Thursday 15th May

A momentous occasion; I got another Facebook friend, last night, and logged-in for the first time in a while to confirm the request. I was greeted by a veritable cornucopia of Facebook requests, writings on my wall and other sundry messages. I logged-out again; sorry – life's too short!


The Socitm Insight Steering Group met, today, at Centre Point. I chaired, as Jos couldn't make it. The meeting started with me presenting on some of the issues we have been dealing with in the Society. I thanked Insight for having been our best-run and most profitable business, but then went-on to describe some of the changes we must pursue that will also affect the Insight business, such as recruiting permanent staff to run the core business, and procurement of fixed-price contracts for non-core business.

I introduced David Houston to present on Socitm finances and the Impact on Insight, who asked for still more sacrifice! I am very glad to say, however, that our presentations were very well received, and the Group was supportive of the action we are taking. We agreed to continue negotiation of further efficiencies through an Insight GovX Forum that we have set-up for the purpose, but committed to not take any action that could adversely impact this year's programme of work.

Vicky Sargent presented an excellent Marketing review of Insight, most of which was also applicable to the broader Society. This included a SWOT analysis, and examined the seven "P"s of marketing (yes – it used to be four) developing ten recommendations for action. These all were welcomed, and we agreed to set-up a day's workshop to "put meat on the bones" of those that require further development, although some – reducing print and increasing e-communications, for example, are "no-brainers".

In the rest of the meeting we reviewed the work programme, events and new developments, such as the Customer Access Improvement Service and Single Issue Briefings (watch this space).

We also started a discussion of how "Better Connected" is to be developed to reflect one of my key themes for Socitm, this year – ICT and the web becoming synonymous, digital convergence, the "network of networks" and role-based access. Again, the discussion was positive and, not for the first time, I had a feeling of pushing on open doors!