Two Steps Back?

On Monday I missed the Socitm Futures meeting, as I took leave for my Father-in-Law’s funeral. However, Adrian told me that the meeting was excellent, and Martin Ferguson played a crucial role in facilitating a very productive session. I’ll aim to feature this in the next President’s report.


I spent Tuesday on a return trip to Barnsley, where I met with the Council’s European and Regional Strategy Officer, and the Head of Information Strategy, to discuss the Digital South Yorkshire Partnership (covering Barnsley, Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster) and potential synergies with Newham’s Telecommunications Convergence programme. Last October a Sporting and Cultural Development Partnership was launched between Barnsley Metropolitan Council and the London Borough of Newham, which provided the context for our productive meeting. We agreed outline proposals for the establishment of a formal liaison mechanism for sharing information and experiences, potential joint development/ technology transfer/ asset reuse, and strategy development, which would be in both our interests.


Among the positive initiatives supporting greater joining up and co-operation between the Central and Local public sectors, last year, was the appointment of Kevin Hayes to lead Central-Local Government liaison on Information Assurance matters, so I was surprised and disappointed to hear from Kevin, yesterday, that early termination of this role had been decided. I’ve replied to Kevin, protesting the decision, which is short-sighted and comes at a time when we are just starting to see the fruits of Kevin’s work in a dawning realisation of the importance of pan-Government Security and Information Assurance policy and infrastructure. I fear that the early discontinuance of this role – at a time when there’s intense pressure on everyone to deliver efficiency savings, will be seized on as a further opportunity to pare back activities to a minimum - setting us right back where we started.

Inaction is not an option.

In continuing consideration of ICT and the recession, two further articles caught my eye. Alcatel-Lucent CEO, Ben Verwaayen, spoke of the unique opportunity we have to reshape companies and processes and build a new digitally enabled future. A shift towards all-IP networks and software as a service lies at the heart of this new world order, he said. At the same (Alcatel-Lucent 2009 Enterprise) event Gartner's senior VP of research, Peter Sondergaard, said inaction is not an option in the current economic climate - and any business putting its head in the sand waiting for the storm to blow over will simply "suffocate". Meantime, Computing’s Martin Courtney worries, as I do, about what’s holding up IPv6. I really do think now’s the time to focus on really exploiting ICT for efficiency, to ensure we don’t lose ground on transformational government (just as we’re moving beyond hype and lip-service to actual joining-up) and to facilitate and sustain community cohesion through to the recovery.


Shane and I, together with Steria’s Legal Director, consulted a Barrister at his Lincoln’s Inn Chambers on matters related to Caboodle’s winding-up.


The Socitm London Committee met in the afternoon. I attended a pre-meeting with Geoff and a few other Members to consider how the region should develop to encompass the Society’s new remit, including aspects such as organisation, agenda and recruitment.

2e2 will be sponsoring the next regional meeting, at the House of Lords, as they did a year ago. Then, they presented on “Generation Y”; this time they aim to update and develop that theme to what they are calling “Enterprise 2.0”. Technology supporting the modern Councillor will also be on the agenda, along with “Connected London”. There will also be third sector input on senior citizen engagement.

We also discussed Capital Ambition plans for benchmarking using the Socitm service, but with a workshop to further develop an outcome based specification of requirements. i.e. Benchmarking business utilisation of ICT.

Steve Pennant advised us that the London 101 project has been cancelled, but the out-of-hours service has now gone live in a number of boroughs.

What's in a name?

A new Socitm Insight report - What’s in a name? The practicalities of being a public sector CIO – is published today. I’m pleased to commend the report, which further develops our push for a more confident, assertive ICT profession that challenges our businesses to use ICT services and infrastructure effectively.

It’s increasingly apparent that some of our regions are struggling to resource the organisation and management of their local events. The Socitm Board will be discussing this, next week, with a view to agreeing what support can be offered from the centre. In the remaining weeks of my Presidency I’m also aiming to meet with regional chairs to gain direct feedback on ways in which the Society can better support them.

Glyn Moody accepted my invitation, last Friday, to meet. He actually accepted it on Monday, but I didn’t realise because his invitation went into my junk e-mail. Unintended, I promise! Glyn says that’s OK because, as a journalist, he is used to being filed under “junk”! We’re arranging to meet and will keep you briefed.

Taking a long, hard look at ourselves!

Shey Cobley hosted a Socitm workshop, at Oxford Town Hall, to consider how the Society can more effectively support the broader objectives it set itself in the remit agreed at October’s EGM – “to be the professional association for all people working in ICT and related disciplines in the public and third sectors…” - particularly young professionals. Adrian Hancock, David Houston, Bernard Gudgin, Steve Jones, David Clayden and I, were assisted by Shey (Oxford City Council) Frances Kettleday (Cambridgeshire) Alex Birtwell (Hyndburn BC) and also Vicky Sargent and Elaine Davis.

Our failure to engage effectively, to date, was exemplified, this week when, following the publication of the latest “Better Connected” report, for the most part, the newly changed username and password for the Socitm Insight pages were not passed on by Socitm Lead Members to the very people who needed them – the web professionals.

We covered quite a lot of ground, in a very productive meeting, but two clear priorities were in establishing mentoring facilities for members – both peer mentoring and mentoring by more experienced people – and supporting professional development. The latter is being worked-on through our Membership Board but, today’s discussion served to reinforce the urgency of this work. Other issues, such as the way we welcome and support new members, were linked to these requirements.

A lot of the discussion was of facilitating the involvement of younger and less senior professionals who, generally, don’t have the same access to budget or time to attend formal meetings. Also, why is it that their managers always get to don dinner-suits to attend formal events to receive the awards their staff have earned?! This also chimed with senior management/ executive perceptions (misperceptions) and assumptions of what’s involved in roles (such as web development), which also embraced some apparently sexist attitudes.

We need to look again at some of the data Socitm has about its own events and services. Is the attendance at our events as representative of the people we want to attract as we think it is, and are the conclusions we draw from surveys well-founded, or are outcomes skewed because of undue influence of the “Old Guard”?

We also covered communications – viral marketing, topics/ workshops – time-limited panels to brainstorm and move-on rather than arrangements “set in stone”, personal responsibility/ motivation for career development and other issues including, of course, the need to make better use of the web/ technology.

Full notes of the meeting will be circulated among meeting participants, with suggested actions arising, and we are aiming to develop a detailed action plan for agreement at the next National Advisory Council, which is on 29th April. A “quick win” should be in establishing member mentoring facilities.

As always, I’ll be glad to receive any suggestions and comments.

Cull or Cure

At next week’s Intellect-Socitm Local Government Supplier Form, I’m presenting a session on public sector use of ICT in the current economic climate. Patrick Smith, from IBM, is presenting the view from the private sector. So I’ve done a fair bit of reading of others’ views in preparation. It’s becoming ever clearer that the recession in the UK is going to be deep and prolonged, as Steve Bundred’s article in Friday’s Times made clear. All the same, I’m not at all convinced that Gartner’s suggested response is the right one. Reliability, now, is everything; minor disruption and outages cause disproportionate loss of productivity and, worse still, adversely impact confidence at a time when ICT should be relied upon to enable greater business efficiency. I think Socitm’s recently published Technology Trends report stands-up very well, although it was completed before the “Credit Crunch” had really taken hold. Anyhow, I’ll look forward to reporting the conclusions of next week’s meeting.


Apart from a few hours out to attend the funeral of a not long retired former Newham ICT colleague, I’ve had my head down, mostly in preparing for upcoming meetings, for the last two days. It doesn’t sound like much, I admit, but still my head’s spinning – so I’m off to get some fresh air!