importance not size! However, as it is Friday evening and I swear I have just heard a bottle being uncorked, the board meeting will wait till later.