Friday, 11 June, 2010

How to run a GovCamp

With the excitement building up to LocalGovCamp Yorkshire and the Humber on Saturday, I thought I might share this piece, which I wrote for the UKGovCamp hub site a little while ago.

It’s a ten point plan to organising your own GovCamp type event – and it really is quite easy!

1. Have an idea

It doesn’t really even need to be a good one, though that sometimes helps. GovCamps take two main forms: being about a location, or an issue. So, would gathering people to talk about lots of issues about a specific place be useful? Or maybe getting people from lots of different places to talk about one similar topic would work better.

2. Float your idea

Join the Nou Camps group on UKGovCamp, and just chuck your idea out there. Mention it on Twitter, on your blog if you have one, and other online networks. How do people react? If they don’t at all, then it’s probably a non-starter. If they do, but don’t offer to help organise, then it’s worth doing, but expect to be busy!

3. Create a group

Next, if people seem interested, create a group on UKGovCamp and invite people to join it. Ask people for ideas on venues, sponsors, things to talk about and that sort of thing. Also ask for volunteers, but don’t be upset or indeed deterred if there aren’t many. Often it’s easier to get things done yourself.

4. Decide on a date, and find a venue.

First of all: weekday or weekend? All depends on your audience. If it’s a very worky-type event, do it on a weekday. If it’s a bit more socially-inclined, then a weekend is perfect. Here’s an example – Jon’s localgovcamp about project management was planned for a Saturday, but not many people fancied it. He changed it to a weekday, and was oversubscribed!

Next, fix a date. Don’t ask loads of people because a) they’ll give you a different response; and b) you’re giving them an excuse not to come if you don’t choose their preferred date. Instead, pick a couple of weeks where it could happen, and then…

Get a venue. What does it need? One big room for congregating in. Several breakout rooms – the numbers depend on how many attendees you have. Lots of coffee is a must! Wifi is also quite important, but not a deal breaker.

If you can, get someone to let you have the venue for free – it’s your biggest cost by a mile if you can’t. Approach companies in the area you want to host it in to see if they’ll put you up – they often will if it is a weekend and they get some good press out of it.

The venue will generally detemined the exact day you run your GovCamp on.

5. Organise, and find someone to pay for, the food and drink

Having a decent venue is important, but having decent – and sufficient – food and drink is vital. Arrange to have very regular deliveries of tea and coffee, and make sure that pastries, biscuits, muffins and that sort of thing are turning up all the time too. If you can arrange for a sponsor to bring a supermarket trolley full of Mars bars, apple pies and cans of coke, all the better!

Lunch is important too. Always order more than you need – never underestimate the appetites of public servants out on a junket.

6. A note on sponsors

I have mentioned sponsors – or at least, getting people to pay for stuff – a couple of times now. Here’s my advice on this – identify things that need paying for, and then get someone to pay for it. Don’t whatever you do either pay yourself, then find a sponsor to pay you back, or just take cash from a sponsor. Connect the sponsor to the supplier, and let them get on with it. Two reasons for this: you’ve got other things to be thinking and stressing about, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably cock it up.

7. Pimp your ‘camp

Keep banging on about your event, on Twitter, blogs, forums, social networks, phone calls, emails, conversations with strangers. It’s a good idea to set up a site for your GovCamp so people have an easy place to link to – a simple WordPress blog will do.

Use something like Eventbrite to handle ticketing, it makes life a lot easier. Release tickets in batches to create a false sense of excitement. Always hold a few back for good people you’d like to attend but who weren’t quick enough originally.

Think of some mad stuff to do at your GovCamp. If you fancy having some musical accompaniment – why not get a DJ to come along? It’ll be fun! Tell everyone about it – they’ll think you’re an idiot, but it turns out that everyone LOVES idiots.

Basically though, never, ever, stop talking about your event.

8. Get some tat to give away

The thing with sponsors and GovCamps is that there isn’t that much to pay for. Once the venue is sorted, and the lunch and refreshments, that’s all the important stuff done. So you’re likely to have to invent things you ‘need’ to satisfy the need of companies to be seen to be involved with your awesome event. So, get people to pay for things like:

  • T-shirts
  • Pens
  • Mugs
  • USB sticks
  • Stickers
  • Badges
  • …and anything else you can think of

9. Get people ready to present

The one big worry about a GovCamp is that nobody is going to want to talk about anything. Usually you’re safe because there will be one or two happy campers who know the drill. To be sure though, get people to talk about issues they’d like discussed before the event, online. Encourage people to join together to present sessions together if they have similar interests. Talk to people offline to make sure they will be up for stepping forward to suggest something they’d like to talk about.

As a back-up, have a couple of your ideas up your sleeve yourself – you almost certainly won’t need them, but just in case…

10. Get the agenda sorted – and then relax

The last stressy thing to get done is first thing, on the day – and that’s the agenda. Find someone skilled with a magic marker and get them to draw a grid on a sheet or two of flipchart paper. Then, gather everyone around and get them to introduce themselves – a good way is for everybody to say their name, organisation and then two or three words that describe why they are there.

Next, call people forward to suggest sessions. In a break from true Barcamp style tradition, it’s often useful to get people to tell the group what they are planning on talking about, so everyone gets an idea of what is on the agenda. They then write them down on a post it, and add it to the agenda grid.

Once this process has begun, you’re done. Relax in the marvellousness you have created.

#How to run a GovCamp

Thursday, 10 June, 2010

Looking forward to LocalGovCamp Yorkshire and Humber

LocalGovCampThis Saturday sees the latest LocalGovCamp, in York. It’s going to be a great day. Learning Pool are pleased to be helping out with a bit of sponsorship, and Breda and I will be in attendance.

It’s funny to think it’s only a year since the first LocalGovCamp, in Birmingham. I’ve such fond memories of that day – the sun was shining, Stuart was a hit on the decks, and Mrs Briggs and the boy even turned up and joined in.

For a trip through memory lane, the Flickr tag page provides a great visual time machine. I’ve just spent far too long looking through the photos from Birmingham (June ’09), Lincoln (Oct ’09), London (Jan ’10) and Cheltenham (March ’10).

Anyway.

I’m quite excited about this LocalGovCamp, because in the spirit of these events, the format has been messed with slightly, with a parallel track for councillors to talk digital engagement. Should be fun and I’m hoping to get involved in that at some point with some exciting plans for Learning Pool’s Modern Councillor service.

The regular track has already had a wide range of suggestions put forward for sessions on the day, so we should be short of a few things to talk about:

  1. How efficient is social media? or, How the internet can teach you how to save money
  2. Our digital future – what does it look like?
  3. Getting offliners online – digital mentors – who where when how?
  4. Libraries and Social Media
  5. The mixtape as social media
  6. Web & online content strategy for local government. An informal discussion about who’s got one, why / why not?
  7. Connecting, public culture & cuts – how the social web can help public cultural institutions to connect with the public, and consider new patrons and forms of patronage
  8. Stuff you can do with Flickr
  9. New ways of working – a solution to local government’s crisis?
  10. Enterprise 2.0 – deploying social technologies within our organisations to improve comms
  11. Selling open data in local government – what steps do we need to take as sector to get us sharing our data
  12. Election wash-up – why wasn’t this the first Internet election?
  13. Co-designing the Knowledge Hub – developing an open process of development
  14. Using ‘Free’ and ‘Good Enough’ technologies – the next stage of digital services development?
  15. Smart Cities & Internet of Things – What could the future hold?
  16. Social Media Surgeries – Lesson, Practice, and Applicability to other contexts
  17. Engaging less able people by the use of virtual walks/events in their area or field of interest.
  18. Front- line social media: Engagement, Consultation & Learning
  19. Just games? Does the growth in social and geo-sensative gaming have any meaning for local government?
  20. Crisis, what crisis?  Innovative responses to emergencies

I expect it isn’t too late to get in, if you want to. Come – it’ll be fun!

Photo of Andrew Walkingshaw at LocalGovCamp Birmingham by Arun Marsh.

#Looking forward to LocalGovCamp Yorkshire and Humber

Tuesday, 8 June, 2010

Google jokes

One of the things I like about Google is the way they try and inject a bit of humour into what they do. Being funny is a key part of internet culture, and Google’s occasional light-heartedness is a welcome break from other more po-faced tech companies.

Here’s a couple of examples:

1) Recursion

Search for ‘recursion’ on Google, and see the suggested result. It took me a couple of seconds to get it…

recursion

2) ASCII art

A real one for the geeks this. Seach for ASCII art on Google and see what happens to the logo…

ascii art

3) Anagrams

Search for the word anagram on Google, and it offers this suggestion – ho! ho!

anagram

4) World Cup

This one came to my attention today via Google’s Matt Cutts, who posted this to Twitter:

Matt Cutts

And here it is:

gooooal

Nice one!

#Google jokes

Monday, 7 June, 2010

Bookmarks for June 3rd through June 7th

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

#Bookmarks for June 3rd through June 7th

Sunday, 6 June, 2010

John Naughton on the iPad

John Naughton‘s Observer piece on the iPad is well worth reading in full:

It’s when one tries to use the iPad for generating content that its deficiencies become obvious. The biggest flaw is the absence of multitasking, so you have to close one app to open another, which is a bit like going back to the world of MS-DOS. Email, using the on-screen virtual keyboard, works fine, and if you buy Apple’s text-processing app, Pages, then you can create documents. But the hoops one has to go through to pull existing documents in for editing are ludicrously convoluted and there’s no way one can easily print from the device.

Further, his week long diary is also a great bit of writing about what this device is actually for:

  • The week has reminded me of how much I value my laptops (MacBook Air and Hackintosh netbook)
  • The iPad is primarily a consumption device — and is very good for that. But it’s hopeless for originating or editing existing stuff. It doesn’t fit into my personal workflow. At the moment, it can’t handle digital cameras (though Quentin tells me there’s an optional USB-type connector available) and doesn’t have an onboard camera, so much inferior to iPhone in that respect.
  • The huge sales of the iPad suggest that Apple has discovered another profitable market niche — between laptop and smartphone. If so, then it isn’t the elderly, PC-less folks of this world. To make use of the iPad you need (a) access to a machine running iTunes; and (b) access to a wi-fi network.
  • For me, the iPad turns out to belong to the category “nice to have but not essential”. It’s beautifully made, but overpriced (esp in UK) and heavy.
  • I can see that I might find it useful in some circcumstances — e.g. a day spent travelling away from base when all I need is email, web browsing and small amounts of writing. For some people, that may be all they need.
  • Finally, I can’t see it making big inroads as an eBook reader, somehow. Of course the big screen is an advantage. But it’s offset by the increased weight, and the poor performance in bright sunlight. And it’s too bulky to carry around. When I compare it with the Eucalyptus App on my iPod Touch — which enables me to carry, for example, the entire text of Ulysses in my pocket. Given that the iPad is only marginally heavier than my hardback Everyman edition of Joyce’s novel — and I don’t carry that around — well, you can see that the Pad is no competition for the Touch.

This pretty much matches my experience. The iPad is wonderful for informal consumption of content quick browsing whilst sat on the sofa, scanning through PDFs and other documents, chatting on Twitter etc. But trying to create anything significant on it is presently a nightmare, and it’s not a Kindle-killer for me.

Update: Andrea Di Maio has posted his thoughts too:

What the iPad has turned into is a compelling professional device. I use it to take notes during meetings, to show slides to small groups around the table, as well as to do formal presentations (I bought the dongle to connect to VGA projectors). Most of my blog posts are now drafted on the iPad, an so are my research notes. When I find a wifi hotspot I just send those as attachments to my Gartner email, where I import into the relevant tool.

#John Naughton on the iPad

Friday, 4 June, 2010

Thursday, 3 June, 2010

Webchatting in Kingston

Being part of something big is really nice sometimes. Take being on the Learning Pool team, for example. Now, quite a few people read this blog, and my gibbering on Twitter – but really, relative to the number of councils and government departments out there, it’s hardly any.

But Learning Pool have over 80% of UK councils signed up for one product or another, and from time to time I get to talk to those councils – usually by turning up to a meeting and performing, but sometimes in other ways. Normally I’d never get a chance to find out from these people what the issues are that they face, and how I might be able to help out.

I’ve spoken from my desk via a live webcam thingy using Skype, and have pre-recorded webinar type things which have been played within organisations or at meetings. Occasionally it’s a mixture of a couple of ways of interacting.

A great example of this is the work we are doing with the The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. A couple of weeks ago, RBK launched their Learning Pool based learning system, which is called Evolve. To provide some light entertainment I went along to present on the subject of all things social.

Evolve

It seemed to go down pretty well – and I’m going to do a question and answer session this Friday with RBK staff on what they might want to use the social web to do, and how they can go about it. Only, I’m not going to Kingston to do it, I’ll be at home in my office, contributing to a webchat on Evolve. Here are some of the topics I’ll be covering:

1. During the presentation the other week, I showed several examples of public sector organisations engaging with citizens about the services they provide. Could your service reach out to residents in this way? What would be the advantages, and what are the barriers blocking you from doing this?

2. A major theme of my presentation was about how we can apply the tools of the social web within organisations, to improve learning, collaboration and knowledge sharing. How could these tools be used within your council and what are the issues they could help tackle?

3. An important part of any organisation’s approach to using social media is that it has the appropriate governance arrangements in place in the form of corporate strategy and user policy. What are the important things to consider when drawing up these documents? How do you think you can get buy in both from senior management and from staff?

4. I bought an iPad on Friday. Anyone want to know anything about it?

The Learning Pool system, you see, is based on a bit of open source software called Moodle, which you may well have heard of. It’s the pre-eminent learning management system, used widely in academic, perhaps most notably at the Open University. We call our version of it the Dynamic Learning Environment (DLE).

The DLE isn’t just about e-learning though, it also includes social stuff like forums, wikis, blogs and the ability to run chatroom style webchats. Hundreds of councils in the UK have this technology available to them thanks to Learning Pool – although not many use it to its potential.

Kingston really want to make the most of it though, which they are running my Q&A as a live webchat. It’ll only take up 2 hours of my time, rather than the whole day which it would take were I travelling down. Hopefully it will be of help to the council, as well.

We are always looking for interesting and innovative ways that we can help councils. If your organisation has a Learning Pool DLE, and fancy doing a webchat or similar, let us know. Even if you don’t, we’re testing things like GoToMeeting and DimDim to provide online sessions to anyone who wants to join in. Get in touch!

#Webchatting in Kingston

Wednesday, 2 June, 2010

Bookmarks for May 14th through June 2nd

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

  • TWiki – the Open Source Enterprise Wiki – "A flexible, powerful, and easy to use enterprise wiki, enterprise collaboration platform, and web application platform."
  • How digital engagement can save councils money – A great paper from Anthony at the Democratic Society. Read this!
  • Living in a world of the merely improbable – Great post, covering why organisations need to figure out their approach to digital and how it can help them get through the cuts.
  • Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt speak out on web institute axing | Technology | guardian.co.uk – "Web inventor says that open government data will become increasingly important – but that 'immediate decisions had to be made' on spending."
  • Instant messaging: This conversation is terminated – Interesting article on the decrease in use of IM – it's Facebook's fault, it would appear.
  • And The Long Sought Replacement For Email Is . . . | Forrester Blogs – "Enterprise 2.0 enthusiasts (count me in) have argued for several years that Email’s manifest deficiencies could and would be overcome with open, social, and dynamic 2.0-based communication and collaboration tools. However, there’s also long been the recognition that Email – or rather, Email users – would not go down without a fight."
  • The Coalition: what now for digital? at Helpful Technology – "In terms of public sector IT at least, it looks broadly as through the principles and plans outlined by the Conservatives over the last six months are being brought into effect, with added emphasis on civil liberties."
  • Designing the Big (Civil) Society – it’s DIY time – "But in my experience, whether it’s a group of activists, social entrepreneurs or local government officers, you can’t assume people will easily start co-designing new stuff together – particularly if that involves adding technology. People need to get to know and trust each other, tell stories about what’s worked and what hasn’t, filter inspirational ideas against local realities, think about who does what, where the money comes from, and so on. That’s particularly difficult when you are doing that with less funds then before – as will certainly be the case."
  • The Future of Open Data Looks Like…Github? – "the future to me in this area seems clear: we’re going to see transformation of datasets incorporated into the marketplaces. As the demand for public data increases, the market will demand higher quality, easier to work with data."
  • Government needs a SkunkWorks – "What's stopping us spooling up a Skunkworks? Nothing but the momentum which continues to carry us down the old path. It's inertia, but, as I said, we're at the dawn of something new. Personally, I'm confident that all manner of things which would have been difficult before will now become possible."

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

#Bookmarks for May 14th through June 2nd

Tuesday, 1 June, 2010

iPad therefore I am

OK, so I said I probably wasn’t going to get an iPad. On Friday I bought one. I admit it: I’m pathetic.

Dave and his iPad box

My thing with the iPad before I got it was that I wasn’t sure where it really fitted in my life – what would I use it for?

A lot, it turns out.

I went for the cheapest option: a 16gb model without 3g mobile internet access – I have to rely on getting a wifi connection. That’s ok though, because I’m not planning on taking the iPad out of the house much.

The iPad is a simply wonderful device for consuming content. The web browsing experience is superb – quick, beautiful to look at, and the screen size makes it easy and comfortable to browse. It’s also great for watching video content, whether purchased and downloaded through iTunes or watched on YouTube through the dedicated app.

It’s also great for reading other stuff, like PDFs and other documents. They’re presented really nicely and it’s much better to flick through on the iPad rather than either stare at a bigger screen or print stuff out.

The form factor is excellent, pretty light and comfy to hold. I tend to keep mine in landscape mode and find myself sat on the couch with my legs crossed and with the iPad wedged into my knee-pit. This is where I see it fitting in – not replacing my laptop or desktop, but being a comfy thing for checking email and reading stuff when I’m not at my desk. Whenever I’m watching TV these days I’ve invariably got a laptop balanced on the arm of the chair and the iPad will suit this casual use really well.

One thing that is missing is a decent RSS reader. There are problems with all the ones I have tried so far (see below). What I really want is a decent iPad interface to Google Reader – in other words, not an app but a website that renders nicely. For example, Google have created a wonderful interface for Gmail on the iPad, but Reader is stuck with the one that regular mobile devices use – which doesn’t transfer well to the larger screen.

I’ve installed a few apps so far. Here’s what I think of them:

  • Pages – Apple’s Mac word processor redesigned for the iPad. Lovely to look at, and ok to use, though I can’t see myself typing for long periods on the on-screen keyboard
  • MindNode – a great mind mapping app which I have on iPhone and my desktop and laptop Macs. You can share mindmaps across devices if they are connected to the same wireless network, which is neat
  • Kindle – despite having iBooks, the iPad will not replace my Kindle as my e-reader – the screen is just too bright, and it’s the wrong size. But for quickly accessing books for a quote or a reference, having access to my Kindle e-books on the iPad is great
  • Huddle – a really nicely done version of the Huddle iPhone app on the bigger screen. Sweeping and swooshing round projects is good fun
  • Bulletin – an RSS reader. Syncs with Google Reader and allows for sharing of items on Reader, as well as via Delicious etc. It’s ok but not the best looking or the most user friendly
  • Articles – a Wikipedia client. Looks lovely and is quick and easy to use
  • iBooks – Apple’s free app for e-books. Comes with Winne the Pooh for free, and is beautiful. See Kindle above for why I won’t use it much though
  • Dropbox – brilliantly done – excellent for accessing and reading documents. Only downside is getting stuff onto Dropbox from the iPad – easy enough with photos, but what about documents created in Pages? Haven’t figured this out yet
  • Twitterific – the best Twitter client I have found so far
  • GoToMeeting – not used this yet, but Learning Pool have recently switched to GoToMeeting for their webinars and online meetings – apparently the iPad experience is really good
  • WordPress – quick access to editing content on a WordPress site, does the job adequately
  • Evernote – enables me to access my Evernote notebooks and add new notes. Read about what Evernote does here
  • NetNewsWire – another RSS reader. Had high hopes for this, but the sharing options just aren’t nearly comprehensive enough
  • TweetDeck – the columns view is very nice, but I couldn’t access individuals’ profiles or Twitter streams. Very weird.
  • Instapaper – a site for saving items to read later. Never really used it a great deal, but the option’s there if I need it!

I think overall, it’s just a different way of looking at an internet-enabled device. It isn’t a computer, and a lot of the criticisms of it – around the control of the app store and a certain lack of openness around the iPad – is missing the point. Your average person can’t programme it, but so what? If you want to programme your device, get a laptop or netbook.

The iPad is a great living room device. It’s not a piece of office equipment.

#iPad therefore I am

Friday, 28 May, 2010

LocalGovCamp Yorkshire and Humber

All Aboard the Great Yorkshire & Humber LocalGovCamp Train!

Departing from: The National Railway Museum in York (only 2hrs from London)

Departure date: Saturday 12 June 2010

For tickets and more information: www.localgovcamp-yh.co.uk

This first LocalGovCamp under the new Coalition Government will undoubtedly see some big issues debated, not least the future of local government itself.

The landscape has changed considerably since Dave organised the first event in Birmingham last June and our focus is now firmly on achieving more with less, or even less with less. So what of technology, social media, co-design and citizen participation? What about new ways of working enabled by technology and what of our digital future and vision?

If these questions are of interest, or you have some of your own, hop on the train and join in the debate in beautiful York. Bring an open mind, some passion and some ideas to share and explore. Bring a sense of fun too, it is a Saturday after all.

LocalGovCamp Yorkshire & Humber will also feature short parallel work streams for elected members on the use of social media, sessions being led by colleagues from Kirklees with input from Cllr Tim Cheetham (Barnsley), Cllr Simon Cooke (Bradford) and Ingrid Koehler (IDeA & Connected Councillor Programme).

If you work in local government perhaps you can ensure your Democratic Services colleagues inform your elected members of this opportunity.

The event is FREE for all to attend and as a bonus we’ll be having a World Cup themed after party to celebrate (we hope) victory for England in their first match!

You can book your tickets now: www.localgovcamp-yh.eventbrite.com

Twitter: @localgovcampYH and #LGCYH

UKGovCamp group: http://www.ukgovcamp.com/groups/yorkshire-and-the-humber-localgovcamp/

See you in York – WooooOOOoooWooooOOOooo!

#LocalGovCamp Yorkshire and Humber

Thursday, 27 May, 2010

Open Leadership

Open LeadershipAm reading an excellent book at the moment – Open Leadership by Charlene Li.

Fans of dead-tree web 2.0 reading will be familiar with Groundswell, which Li co-authored and was chock-full of interesting case studies – mostly from the US private sector – around how collaborative relationships with customers, often using the web as a platform, lead to success.

Here’s some of the blurb for Open Leadership:

Open Leadership reveals step-by-step, with illustrative case studies and examples from a wide-range of industries and countries, how to bring the precision of this new openness to both inside and outside the organization. The author includes suggestions that will help an organization determine an open strategy, weigh the benefits against the risk, and have a clear understanding of the implications of being open. The book also contains guidelines, policies, and procedures that successful companies have implemented to manage openness and ensure that business objectives are at the center of their openness strategy.

It’s a great read too. One of my favourite bits is where Li lists early on five new rules for leaders to bear in mind when managing relationships:

  1. Respect that your customers and employees have power
  2. Share constantly to build trust
  3. Nurture curiosity and humility
  4. Hold openness accountable
  5. Forgive failure

Hear, hear!

You can get a flavour of the book with this free snippet:

#Open Leadership

Monday, 24 May, 2010

Wednesday, 19 May, 2010

Hack Warwickshire

Warwickshire County Council‘s approach to open government and IT strategy is impressive. Check out their IT strategy blog, where they detail their use of the cloud, for example, and their open data site. Great stuff, and good to see it happening at a council where I used to work! I spent a year as a Business Analyst there, between 2005 and 2006.

On the open data blog, Warwickshire have announced a competition, called Hack Warwickshire:

After the recent launch of our Warwickshire Open Data web site, we are really keen to see the new and innovative uses that our information can be put to. Whatever your idea, whether it is an incisive data visualisation, a web mashup, an app for your mobile or a way of integrating with social networking – this competition is a way for you to get involved with the open data revolution, build something cool and possibly get your hands on a brand new iPad with which to show your winning entry off.

Sounds good to me. Well worth following what these guys are up to.

#Hack Warwickshire

#lgworkforce – Sharing management successfully

Chris Elliott, Head of Transformation at Staffordshire Moorlands District Council and High Peak Borough Council shows how to make the most of a joint chief executive, how to bring services together to save costs and how to best spread best practice.

  • Both excellent councils, semi-rural market town environment. Similar population, adjacent boundaries.
  • But different counties and government regions!
  • It ‘feels’ different. Everyone has to work differently. Greater emphasis on people. Challenging every activity.
  • Double the number of members!
  • Was considered a takeover at one stage but no longer
  • Cultural differences
  • Flexibility is key
  • More secure by the day
  • The role of management – the tiers of management – what should the be doing? Directors, Heads of Service, Service Managers. Strategic, transformational, operational
  • Enablers – IT, procurement, change. Also legal, HR and comms.
  • Methodology, toolsets and quick wins
  • Resource strategy alignment
  • Got external consultants to produce high level business case
  • Programme began quickly (be quick and be bold!)
  • Potential projects mapped in terms of difficulty and transformative impact
  • Member led initiative – concordat –  2 pager – and governance. Need for scrutiny and reality check
  • Sense of urgency driven by budget issues. Message to staff – support this or there may have to be compulsory redundancies.
  • Importance of engaging stakeholders
  • Situation now: joint CEO and Snr m’ment team, joint ICT, procurement and transformation teams, joint property services, joint environmental health team, joint grounds maintenance service.
  • Measures: VFM, customer service, public recognition and satisfaction, improved quality of life for residents
  • Observations:
    • exception processes everywhere
    • Measuring the wrong things
    • Make waste visible
    • Help people to let go
    • ICT is a barrier – or is it? – Now at 35% shared IT systems. 80% by next year
    • Management competency
    • Use lean leanly
    • Procurement = 50% of budgets
    • Simple is better
  • Service heads have to own transformation process
  • Don’t create IT wish list
  • Pain is inevitable
  • Two councils = easy benchmarking
  • Don’t forget the supply chain
  • People first
  • Think process not tech
  • Be ruthless with waste
  • Make status quo unacceptable
  • Kotter – 8 reasons transformation projects fail
  • Grow your own, be prepared to learn
  • It’s easy to complicate things
  • Know when to stop
##lgworkforce – Sharing management successfully

#lgworkforce – Buckinghamshire’s Organisation Redesign Programme

Gillian Hibberd, Corporate Director for People, Policy and Communications, talks through how their change process was planned and supported, and how staff were engaged.

  • OD is aligning structure to objectives – form following function. Many orgs struggle to easily define their purpose.
  • Structure alone does not guarantee success
  • Org design is not a perfect science
  • What are the issues?
    • business operating model – more outsourcing and commissioning. Councils become smaller with other partners delivering service
    • Reducing layers and numbers of managers
    • Spans of control
    • Synergies from merging teams and reducing m’ment team
  • Approaches to budget pressure – slash and burn, be reactive, or plan for change
  • Key requirement is a vision for the organisation
  • Bucks’ vision is ‘rising to the challenge’. 4 elements of lean organisation: elected members, knowing our customer, support services, different service delivery models.
  • Model based on locality areas – 19 geographic communities with community plans.
  • The core of the council is a very small, learn organisation
  • Design principles clarify the vision and translates into organisational changes
  • Bucks have 6 key principles in total
  • Redesign model – flexible, sustainable, cost savings, management and admin targets, blueprint driven
  • Director team and heads of service team reduced with a 25% cost reduction
  • Phases: design, high level org design, design phase, consultation, transition
  • Outcomes – £4.2m cashable savings so far. 183 posts cut. Few employee relations issues. Next phase of transformation about to start. Blueprint coming to life and a fit for purpose organisation.
##lgworkforce – Buckinghamshire’s Organisation Redesign Programme

#lgworkforce – Implementing a major organisational transformation

Melanie Wood and Catherine Griffiths from Birmingham City Council talk about how to take £450m out of the budget, addressing the workforce implications and creating new ways of working.

  • Birmingham is the largest local authority in Europe – £3.4b revenue expenditure, 52,600 employees and has large funding cuts announced
  • Excellence in people management – model which aims to improve performance, manage headcount and produce an org that is fit for purpose
  • Strategic Workforce Planning – effective and aligned business strategy, drives innovation, influence Council planning in a volatile environment, creation of collaborative networks with partner orgs
  • Four areas of team capability – people management intelligence, workforce planning, talent management and succession planning, innovation hubs
  • Model: define plan, analyse demand, analyse supply, plan actions, implement and review
  • Intranet content and e-learning are key tools
  • Developing modelling tools with a local university to help understand the organisation and plan for change
  • Org design function established after HR redesign at BCC
  • Role is to help managers and leaders run an org capable of delivering excellent services in a time of cost-cutting
  • Eliminating duplication, facilitating service innovation, removing barriers to collaboration, finding the ‘bright spots’ and replicating them
  • Components of org design – model, methodology, principles, knowledge management, toolkit (by phase) and a development programme
  • Systems thinking based approach.
  • 4 phases – asses, design, implement, embed and revisit
  • Regulatory studies case study – saved £3.5m over 4 years. Front line services maintained through technology investments. 300 staff affected.
##lgworkforce – Implementing a major organisational transformation

#lgworkforce – Successfully redesigning your organisation

Duncan Brown, Director of the Institute for Employment Studies, provides some lessons from research, what works in practice and pitfalls to avoid.

  • How many major reorganisations have we all been through? Lots and lots, it would seem. Not many seem to have gone that well.
  • Context: budget cuts, redundancies rising, private sector is still cutting costs, more partnerships, outsourcing, shared services, flexible working, service removal
  • HR and OD depts are being challenged with fundamental questions around organisation structure and culture
  • How many people, in how many layers, does a council really need?
  • To get a 10% cost reduction, you need to target 25% cuts?
  • Restructuring: it’s happening more and more, isn’t going away, high stakes activity, organisations need to be good at it – because at the moment they aren’t
  • Less focus on internal issues than external which often leads to reduced success
  • What do you need to consider during a restructure? Incidence and influences.
  • Nature of change is shaped primarily by managers’ prior experiences, much less so on external advice
  • Reductions/Recruitment/Redeployment of staff
  • What are the causes of the change – what effect does this have on the nature of the change?
  • Don’t just look at total cost and numbers. Consider organisation of services – and workflow and geography.
  • Specialisation v co-ordination
  • New forms such as networks, modular, processes and project based structures
  • Get your risk management right
  • Balance of internal and external, fixed and flexible sourcing
  • Strategy, structure, processes, rewards and people – star model of change (Galbraith?)
  • Consider competence and capability early – need for knowledge and experience
  • ‘Organisation architecture’
  • To be successful – Choose a team to manage change, craft a vision, connect organisation-wide change, consult stakeholders and employees, communicate clearly, support people so they can cope with change, capture learning
  • Also – early planning, address cultural issues, manage risk, capable HR function attending to the basics, appropriate speed
  • Success is nothing to do with numbers of layers or the scale of cuts
  • What would employers do differently in reorgs? More training, better comms with staff, better project management, redesign career structures, learn from other orgs
  • Difference between programmatic change and adaptive change. Programmatic more command and control. All about implementation, less about humans
  • Get the strategy right first, then assess, plan and prepare, then implement and manage. Evaluate, and keep doing it.
  • Removing layers not always the easy win it first appears.
  • Maintain staff engagement: lower turnover, better attendance, greater initiative, wanting to develop, higher productivity, improved customer service
  • Employee reductions – consider survivor symptoms – they have organisational outcomes: morale, risk avoidance, reduced motivation and commitment. Done well, the reverse can be true.
  • Prepare well, drive and leadership from the top, customers at the heart of change, don’t waste a good crisis, learn from outside but find right fit for your org, invest to save (get expertise and resources you need), ensure good union and staff relationships, communicate extensively, proceed with pace, be bold
##lgworkforce – Successfully redesigning your organisation

#lgworkforce – Welcome & Introduction

Andrew Hancox, Director of Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands introduces the day.

  • The money really does seem to be running out in local government
  • Leaked CLG memo – 40% reductions. Leaders and managers need to consider how their organisations operate.
  • How do we preserve front line services while reducing costs?
  • Changing org structures can help to produce efficiencies, so this event very timely
  • Online resource available on organisational redesign, outlining key issues, case studies and guidance on change
  • We must now pick up the pace when it comes to organisational change
  • Sharing good practice will be vital – this must be the start of a conversation
  • RIEPs very keen to support the discussions where possible.
##lgworkforce – Welcome & Introduction

Designing a fit for the future organisation

I’m at the IDeA-organised ‘Designing a fit for the future organisation‘ event today, in Birmingham. It’s all about organisational redesign and development, and how councils can help meet the challenges they face by changing the way they work.

There are a load of interesting speakers, and I’m going to be live-ish blogging as much of it as I can, as well as catching some of the speakers afterwards for some quick video summaries of what they have been talking about.

You can also follow the action on Twitter, with the #lgworkforce tag.

Also, next week there will be http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/4236123/home.do#mce_temp_url# on the Communities of Practice exploring these issues (various levels of signup required).

#Designing a fit for the future organisation