An online notebook
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An online notebook
Today Learning Pool are exhibiting at the Enchancing Local Democracy conference, organised by South East Employers. There are some interesting speakers on the agenda, and the workshops look good too – especially the one in the morning run by Catherine…
I wrote up quite a bit of what was said at the Local by Social event yesterday, but didn’t add much in the way of comment or analysis. This post makes up for that. I’ll try and sum up what…
LocalGovCamp Yorkshire and Humber was a great day, superbly organised by Ken Eastwood, Kevin Campbell-Wright, Melanie Reid and a host of helpers. It was by a mile the least involved I have ever been in one of these events and,…
This week saw the launch of a new local government digital engagement project – Let’s Talk Central by Central Bedfordshire Council. The Learning Pool online innovation / social media / loafing around team – that’s me and Breda – were…
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…
…is the title of a startlingly well written and interesting paper from Anthony Zacharzewski of the Democratic Society. Download it here (PDF warning).
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
In case you didn’t know…
A question was asked in the social media community of practice (various levels of authentication required) about using web 2.0 technology to support learning. I couldn’t help myself… Blogging Using blogs to record and share learning is a really nice…
I wrote about the Transformed by You project, run jointly between Kent and Medway Councils, here. By all accounts it was a great event, and thanks to the great social reporting efforts of David Wilcox, we can all get a…
Connected Generation 2010 is, in the words of chief cheerleader Tim Davies: …a one-day conference exploring youth engagement and technology in 2010. Based on feedback from participants at recent training events, and on the positive response to the Beyond Twitter…
I was asked recently by a colleague for some information about the names and locations of local authorities in this country. I was able to respond quickly and usefully thanks to the places database, which sits on the website of…
I like scrutiny – it was one of my first jobs in local government to help the process at a smallish borough council. The CfPS does a great job of supporting good practice in the area, and recently this is…
Two great blog posts recently on the ever thorny issue of local government websites. Firstly, Al Smith recounts his experience managing the refresh of Newcastle City Council‘s site. A remarkably honest and open appraisal of how it all went, and…