Friday 16th May

Socitm's EMT (Executive Management Team) met in Birmingham. I guess this has been the main vehicle for co-ordinating Socitm activities at an operational level, with representation from Consulting, Insight, Marketing, Performance Management and Member Services, and usually chaired by the Society's Chief Officer. Adrian was on leave, today, however, so I chaired. We discussed all the areas of organisational development that have been prioritised, and to be considered at next week's board meeting – resourcing, policy development, board development and directors' portfolios, the National Advisory Council, professional development, the membership model etc.

Martin raised the issue of our supplier database – or rather databases, as each service currently seems to have its own. There is clearly a need to clean and merge supplier information into a single corporate resource. Discussion led to consideration of Socitm's Software Supplier Index, and the proposal to merge this with Brent's excellent "e-Gov Index", which must also be part of the picture. Mark pointed-out that our GovX system also contains a wealth of supplier information. Martin agreed to lead on the discussion with Brent, and I will discuss with Adrian what resource we can make available to clean and merge information from our various sources.

Adrian is exploring opportunities for the development of our web-site and content management system to provide the sort of functionality – event booking, personalisation etc – that currently is sadly lacking, and we agreed to establish a small work-group to determine the requirements,


In thinking further about our organisation, it seems we need to establish a team that focuses on policy and strategy, which may be a combination of the present SIAG (Socitm Information Age Government) and EMT groupings – perhaps with separate strategic and operational emphases, but closely linked; another discussion point for the board.


I got home, tired and irritable after a journey that seemed to comprise continuous road-works and traffic jams. I had planned to go shopping with Chris. "You'll be too tired" she'd said. "No – I'll be fine." But I arrived home grumpy, we argued over a trivial matter, and she went off on her own! In my defence, had I been able to unwind with my cup of tea for ten minutes, I think I'd have been able to steel myself for the shopping ordeal.