A More Productive Day

The minutes of the Socitm EGM, confirming the momentous decisions on membership, are now on the website. (Member log-in required.)


Today, I worked from home, as I shall do on Monday and Tuesday – and started assessing entries for the e-Government National Awards, and the Local Government Chronicle (LGC) Awards.


Three Teleconferences, today, would have wiped my day out, had they all been meetings I had to attend, but took only about two hours in total.

The first was with Steve Palmer, Steve Hopson and Adrian concerning Socitm Membership Benefits, properly establishing the Membership Benefits Board and implementing the new membership model. Steve P. had prepared a paper with initial thoughts.

I am anxious to ensure we also reflect the benefits that come from our ability to lobby and influence - not just on behalf of individual members, but also on behalf of their employing organisations - epitomised (off the “top of my head”) in our work on the Local Public Sector CIO & CTO Councils, Government Connect, the Microsoft Software Procurement Project, the Ocean Unified Computing Subgroup, the Public Sector Infrastructure Team, the DCSF Employee Authentication Service and DCLG and CESG Security Strategy and Data Sharing Guidelines.

We agreed a few of us would work on developing the “brochure-ware”. Adrian and David Houston are working on the administration with Bernard Gudgin. The new membership fee structure will be proposed to the board on 6th November. The new CRM system will be ready in time for invoicing at the beginning of January.

After lunch my Teleconference was with the Unified Communications Subgroup of the Ocean Procurement project – on developing the Government’s vision on Unified Communications. Jim Boyle, from the HMRC, who chairs the subgroup, circulated an initial draft vision that we discussed and added to, and a further version will be circulated. I’ll publish it to Members, once agreed.

Later I teleconferenced with Andy Collett and John Sweeney from IBM on Government security. This resulted from a conversation I had at the Socitm Conference. It made me realise that we need to get the industry onboard with our lobbying for the agreement of a sensible pan-Government Vision, so I’ve now asked for this to be put on the agenda for a forthcoming Socitm/ Intellect Meeting (5th November).


Today I’ve been in-touch with both SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executives) and the CMA (Communications Management Association) who we will be meeting with to discuss how our respective organisations will work together. Unfortunately, because of existing commitments, and the fact that I shall be attending the ALGIM (New Zealand equivalent of Socitm) Conference and taking an extended holiday from 15th November to 12th December, this can’t be until mid-December, on my return.


What with those, and a few other distractions, I didn’t actually manage to review all that many Award entries, but I at least finished the week feeling I’d had a productive day!
Have a good weekend, and don’t forget the clocks go back.