Musical Chairs...

Congratulations, Phil Pavitt on your move to the HMRC. Thanks for the great work at TfL. I hope we can sustain and build on that, and continue a productive relationship in your new role.

Tom Watson may have resigned his Cabinet post, but his 1m + followers will be glad to hear he is not leaving Twitter.

Jerry Fishenden has also announced that he is moving-on from Microsoft, but will also maintain his great Blog and Tweets.

On Wednesday I attended Cisco’s launch of its Blueprint for Communities and Local Government at its offices in Finsbury Square. I contributed, slightly, in reviewing the drafts, and Socitm is supporting this great piece of work. The overall framework is reproduced below.

At the event, Steve Palmer, Hillingdon CIO and Socitm President, gave a great presentation of the work done at his borough to turn-around the ICT infrastructure, and position the Authority to achieve the Connected Council and Communities vision. In the next couple of weeks they are issuing 190,000 Citizen (Smart) Cards, but the other things that impressed me most were some of Steve’s previous career responsibilities, which included the coroner’s court, and the incontinent laundry service!

On Thursday I joined Adrian Hancock and Martin Ferguson, who “officially” started work as Socitm’s Policy Officer on Monday (having already got involved in a number of initiatives) to contribute to a briefing and handover of work I’ve been involved-in – particularly membership of Government Working Groups.

Adrian showed me a beta of the new Socitm website, which is looking good, and the format for a new proposed weekly broadcast to consolidate our communications and reduce e-mail clutter – an equally important development! We also discussed the new branding proposals that are under consideration, and we look close to a decision for implementation ahead of the conference, and in conjunction with our domain name change.