It’s my therapy. My way of coping.

Sticks and stones may break my bones…. but words? Actually, they really do hurt.

So, perhaps I should start with what other people have been saying about me?

• http://nbrightside.com/blog/2011/02/09/sarah-baskervilles-hidden-agenda – “Idiot“, “Hidden Agenda“, “prolong her 15 minutes of fame“
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/feb/08/pcc-twitter “The woman who put the twit in Twitter“
• I’ve also been in receipt of several abusive e-mails and tweets (that I won’t repeat here),  from individuals that I have never had the pleasure of conversing with, yet deem it socially acceptable to openly attack someone whom they have never met and don’t actually know the true facts of the situation. I can only conclude that they have decided to base their “opinion & commentary” about me upon what has been said in the media regarding this “incident”. And what has been said leaves a lot to be desired.

It is abundantly clear to me that no matter I say, blog or tweet can be taken, republished, twisted and corrupted by those that wish to do so. The most innocent of phrases can be taken out of context, sneered and jeered at, implications made etc, in order to sell more newspapers or generate more hits on their websites.

Why? Apparently because I happen to be a Civil Servant, and I do fear for the hundreds of thousands of other Public Sector workers who are now at risk of the same “treatment” by the UK media to spin such stories in the tabloids.

Whilst this may give the editor the small satisfaction of writing an article which generates a lot of traffic, I do not think that for one minute they have actually thought, or indeed care about the unintended effects or consequences of what publishing, emailing or tweeting about that individual does.

I have never once sought to “prolong my 15 minutes of fame” as one blogger put it. I  submitted my complaint to the Press Complaints Commission back in November when all of this first happened. It is my right to do so. I had been wronged in the Press and this was the “official” channel I could use to try and get an apology. I’m entitled to do so.

I had no idea that it would take so long for a “ruling” (for want of a better word) to happen, which effectively re-opened the whole mess again for me. Yes, I’ve had journalists bombarding me again through Twitter and emails, but fortunately this time not on my front doorstep – a traumatic experience to say the least.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wenzday01/

I am more than happy to stay in the background, quietly engaging away with other colleagues, civil servants, friends, family,  coders, geeks, open data people having discussions, nurturing friendships and conversations about life, the universe, X-factor and dare I say even the odd work conversation? It happens, and I defy anyone to say that they haven’t done the same either.

By staying in the background I don’t mean being quiet and NOT using social media, because that’s where a lot of people engage. It’s where I engage. I will continue to use Social Media *in a personal capacity* to converse with my friends, my on-line friends, my other friends who are scattered around the UK and the Globe. I simply do not understand why the conversations  I have with friends using my own personal equipment (not my employers) are subject to national coverage, sneering and slandering in the national press.

I’m not newsworthy. Unless of course I won the lottery, or maybe started dating some famous celebrity then perhaps there would have been something there to write about there. But I lead a fairly normal average life, have an average job, had an average family up bringing. Hardly newsworthy.

I’m not Perfect.

I’ve never said that I was, and I’m certainly no angel.

• I’m overweight

• I probably drink too much

• I probably eat all the wrong foods

• I’m 35, on my way to being the wrong side of my 30′s

• I lose my temper too easily

• I probably swear far too much

• I wear my heart on my sleeve

• Sometimes the I say things before the brain has engaged because I’m a fairly reactive person. It’s only on reflection and once I’ve had time to calm down that I think “oh bugger…arse.”

I’m a Public Sector worker. Not a slave to the media to be jeered at with no means to redress. When I became a Civil Servant I did not sign away my rights with respect to  Freedom of Thought, Speech and Expression of Opinion (and that includes political opinions as well).

I am 100% impartial and dedicated when it comes to my work.  I’m still at work, trying to deliver against a very, very challenging and stressful environment. However, I am entitled to have my own personal opinions and express them. If you have read my blog posts and tweets you will have seen this, and I have attempted to keep well within the Civil Service Code of Conduct. I’m sure that you can appreciate that there’s not a lot more I can say about work in this respect, but as like all other civil servants, by performance is constantly monitored by my line management and if there were to be issues, it would be dealt with by my management. Not the National Press.

Stress.

Photo Credit: Alan Cleaver

So, suffice to say you can guess that it’s been a rather stressful time because of all of this. For those that do know me better, they will know that the last 6 months of my life have been hell. Absolute. hell.

Last August, I got a phone call. It’s a phone call that we all dread. That someone you care deeply for has fallen seriously ill. He’d collapsed with a brain haemorrhage and was in the High Dependency Unit. The days and weeks blurred into one another, spent at work during the day in the office, then late afternoons and evenings up at his bedside.

I think I’d been living on automatic pilot during that entire period and was so glad when he was finally discharged weeks later. It’s been slow progress, dealing with the tiredness, mood swings, medication, physiotherapy  exercises, memory recall etc. It’s only now, near 6 months later that he’s finally returned back to work – but all of that was incredibly stressful, and there’s still further recovery to go and more big life changing decisions to make.

Not long after he was discharged from hospital I got another dreaded phone call. My Grandad had just died http://baskers.posterous.com/my-grandad, although he was a grand old age this was totally unexpected and had come like a bolt from the blue.

I was struggling in dealing with all the raw emotions, grief, loss and stresses of these two tragic events in my life, but I was managing to keep my head above the water. I am still going to work, still managing my team, delivering against my objectives – even managing to deal with the implications of the political decisions by the new coalition government to slash the Administration Budgets of all Central Government Departments by a third. This is directly effecting me as every single person where I work is now having to reapply for their grade, and if they are successful they will then be reallocated to a new “role” within the new, smaller and slimmer Department.

I hope that you understand why this is an incredibly stressful time for all that work in Government who are going through this. There are whole swathes of people taking voluntary redundancy, resigning, retiring and for those that are left there is the uncertainty of the job selection process and whether or not you are going to be served your 90 day notice. Our office environment is changing beyond any recognition. Friendships and teams are being torn apart. It’s all extremely stressful and we are all affected by stress in different ways.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartpilbrow/

For some, they will internalise until such a time they can hold it in no longer and they simply snap. Some will “snap” in the office environment, others at home or when traveling. It’s already happened. Good, hard working people that I know are suffering and are struggling to cope.

Just as I am.

I thought I was coping, I thought I was doing well. But I’m also at breaking point. Right in the middle of all of this, with all that is happening around me I have also had to deal with the unwanted and unmerited press intrusion into my life. My name has been published all over the tabloids, the media, the internet. I’ve even had journalists from America and Australia contacting me for quotes and commentary. This is pushing me to tipping point and I’m now suffering from the classic symptoms of stress.

• Anxiety
• Loss of appetite
• Sleeplessness
• Lack of motivation
• Fragile emotional state
• Despair
• Depression

I can feel the cold icy grip of depression coming over me, the razor sharp shards of it’s nails digging into my brain and beginning to paralyse my very thoughts, my hopes and dreams. It’s as if a great dark ice cloud has descended over me and is slowly rooting me to the spot. Bit by bit, day by day it takes that bit longer to get out of bed, trying not to burst into tears each morning, to get to work, to try and feel motivated and inspired to lead my team. I can feel the angry dark cloud of depression seeping into my bones and I don’t like it.

I cope with my depression as best as I can, by engaging with people on and offline. It’s helped me immensely over these troublesome times and it helps me keep the faith that there are some genuinely nice people out there, which I’ve also had the great honour to meet some of them, and hope to meet many more.

Despite all the nastyness I’ve encountered, it warmed my heart to find that there were many people (some I’d met, the majority I’d never met) who jumped to my defense with the first press intrusion into my life back in November (here’s where you can see a collection of blog posts regarding that - http://annkempster.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/a-history-of-the-defense/)

Making the complaint

Understandably I was immensely upset by all of this. I lodged a formal complaint to the PCC using the only thing I could which is the PCC Code of Practice http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html which sets out exactly what I can or can’t lodge a complaint against a newspaper. It is narrowed down into 16 specific areas to complain about which are further narrowed down into sub categories that further restrict you in what you can legitimately lodge a complaint about.

You’ll note that defamation of character,  slander, the republication of my social media content or it being a “non-story” aren’t actually covered as reasons to complain, thus I had to try and word my complaint in a way that slotted into the limited categories available to me.

I don’t have a massive salary or swathes of personal assistants, lawyers, journalists to spend hours researching these clauses, sub clauses etc to put together the perfect complaint. When this was all kicked

off that weekend in November I lodged a complaint there and then on what I thought fitted best into their categories. I will be the first to hold my hand up and say that the privacy angle wasn’t the strongest of defenses, but what was I to do? At that point in time I had journalists turning up at my front door, phoning me, emailing me. My Twitterstream, email and phone went into meltdown. I felt like I was under siege.

Why my social media content was republished nationally, subject to spin and comment like that is anyone’s guess.

I do not live in the public limelight, nor do I actively court the media circus. I do not consider myself to be fair game. I am a private citizen and have rights as such not to have my life plastered across the tabloids. If however I had done something that merited press intrusion (murder, fame, terrorism, espionage etc) then I would consider myself to be “fair game”… however merely owning a blog and Twitter account, being an active user of Social Media does not make one “fair game”. Publishing on the internet/social media platforms is not the same as being published in the national press.

If the Daily Mail was unhappy that Civil Servants are afforded the protections of the Civil Service Code and Articles 8, 9 and 10 as set out in schedule 1 of the Human Rights Act 1998 then I would suggest that writing a slanderous character assassination article about me is hardly the way to go about having an *informed* debate on the personal use of Social Media by Civil Servants. One wonders if the Daily Mail will be lobbying next for Civil Servants to be barred from voting at election time because this could be construed as to expressing a political opinion……

Unlike the celebrities of this country I can’t afford to take the newspapers to court for what’s been written about me and had to put my faith in self regulation of the media industry through the PCC. Thus, I submitted my complaint to the only authority there was and waited for the outcome.

The Press Complaints Commission ruling

So, with the publication of the PCC ruling, there were others out there who instead of jumping on the bandwagon with the megaphone journalism who have dug a little deeper to find the deeper story underneath the tabloid smears. These aren’t my words, these are the words of people that I don’t know (apart from Terence who I’ve only met twice at large social gatherings), and who have no vested interested in my job or what I do.

• http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2011/02/baskers/ – “the victim of a vicious and petty bullying campaign in two national newspapers“
• http://bluebridgeim.blogspot.com/2011/02/on-privacy-and-unprotected-tweets.html “tabloid bullying“
• http://themediablog.typepad.com/the-media-blog/2011/02/twitter-pcc-privacy.html “Victim of lazy journalism“
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/blog/2011/02/twitter-monster.shtml “And those papers printed it as ‘news’, not because it deserved to be in a national paper but because they could. And that’s the real issue. ….But we still haven’t got our heads around this distinction in the new, networked universe. Around the idea that just because (almost) everything is knowable, everything isn’t news. And just because we can, doesn’t mean we should“
• http://inforrm.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/pcc-ruling-twitter-journalism-and-privacy/
  “It seems to us that there is a good argument that there was no proper journalistic justification for writing about Ms Baskerville’s tweets………The fact that social media allows the newspapers to obtain this kind of information does not convert it into something which is “newsworthy”.

You see, I don’t consider myself newsworthy and nor do a lot of others. This was a total non-story and should never have been published in the first place. Publishing Social Media content isn’t news. It’s lazy journalism. It’s not a story, unless you try and spin it into a story. I was only made newsworthy because the Daily Mail decided to concoct a story about me because of some tenuous link to Sally Bercow (I’ve only met her a couple of times), and my use of Social Media more importantly, Twitter. And I think we all know the Daily Mail’s stance on those two subjects.

It has been pointed out that at the time I hadn’t locked down my Twitter stream, or locked my photo’s, or locked my blog. When I first started using Social Media I had thought about doing all of that, but it got me thinking about how do I want to live my life? Did I want to hide away? To be afraid to have an opinion? How is that in living with the ethos of Social Media? Is it wrong to openly engage and converse with people?

Perhaps I was naive, as has been pointed out in several blog posts that I didn’t hide away. What sort of society are we to become if we are to hide our thoughts and emotions away from one another? Bit by bit, we seemed to be moving closer to the “Big Brother” society where our very own thoughts are being used against us in the frenzied hype of the media circus. I do hope this trend can be reversed.

So there I was, unwittingly held up in the limelight to highlight everything that was wrong with the Public Sector and Social Media, with a sideswipe at the Bercows. This then became the “story”, thus reasonably justifiable for other papers to print it and add to it, according to the industry. And now, because of the PCC ruling it’s looking like it’s open season on any other public sector worker who’s caught in the grasp of the sweaty nicotine stained fingers of the press.

The problem with the PCC

Of course, you are going to think that I’m going to have an axe to grind here. And yes, you are right. I’ve put my faith in the PCC only to be badly let down. From my personal experience of the PCC, I feel that it isn’t independent at all and that the industry is failing to self regulate to the angst and cost of normal individuals.

There are several issues I have with the PCC;

1. The PCC is entirely dependent on it’s funding from the newspaper and magazine industry, although it claims to be independent. You are hardly going to bite the hand than feeds you are you?
2. The PCC is staffed by many people, journalists and editors from the newspaper industry, although it claims to still be able to make independent rulings. Conflict of interest?
3. The PCC doesn’t actually represent the entire newspaper and magazine industry. Thus if you wish to make a complaint concerning a paper that isn’t in the PCC remit, you can’t and would probably have to go to court instead. Hardly making “justice” accessible to those who can’t afford the costs.
4. The PCC doesn’t actually listen to it’s own guidance, As http://inforrm.wordpress.com/about/put it:

“http://inforrm.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/pcc-ruling-twitter-journalism-and-privacy/

The PCC guidance on “Privacy and Social Networking” (repeated and expanded in the January 2011 edition of the Editors’ Codebook) says.

“newspapers cannot automatically justify the use of material simply on the basis that it has appeared previously on the internet and is, therefore, ‘publicly available’. Even if an individual has not taken steps to protect their personal information (by hiding it behind strict privacy settings), newspapers will have to consider whether republication of the material shows respect for the individual’s privacy”.

By treating “public availability” of tweets as a “key consideration” the PCC appears to have given little weight to its own guidance.  More importantly, the adjudications do not address the question as to whether the republication “showed respect” for Ms Baskerville’s privacy.  The “public interest”identified relates to “the wisdom of civil servants using social media platforms” rather than the specific content of the messages.  In other words, even on the basis of the PCC’s own guidance, the adjudications are questionable.”

So, where to now?

Well, what’s done is done with me. I’ve already been plastered across the tabloids, world press and internet. As much as I hope that this doesn’t happen again to anyone else I don’t hold out much hope given the recent PCC ruling. I can’t afford to take this to court so I have to live with what has been done to me, my character and reputation.

But if anything good is to come out of this, then perhaps ;

• a truly independent Press Complaints Commission that is independently funded – perhaps via a tax/levy on the industry?
• A body that ALL newspapers and magazines are accountable to, not just those that currently subscribe to the current PCC Code of Practice
• A new Code of Practice that takes into account a far wider remit than the current one does
• A body that is staffed independently from the newspaper and magazine industry

I don’t make the policy, as they say in the old jokes “That’s not my Department love”.

But something has to be done.

Because the next “victim” of this social media and public sector hatred campaign by the press may not be so lucky to have the support network that I had. This “bullying”  has to stop before it does actually causes someone some serious mental or physical damage. There is only so much you can put up with.  And as it stands, clearly the PCC in it’s current form isn’t in the position to be protecting their rights.

Should I stay or Should I go?

I’ve yet to return to Twitter, I know I said earlier on in this blog post that I would continue to use Social Media but as I get to the end of this post I’m now questioning whether or not I will.

Because I’m tired of all of this. I’m tired of the sneers, the jokes, the poking and pointing at my expense, just because I dared have an opinion and express my thoughts. I’m tired of receiving unsolicited emails from people who think they can sit in judgement over me because of what they’ve read in the newspapers.

I’m tired of having to second, triple, quadruple guess anything I say in case it could be used against me in the national press. That’s no way to live a life.

I will miss everyone immensely, but I’m mentally and emotionally shattered by what’s happened and am struggling to escape out of the depths of depression that I now find myself in, close to tears as I write this blog post. I don’t want to have to go through that entire vile experience ever again.

I realise it could be said that by me posting this blog post, I’m indeed courting the media (although I don’t think that I actually have that many subscribers to my blog) and deserve everything I get but that isn’t my intention at all. I’m writing this as a way of processing my thoughts on the matter and trying to work through my feelings about this. There have been many, many posts written about me and I have haven’t publicly commented on any of them. But I’ve never written about this, until now. And it’s something I have to do and get it out of my system if not for my own sanity. Whether I will write again is another matter. I honestly don’t know if I ever will. Who knows, perhaps I will feel better after some sleep and perhaps I’ll feel a little less vulnerable about the whole thing.

Or, perhaps Quentin Letts has won at the end of the day.

One less voice in the wilderness?

This is the first blog post since the whole affair and I think you all know what I mean by that.

For obvious reasons I can’t elaborate any further for now (I’m sure you can understand why) as that’s a blog post that will not only happen when the time is right, but when I have the emotional and mental capacity to come to terms with it. Suffice to say I hope the time will come soon when I can draw the line, and move on. Because we all have to move on and start engaging again. The world moves on, the world is changing. We no longer live in an “offline” world, our lives are changing in so many ways to connect with the digital world, that connection is no longer enough. We also need to engage if we are to be truly “whole” citizens of the 21st century.

And that’s where I’ll start.

Engaging.

I “Engaged” last Sunday. Big Society style.

I gave up my Sunday (quite willingly and unpaid) to join a group of like minded people in a rather hot office just by Westminster Abbey (where the Cabinet Office’s Technology Strategy Board is living right now) to be part of a workshop that was looking at how we could get the LinkedGov project working.

Communication

I’ve always had issues in communicating… I get frustrated that people just don’t “get it” instantly or being able to distil a complex problem into a simple “vision”, because I have a rather logical and technical mind and don’t understand why people don’t come to the same conclusions as me…. but that’s just me. I can be a bit autistic that way (as friends, family and loved ones constantly tell me!)

I know my strengths, I know my weaknesses. It’s a common failure that logical/IT people suffer from – good communication skills and I am making a conscious effort to improve on this, but I’m also lucky to know people that *can* communicate, that *do* have the patience  and saving grace to go out there, navigate that political minefield, and communicate. Enter in one Hadley Beeman, and one Glyn Wintle

Teacamp - Photo Credit Adrian Tritschler http://www.flickr.com/people/ajft/

I first met both Hadley & Glyn at strange thing called Teacamp - Teacamp is a monthly informal get together of digital communicators, web developers / designers, social media specialists who work in government, with government and outside of government.

It’s where we share ideas, solve problems, have a cup of tea/coffee (or a bottle of sparkling water in my case) to learn something new. And hopefully out of all of this communication and collaboration we may just manage to do our jobs a little bit better.

It was because of Teacamp that I began regularly following these two on Twitter and started engaging in them, and more importantly I also consider them to be friends in the “off-line” Real World. We’ve met several times in “real-life”, having the odd coffee… the odd beer… and being rather sad and geeky at the best of times discussing issues close to our heart.

I was always given strange looks by people when attending Gov Social Media type events because I’m not a web/techie/comms person… but that’s the whole beauty of Social media, you shouldn’t need to be any of those types of people to get involved. It all boils down to openness, transparency, collaboration and communication no matter what field of work you find yourself in. Collaboration drives innovation. But anyway… I digress. Back to open data and transparency.

So, why is that? Why did we bother to meet up?

Open Data & Transparency

Well, it’s because we all share a passion for doing things better, and more importantly for open data and transparency. All at the very heart (or should be?) of any Government’s agenda.

Since the introduction of Data.gov.uk we have seen whole swathes of previously unreleased government data being sent out in the cyberspace for all to see, download and analyse. For me, this was just a fantastic achievement.

Developers, institutions and industry had been crying out for access to this data for years (all funded by the tax-payer ultimately), and now it was finally beginning to happen. But it was only the beginning.

Whilst this was massive leap forward in opening up Government data there is a problem.

For my sins, in one of my other jobs as a Civil Servant, I used to work in Treasury. Not only did I work in Treasury but I was on the very project team that designed, built and implemented the COINS System across the whole of Central Government. I’m a geek, but not a true hardcore geek like many of the developers that I met on Sunday at LinkedGov. I didn’t get down to the nitty gritty bits of coding, that’s what the software developers on the project where there to do so. But I managed that process, setting out the high level design concepts, data structures, coding conventions etc.

I will admit that it on a personal level it made my heart swell with a wee bit of pride when I saw that the COINS data was being released into the big wide world. I’d almost given up all hope of ever seeing my “work” out there for people to use because let’s face it – Finance isn’t sexy, it doesn’t really draw in the big headlines.

But it was still awesome to see something that I’d worked on, that I’d once built being opened up to the public. For years, friends and family had asked what I worked on and it was rather had to get across to them exactly what it was I did, but now this was something tangible that they could see and look at!

I’d nipped onto the data.gov.uk website to see what COINS data had been released and indeed what it even looked like and came up against a couple of problems.

• I couldn’t download the file. It was HUGE – my tiny little personal broadband connection kept on falling over.
• Snippet’s of the file that I did manage to see were rather daunting. Whilst it was in machine readable format it had became clear to me that I would need to build an actual database, and use SQL etc to try and sort the data into  any meaningful analysis.
• It’s not just COINS data though, it’s the same for any large or even small to medium government datasets that have been released.
• These are complex data releases usually about a specialist subject matter requiring specialist knowledge.
• They require specific skills sets and resources to open up and analyse.

For me, I think that the biggest issue with Open Data & Transparency is Accessibility.

This isn’t a reflection or in any way saying that there’s been a failure by Government here. I will say again, data.gov.uk do a brilliant job. This is a learning curve for *all* of us, public, industry and government alike. We are in a new era of openness and have very much still got to understand the issues around it.

If you are the normal person (and sometimes I think I am),  the very idea of downloading huge data sets, using specific programming & interogation languages to try and get an inkling as to what the data is perhaps telling you is rather daunting. It’s not a “normal” skill for most people out on the streets to be able to manipulate (or even download!) these vast datasets.

How do we unlock the data?

Releasing data whilst it can be read as ticking the boxes as being “open” and perhaps “transparent”… I’m hearing and seeing discussions all over the spectrum that actually it isn’t that transparent or indeed accessible. I saw this happening with the release of the COINS data and other large datasets (non-gov as well). The kind of questions that were being raised on and offline that I saw were;

• “I can’t actually download the datasets” – huge gigabytes of data that a normal person’s broadband would struggle to cope with. Accessibility issues.
• “I don’t understand what any of these codes mean” – Specific systems use bespoke codes, they aren’t always consistent across organisations. Lack of understanding of the meaning of the data doesn’t help with transparency.
• “Can someone explain to me what this line of data means? What does that column mean?” – Without understanding the actual meaning of codes etc and the context,  it is rather hard to try and attribute any meaningful analysis of the data. Mistakes could be made because of this lack of understanding.Thus not really that “accessible” or “transparent”.
• “Why is this bit of data missing?” –  It could be a simple mistake in the dataset, but it’s rather difficult for the person reviewing the dataset to know who to contact about getting that sort of information. Thus muddying the transparency angle.

Without “meaning” and “understanding” of the data that’s been released it’s just lines and lines of data. Unless you are an organisation or a developer with the skills and resources to put behind trying to understand the data, for the normal person out on the street it’s going to be inherently more difficult.  Thus Open Data for the vast majority of the public I think, isn’t the be all and end all of everything that was promised when the data was first released;

• It isn’t information – it’s data without meaning
• It isn’t easily accessible
• It isn’t particularly that transparent.

That’s the kind of conversation I found myself having with Hadley and Glyn back in the summer. Whilst life got busy for me and there were many personal and traumatic issues that I had to deal with, I kept in contact with these two and had been following their progress on this issue, discussing ideas, potential problems/barriers and possible way’s forward.

Data.gov.uk is doing a fantastic job in opening up the data to the public, but they have (like all of us) limited resources. They have a huge job in opening up the treasure trove of Government Data, and it’s no small task. So what can be done to help?

What can be done?

This is where Hadley & Glynn come in.

Hadley & Glyn have been working with the Cabinet Office’s Technology Strategy Board in finding out if perhaps LinkedGov can help bridge that gap between open data and accessibility, unlocking the data for everyone.

So what is LinkedGov?

Linked Gov

I will try to explain that in my usual hamfisted way!

Quite simply it’s about how can Open Government Data be improved, and made more accessible to the “man on the street”. I don’t think that you should need to be a developer or large organisation to be able to access Government Data. By “access” I don’t mean just being able to link or download the data, but to be able to actually use it meaningfully without trying to learn new coding languages.

Hadley had started formulating ideas around this (which I strongly urge you to look at http://hadleybeeman.posterous.com/how-are-we-going-to-improve-government-openda)

Picture Credit - Hadley Beeman

First of all just setting out the landscape, the ”vision” for what LinkedGov is trying to achieve.

• • There’s lots of data held within Government and it’s now beginning to be published, but all in different structures, formats, codes etc. This is in keeping with Sir Tim Berner’s Lee “Raw Data Now speech”
  • Developers and organisations are now starting to analyse that data, build applications around these data sets
  • Longer term, hopefully people will be able to access that data or the analysis of that data via simple questions in a web browser or an application from a smart phone
  • Once people start accessing the data easily hopefully they can learn more about their public services, government etc and make more informed decisions about how they interact with Government, and what services they use.

As a vision to have, I think that it’s damn good vision to aspire to. The best things come out of simple ideas around how can we do things better.

And the workshop on Sunday was just about all that. Full photo’s can be seen at my Flickr page

LinkedGov - The Project. Picture Credit Hadley Beeman

I looked around the room (rather bleary eyed for a Sunday morning) to see a wide range of people (Coders, Developers, Civil Servants, people interested in Public Sector data, Industry people) all giving up their own free time to sit around and discuss the LinkedGov Project and how we could possibly make it work.

Kicking off the workshop

The day started off with Glyn & Hadley doing a double act, kicking off the intro workshop setting out the high level vision and asking us to write a word on the board associated with the project;

Words not to say.....

Once the words were up on the board we were each given a “stress ball”. And any time either Glyn or Hadley said one of these “forbidden” words were were to throw these “balls” at them.

Suffice to say Hadley was better at not saying the words than Glyn… he got hit an awful lot! Joking aside, it was a good way to break the ice and to get some energy in the room, as difficult as it is on a cold Sunday morning.

We talked around various issues from the high level concepts of the project to data formats, accessibility, API keys etc, how to get the data updated, how should it be presented? etc but also Glyn & Hadley to set out exactly what the project wasn’t.

• It’s not about getting local government officers and civil servants to do more work. This will be voluntary. Linked Gov is looking at ways to make it easy for people across all discipline’s to contribute and help clean up open gov data sets, and where you can perhaps give it the additional meaning and context.
  • If you are the expert in a particular field can you spare 2 minutes to answer a couple of queries around a particular dataset? How can LinkedGov do this easily? Questions on screensavers? Set up a reward system? Make it game based? Set up Open Data champions in Public Sector Organisations?
  • Very much “tell us once”. Once the data has been updated and explained it’s then there for developers to build apps/API’s on, and not have to keep on asking for definitions once it’s been defined.
• It’s not about replacing existing services i.e;
  • Data.gov.uk
  • Theyworkforyou
  • Wheredoesmymoneygo
  • MySociety
• These services already deliver to an existing market and are well placed to do so. Linked Gov is setting out to try and clean up the data and also make more accessible.
• It’s not about providing an analysis of the data i.e. political analysis or publishing an analysis of the data. That’s for journalists, politicians, self interest groups to do. Not LinkedGov.

Lunch

So, once we’d worked through all of that… it was time for lunch.

Pizza Power! - A healthy brunch?

As the pizza was wolfed down, as you do at many of these types of events you get talking to people over lunch and I met up with so many people who were brimming full of ideas and enthusiasm for this project which was very hopeful to see. The discussions were far and wide ranging from;

• Longer term vision for Government with open data
• The need for perhaps common data standards across public sector bodies
• How do we get industry involved in being part of the solution?
• Social Media & Distributed communities

Interesting discussions, and something that I could perhaps spend a day each on! But alas there was only time to focus on LinkedGov today

The Afternoon Session – Game on

So, it was soon time to head back into our specific discussion groups looking at specific tasks. Getting into some of the detail as to how LinkedGov could actually start getting this project off the ground with real tangible deliverables ;

Comms

Thinking about a Comms Strategy

- Developers

- Stakeholders

- Game players

- Documentation, websites, wiki’s, forum threads, mails, Tracking progress

- Communication & Collaboration – how can this be encouraged in the different communities? Hearts & Minds

Game Play

How do we make this interesting?

This wasn’t a group that I sat in, but as you can see from the whiteboard a lot of thought had gone into how to make LinkedGov interesting for those that choose to participate once it’s up and running.

Tasks

Defining Tasks?

What is a task?

I wasn’t in this group either, (too busy getting all comms focused in Hadley’s group!), but you can see from the Whiteboards & Flipcharts that this group was focusing in breaking down what tasks needed to be done programatically, and how they could possibly start going about that.

Regroup & Review

Finally we reconvened together in the main room to discuss what we’d been working on all afternoon well into the darkness of the night.

It was an intense day, and whilst we were getting our heads around the high level concepts and starting to formulate strategies and ways of trying to build and implement such a product, there was also time for pause and reflection on the risks.

As with any project it’s got inherent internal and external risks;

• Highly ambitious timetable
• Reliance on volunteers to give up their free time to build and participate
• Getting sufficient high level buy in
• Getting adequate funding and sponsorship
• Technical barriers (technology wise, this can be built we thought but it’s how it’s rolled out across Gov that may be a potential barrier)
• People/internal politics barriers

There’s still a lot to do and a lot more to work on from a people/technology perspective. But I don’t think that any of these issues are instant show stoppers, but they do have the potential to be. It’s going to be down to the LinkedGov Project team to show us how to rise up and deliver to these challenges, and I for one think that if anyone can do it, these guys can. Which is why I’m giving them my support and will help in what ever way I can.

For me, more than anything what I got out of the day was a sense of hope. Hope that there are people out there who are willing to give up their own free time, to help free up and make open data more accessible to the public.

I think that this can be done.

More importantly, I think it *needs* to be done.

Are we necessarily the right people to be doing it though? That I’m not sure, but then again I don’t see anyone else stepping up to this challenge apart from the LinkedGov team. Big Kudos for them for doing so.

I would love to see Government tap into this rich talent, and not to be bogged down with Change Boards, Project Initiation Documents, Business Cases, Risk Registers etc that goes with most projects/programmes of work. But more importantly I think we need to look at how can Government help support this talent? Questions started formulating in my mind and I don’t know what the answers are, but should we at least start the discussion and see where it takes us?

- Do we need to reconsider *how* we teach ICT within schools?
- What can be done to encourage more events like this?
- Is Government doing enough to keep talent like this engaged in the education system or do we need to consider a different approach?
- Can Government learn from this fast agile approach to development and use it for existing or new up and coming projects?
- Can Government open up more data, or put pressure on those bodies that they supply funding and grants to i.e. Arms Length Bodies, Non-Departmental Public Bodies, Service Operators (Buses, Trains etc), Trading Funds that deliver services to the public – make it part of the funding regime that in turn these bodies/commercial organisations have to free their data up that is open standard compliant?

Excellent blog post Julia, and many, many thanks to the organisers and of course the young developers for showing me that there is a future out there, but we need to invest, support and nurture our talent and most of all open up the data. That seems to be the biggest hurdle so far. Not just the lack of available data, but the quality or consistency of the data when it is released.

There’s a long way to go, but I think we are on the right track

Involving more people and at more locations than last year, Young Rewired State reached its climax yesterday with presentations from young coders in London. Besides the teams from London, Brighton, Manchester and Norwich, plus lone coders from Dundee and Reading, crowds arrived at the top floor offices of Transform yesterday to see what the coders had been able to come up with during the week. Judges were Andrew Stott (Government’s Director of Di … Read More

via Julia’s Blog

When does it stop?

When do I stop feeling like I’m under constant attack?

I picked this up on Twitter http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=1499 from the @TweetMinster account.

http://twitter.com/tweetminster/status/18832708475 “The Civil Service is the problem“http://bit.ly/9Y3NsM

It wasn’t what I was expecting to see on a Sunday morning when I was sorting out my mails, domestics, washing etc, yet another attack from a person who is a Conservative member of Parliament. So I stopped what I was doing, tried to calm down a little and compose my thoughts on the matter.

I have worked my ass off these last few years, to get that promotion, to get that new job, to learn new skills, to deliver against extremely challenging circumstances and it shows in my exceeded performance reports for the last couple of years. In other professions, when your management constantly belittle you about your performance, your pay, your very worth when you *are* delivering, it’s called bullying. It’s called harassment. It’s completely demoralising. And if it continues you can find yourself in court eventually.

So why is it that it’s okay for my “Management” i.e. my political masters (not my direct management) and those in direct support of them to constantly attack the organisation I work in?  I get the messages from up above, informing me in the typical Civil Service manner that new legislation is coming in to change our terms and conditions without the need to negotiate. To make it cheaper, easier for our political masters to get rid of us.

And lets not sugar coat it.

It’s not about streamlining and making the Civil Service more efficient. It’s about the brutal unfocused cutting of headcount, cutting costs, cutting the strength of the unions (PCS & FDA), cutting the very heart out of the Civil Service and as the Guardian SCS Secret Blogger put it, creating a “Tesco Value Civil Service”

“But we need to move on and get real. This isn’t an argument about public sector services or private sector services – it is about what services you have at all. Plans are being finalised now to create a Tesco Value state with a much smaller range and the public sector will need to change rapidly to deliver it.

I pondered this puzzle as I put the phone down on yet another private sector supplier offering his services. “I am sorry,” I said. “Your offer sounds wonderful but unless it’s free I am not interested. All our money has gone.” They are getting the same answer across government. Here at my desk was a microcosm of the British economy. The supplier will have to downsize now, they may even go bust. In time my team and I will join them on the scrapheap.

How, I ask, can this not lead to another recession?”

If we do end up in another recession – where are these magical jobs going to materialise from in the private and third sector when we throw over 600,000 Public Sector workers onto the scrap heap? I fail to understand how that strategy is of benefit to UK GDP and the overall welfare benefits costs.

I also fail to understand why it is deemed acceptable to continue with the attacks in the press and on political blogs against the Civil Service. What did we do that was so bad that merits these constant attacks? Did we commit murder? fraud? espionage?, sexual abuse? terrorism? Genocide?

Of course there has been mistakes i.e. delayed projects, overspending – but you show me where that hasn’t happened in the Private Sector or elsewhere? It has. Bad Project Management or ill thought out strategy decisions don’t just happen within the Civil Service, they happen across all sectors of industry and employment yet you don’t see laws being changed or full scale media wars waged against them constantly.

What other employer in this country can change the law when they feel like it? It’s atrocious and a mockery of justice and the political process that changes to legislation can be pushed through parliament to make changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (that have twice been found unlawful in the High Courts of Justice) without even the slightest hint of negotiating with the Unions.

In other sectors of employment, the employers are forced to meet with the Unions and hammer out a mutually agreed settlement – I struggle to understand why this isn’t the case for the Civil Service? Are we not eligible for the same due process? Where does it stop? Shall the door be opened for other employers to just change the law when they want to force through changes to their workers terms and conditions? Shall we legislate to disband the Unions all together?

All Civil Servants have done is to carry out and administer the delivery of Government Policy as voted by MPs in the Houses of Parliament. The Civil Service doesn’t vote on policies, we don’t create them. The Government of the time is responsible for their own policies. Government Policies, the mis-management of the financial industry and the economy has gotten us to the position we are in. Not the Civil Service.

So I ask again.

Why is it deemed acceptable to constantly attack the Civil Service?

Any worthwhile manager knows that if you continue to belittle and devalue your staff you won’t get the best performance out of them. You’ll have a team and organisation that is completely demoralised, shell shocked, locked into despair and won’t be operating at optimal efficiency – and surely at this time when we are supposed to be doing “More with Less” these ‘attacks’ kind of go against that what is trying to be achieved.

How can we do more with less, when we can’t even see the light at the end of the tunnel? I don’t think we’ve *ever* been informed as to what this new coalition government wants out of the Civil Service, or what shape it is to become and what it’s expected to deliver, except reduce costs, reduce size and look to outsource as much as possible.

What is the “Vision” for the Civil Service? I can’t see any clear vision apart from a clear cost and size reducing agenda, but with no idea as to what the end “state” is to be – i.e. a Tesco Value Civil Service?

I will return back to my chores this Sunday, trying not to think about the brief flash of anger and despair at reading that article. I am looking forward to taking a few well earned days off later this week to go back home to Dundee to see my new niece and nephew, and to enjoy the Dundee Blues Bonanza. My only dilemma is do I or don’t I take the work Blackberry with me?

Last time I had a day off, I forgot to take the Blackberry out of my jacket and did indeed end up sorting through work mails and dealing with various issues on my day off. When I did turn it off, it didn’t help because all I got was phone calls direct on my personal mobile, “I‘ve sent through urgent papers for you to brief on, can you give me a response urgently“… No, it’s my day off. I haven’t had a day off in months… “Well can you look at it first thing when you get in tomorrow?“….err that’s on top of the pre-reading I have to do for the Design Authority meeting that afternoon, the pre-reading for the Gateway Review Course the day after, dealing with the whole HR process in breaking up my team and negotiating with other line managers to move staff across, updating the Risk Registers etc “.. But I need you to do this, just give me high level points to take..“… Okay, so I’ll do it. I end up taking papers home after my meetings and spend my evening, *my* free time that I’m not getting paid for to try and keep on top of everything. I forgot that I’m supposed to be a lazy civil servant, and then I see in the paper;

I work in Finance.

I’m tired.

My desk....

The first email of the day was to inform me that I’m losing a highly valued member of my team. You see, she’s a contractor. One of those contractors that have been painted in the press as being highly paid, a drain on the pubilc purse strings.

I don’t see that.

I see a wonderful team member. A member of my team who’s been a shining light through dark days, bubbling with enthusiasm, going out of her way to get things done. To connect up with people, to ensure that everyone knew what was going on and what was expected of them.

She will be sorely missed.

And I will be left with a void that I’m not quite sure how to fill, or to try and rebalance the skills sets within what’s left of my dwindling team.

I had been battling for weeks to try and secure the funding and agreement to keep at least 2 of my contractors on until end September, filling out HR form after HR form, piles and piles of paperwork and approvals processes to go through like a vast set of hurdles. But it’s all in vain. I can’t give any of my contractors within my team any assurances about how long I can keep them on. We’ve got to reduce costs, and that means that with the recruitment freeze and contract renewals, it’s the contractors that are the first to go. So with that level of uncertainty I can’t blame my contractors for looking elsewhere, whether that be elsewhere in the Public Sector (highly unlikely given the current set of circumstances) or the Private Sector. However it leaves me with great big voids in my team, with very little handover time – but these are the consequences of the politcal decisions made higher up.

Contract staff will walk, and team leaders across Whitehall will be left trying to absorb what work they can but we are already stretched. And next year when the full weight of the cuts start kicking in from the Spending Review, the cuts are aimed at the permanent staff.

It’s a slow process trying to retrain staff in Finance Systems, SQL Server 2005, SQL Intergation, SQL Reporting Service, Visual Basic, Financial Frameworks, Project & Change management disciplines, Contract and SLA management, Security Accreditation process… Sooner or later something’s going to break. Something is going to fall over, something will slip through the cracks as we’ll be struggling to keep our heads above water and trying to learn whole new skills sets at the same time as trying to deliver “more with less”.

These aren’t the sort of skills you learn within a ‘couple of months’, which has been quoted to me when trying to pull together an exit strategy for the contractors. Finance, IT & Project skills take many months, and years to learn. Once you’ve learnt the basics i.e. done the courses you are still very green. It takes experience on the job over time to bring you up to the necessary skills level and experience that’s required. Which is why some teams tend to have contractors in the first place. Those skills and experience aren’t readily availble within the civil service, and they aren’t financially recognised – with only “Accounting” qualifications being eligble for a salary increase, thus it makes it all the harder to fill the posts with permanent staff because they wont get financially rewarded for gaining these skills sets.

Whilst I wish my contractor all the best in her new job, already I can feel my stress levels rising and that sickening knot of stress tugging away like a lead ball inside my stomach. The exodus begins and I suspect it will be the first of many.

Knowing her as I do, I know she’ll be successful where ever she ends up – she’s that kind of person. It will be a sad day for the team, and a loss to the Public Sector when she leaves, but I wish her all the best and good luck to her!

FDA Union

I’m a Grade 7, and a proud member of the PCS which generally represents people in jobs below Grade 7. The FDA http://www.fda.org.uk/represents Grade 7 and above – the Senior Civil Service. Of course the majority (from my own experience only) of SCS tend to be on the male side, late 40s-50s, white, middle class etc and the higher up you go the more into Oxbridge land you find yourself in.

I struggle at the best of times to identify with Senior Management and thus the FDA. I found it slightly arrogant that the conference organisers just assumed that we were all FDA members. I’m not, and have still yet to be convinced to join.

I may be white, but certainly aren’t male, or had the benefit of an Oxbridge education, with all the contacts that go along with that. I’m also not a ‘policy’ person, I live in the murky world of Finance Systems, Data Quality & Integrity so there’s not an abundance of ‘contacts’ in that area. Whilst I have seen some improvement in the SCS with a slow but gradual increase in the amount of women and non-white people, there’s still that Oxbridge/middle class barrier that seems to be there. We were told at the conference that the old saying “it’s not what you know, but who you know” still applies. You need to network, you need the contacts. You need to know the ‘right’ people to get these SCS jobs.

Riiiiiiight. Well that’s me screwed then.

Networking

I’m not a fan of these ‘networks’.

"Networking"

I don’t know how I’m supposed to relate to people that have no idea what it’s like to grow up on the breadline, go out on strike or a march for a cause you believe in. I cringe at the thought at having to stand at functions with a glass of wine and ‘hobnob’. Don’t get me wrong, I like a glass of wine, I love a drink. I love being down the pub with friends and socialising with like minded people. That’s why I love Social media and social networks, I can quite happily talk to people I’ve met through Twitter etc because they are like minded people, who to me are genuinely interested in the topic we are discussing, and it’s not about what ‘grade’ you are. It’s about what you can do to make things better.

I just feel completely alien in the civil service networking situations, it feels false, it feels akward…. it feels like your only there to move on up the promotion ladder. Who can you connect to? Who can you do a favour for? Who can you stitch up to move on up? Have you covered your back sufficiently enough?  But I guess that’s the same in all large organisations, and not just the Civil Service. I shouldn’t be just looking inwards at the civil service and saying it’s all bad, there’s some damn fine people there working hard within an environment that is down right hostile at times, especially with the latest round of attacks on the Civil Service by the media and our own political masters.

Something to love?

I love being part of something bigger than just me, part of something that looks to give back to society. I love my job, or until recently did love my job. We were told at the conference that;

“the Civil Service needs to be smaller, more strategic, with less direct delivery“

“We need to make sure that we get rid of the ‘right’ people“

Like many Team Leaders, I’ve run a team that’s a mixture of permanent staff and contract staff (to ensure that I have the right skills mix). It’s breaking my heart to see teams being ripped apart, people moved into posts that they don’t want to be in(or have the sufficient skills to perform adequately) because we are losing all contract staff as part of the recruitment freeze, and next year once the new Spending Review comes into effect the cost cutting is turned to permanent staff, it’s only going to get worse.

I’m spending more and more of my time filling out HR Justification forms, business cases, staff organograms, staff objectives, tasks and deliverables to justify keeping my team together – a whole cottage industry has sprung up requiring more resources to justify the process of scrutiny and review of these requests. I’m not the only one going through this – I imagine this is replicated all throughout Government Departments with the recruitment freeze firmly in place, with less of my time actually being spent on the actual ‘job’ as I wade through all the various forms and processes.

I’m struggling to keep motivated in an environment where I’m being told to lose staff, to drastically reduce costs (targeted, thought out cost reduction is not a bad thing) to the point where I simply don’t know how I’m going to deliver against my objectives because I just simply don’t have the resources or skills within my team to get the work done.

Which kind of goes against what I was being told by one speaker at the conference;

“No leader succeeds on their own - you need to invest in your team“

What team? Teams are being downsized, training budgets being taken away, opportunities being reduced. If this keeps on continuing I might not have a team, hell I might not be a civil servant no longer – and that was also alluded to.

“If you don’t like your job, leave the Civil Service“

….. Whilst that might help reduce the spend of Departments it hardly helps with my already dented morale.

I’m not alone

Twitter - Social Networking

I thought I was alone in my despair, disillusionment and confusion – but I’m not. I’ve been contacted by many civil servants via Twitter who share the same fear, worries and concerns. Surely it can’t be healthy for us all to be feeling that way?

When I was ‘tweeting’ from the conference (you can download the tweets here http://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc?key=tFF35LZcsUw63qMyvgfMM0A#gid=0 or simply to a search on Twitter using the hashtag #SCS2020), sharing the traditional conference experience with those civil servants who perhaps couldn’t have afforded the £250 ticket price tag and questions where raised from the Twitterverse.

It was a ‘traditional’ conference, you know the type. You are all herded into a large room, given name badges and sit in the auditorium whilst the range of speakers speak *at* you for the majority of the day.  It was a shame that there wasn’t a live feed of the conference onto the internet to allow civil servants across the UK to watch the event, or a monitor screen with a live TwitterFall of the #SCS2020 hashtag to allow civil servants to interact with the speakers ( at Q&A time).

Surely in this era of cuts and doing more with less, the days of the traditional types of conferences are over? Why hire out huge rooms in rather opulent buildings?

Using the ‘technology’

Why was it that when we were told at the conference that;

“Civil Servants need to appreciate what technology can deliver if we are to deliver more cheaply“

I was the only there who was ‘tweeting’/'live blogging’ from the conference? I was using technology (that was my own iPhone and didn’t cost the tax payer a single penny) to help other civil servants engage and get a glimpse into what was being said at the conference about the future of the Civil Service and their possible promotion opportunity.

I was sitting in an audience of hopeful SCS members, yet not one of them was using ‘technology’ or the conference organizers to deliver the message more cheaply. There needs to be a *radical* shift in our thinking if we are going to deliver more with less. I was practising what was being preached, but why was I the only one?

There are better ways at engaging and reaching your audience. I’ve grown to realise that I loathe the traditional types of conferences, and crave for the enthusiasm and engagement of an un-conference that is opened up to the internet and social media for those get involved that physically can’t be there. Also by using the ‘technology’ appropriately you should be seeing costs reducing, less people travelling and a carbon footprint reduction. People able to engage with the conference when they need to, and not having to be out away from their desks or meetings for the entire day.

Of course to adequately do this, you do need to have the IT infrastructure & necessary security protocols in place to allow your staff to have access to the live feed/social media channels. I am well aware that not all Departments will have the infrastructure, bandwith or capability to allow for this to happen without a significant amount of investment and a change in the way we think and operate with regards to IT, Security, Social Media and last of all…. conferences.

To Tweet or not to tweet?

I had many civil servants tweet or DM me back asking what was happening in the conference.

• how to keep your staff motivated?
• What is the role of the civil service with the new coalition government?
• What skills do they want us to have as SCS?
• What opportunities are there for aspiring G6′s & 7′s to gain the experience required to move on up to SCS level?

I had asked the twitterverse should I even be tweeting from this event and was told unreservedly yes! It was the only way they had of finding out what was going on, even if it did depress them. So I continued tweeting updates from the conference to keep interested civil servants informed.

We had a range of speakers from Lord Bichard, Executive Director, Institute for Government to Sir Nicholas Macpherson KCB, Permanent Secretary, HM Treasury talking at us in the morning telling us what sort of future they saw for us – but very little in the way of answers to the questions that were being raised from the floor at the Q & A after each speaker.

And what a grim picture of the future they were painting for us.

I did think about going into great lengths as to exactly what was, but given the national press coverage recently about how this new coalition government is going to slash public spending, slash Civil Servants pay and pensions, downsize the civil service….. I think you can guess we were being told the party line on all of this, and being told to ‘embrace’ these new ‘challenges’. It’s hard to get motivated when you are being attacked in the press constantly and your own political masters telling you that they are going to change the law in order to slash your pay and pension rights.

I know the economy isn’t as good as it could be, but the PCS union has tried to negotiate with both prior and current Governments, to come up with a package of cuts that would be acceptable to their members but it seems there isn’t the appetite for negotiation. They would rather go against a High Court ruling and legislate before negotiating.

http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/cscs/cscs-updates-and-briefings/branch-briefing-7-july.cfm

As you can imagine, this isn’t particularity going down to well with PCS members of which there are a *lot* of in the lower grades below G7. And it’s being noticed higher up as well, with this anonymous Senior Civil Servant article in the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/11/civil-servant-diary-turmoil-whitehall

Which I think, given the reaction on Twitter this morning to civil servants I know struck a loud resonating chord with them. It says a lot more than I could have ever said.

So what did I get from the conference?

I’m saddened to say, all I got was a sense of despair. The Civil Service is being cut. If we want to get into the Senior Civil Service we are expected to get experience outside the Civil Service (but once you leave you aren’t getting back in – headcount remember?). We are expected to seize opportunities within the Civil Service, but with the Civil Service shrinking in size those opportunities are become rarer and rarer.

There were a couple of good sessions that I enjoyed, and would have enjoyed more if there was more engagement across the Civil Service at these types of conferences. Session highlights for me were Richard Hillsdon, Development Consultant, Westminster Explained & former member of the SCS and Richard Calvert, Director General, Corporate Performance, DFID sessions.

I don’t know what the future holds for the Civil Service. I don’t know what the Government’s longer term plans are for this old and once proud institution. I don’t know how many out there who are currently Civil Servants will still be Civil Servants in these coming months and years of the coalition government.

These are strange days, and not particularity happy days.

I’ve lost my appetite.

I stare at the crumbs on the plate and can’t help but think that’s all we have to look forward to in this new era of fiscal austerity and the impending ‘Slasher’ Spending Review.

I’m being squeezed. Cut head count. Lose contract staff. Reduce your cost. Stop travelling. Don’t print out in colour. Don’t print double sided. Don’t order any stationary ( should I tell them my stapler is broke?). Don’t do any systems development ( should I tell them that it’s not me that changes the requirements, it’s Treasury, Cabinet Office, No. 10, that necessitate the corresponding system updates/upgrades?).

What do I *stop* doing?

I’m not hearing an answer to that.

When I explain the risks and consequences of losing contract staff, I somewhat feel that I’m being listened to, but it’s not really registering. I’m also not being given any assurances about being able to retrain existing staff in the necessary skills and qualifications to bridge the gap……..

This all leaves me feeling rather uneasy, stressed out and feeling that I’m living with am impending timebomb over my head. Cause systems and processes will begin to fail… They will fall over… We will miss key deadlines…..And I simply wont be in a position to fix it anymore. I won’t have the skills or experienced staff in place in my team to help me pick up the pieces.

There will be no more room for innovation, we will be too busy just trying to hold things together at best.

These are the consequences of the decisions to cut specialist contract staff.

Purdah

Purdah.....

I’d stopped because officially the Civil Service was heading into Purdah http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/briefings/snpc-05262.pdf because of the General Election and in all honesty, I think it’s something that seriously needs to be  looked at given the growth of Social Media and how it’s used by civil servants in their private life.

I’d stopped blogging as per the guidance. But I didn’t stop Tweeting. Why should I?

It’s clear from my Twitter account @baskers http://twitter.com/baskers that it’s my *own* personal account, and not representative of the place that I work, and to be honest I thought to myself why the hell should I? It’s my account. Not the civil service’s property.

I am always conscious that whilst it is my own personal account and because I’ve specifically put a disclaimer on my profile, that there is still a responsibility to not be an eejit. Or as I’ve said many times before when talking about social media to friends and colleagues in my more typical down to earth Scottish manner – don’t be a fecken muppet when posting/tweeting something. Once it’s online, it’s there for all to see and becomes part of your digital footprint.

Same goes with my Facebook account. It’s my personal account. It’s locked down (despite Facebook’s maze of privacy settings) so that it’s only accessible to my immediate friends and family. I don’t happen to live close to my family, or a lot of old School/University friends – they are either all living back home un Dundee, Carnoustie, Arbroath, Forfar etc or scattered around various parts of the UK and indeed the world, with friends living in Australia, Canada, Japan etc.

I use social media to keep in contact with my life outside London. Why the hell should purdah prevent me from doing so?

Indeed, I could go into a whole chapter and verse about how out of date, how restrictive, how…how… completely out of touch it is with how we now live our on-line lives. But I wont, because it’s already been done for me by an excellent public sector blogger http://publicstrategist.com/2010/05/a-footnote-to-purdah/ and Patrick Butler http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/may/07/society-daily

“Purdah looks less workable now, when social media – Twitter, blogs, Facebook – is so universal. It is easy enough to silence the departmental tweets. But what about the individuals-who-also-happen-to-be-public-servants, who, in their private lives use social media to comment, discuss and argue (non-impartially) on the issues of the day, including politics. When, for example, are they tweeting in their capacity as civil servants and when as private individuals? (the same question might be asked of journalists).”

So I’m going to stop right there on the draconian purdah measures – it needs revised. Period. As come the next election, when more and more people have ‘on-line’ lives it’s just not going to be practically possible to implement such draconian measures.

Now that, that’s settled lets move on.

Starting Blogging again

Blogging

It’s safe to say that with the implementation of Purdah I’d fallen out of the habit of blogging. Of gathering my thoughts together in some sort of cohesive pattern to mull over and explore.

I hadn’t stopped living. There were plenty of trips to meet up with friends, drinks, meals, dinner parties, gigs etc and if you’d been following my Tweets on Twitter you’d be up to speed on that. Work has been more busy than ever even with Purdah! Whilst policy colleagues had more or less stopped, well when I say stopped, of course they hadn’t stopped it’s just that when Parliament was dissolved, there are no ‘Governmental Policies’ as there is no government. But as I don’t work in a traditional policy area, I work in the deep, dark murky world of Government Finance where we try and operate across three distinct different financial policy frameworks;

• Budgeting Framework – That’s Treasury controlled for the present Government to stabilise the UK Financial and Economic Polices
• Estimates Framework – That’s for Parliament  - for the Government to vote on Public Expenditure giving Government Departments, Agencies, Public Corporations, Non-Departmental Public Bodies, Trading Funds the legal authority to spend/receive public funds in the delivery of Government Policies
• National Accounts Framework – That’s to ensure that we comply to National and Globally recognised accounting standards and more importantly is used to scrutinise Government Spending at the end of the Financial year against our Budgets, Public Service Agreements, Departmental Strategic Objectives, Key Performance Indicators to ensure that what Government Departments do is compliant and offers value for money.

Guess what – 3 frameworks, different treatments in each of the frameworks, different guidance and timetables for each framework….. it’s a complicated old thing Government Finance. So, the Central Finance Division in any Government Department is usually rather busy juggling this lot. And whilst there was the General Election on, Finance didn’t stop, because we were actually gearing up for Main Estimates and Financial Year end, in fact we were busier than ever because of the election to be on call for urgent finance questions asked by any MP whether they be in government or the opposition.

And of course whilst I’ve got the day job of working in Finance I’m also trying to carve out a little niche and gently nudge/push my Department into the world of Social Media, which also takes up a significant amount of my time and effort but it’s something that I feel is worthwhile and has to be a way forward for the civil service. There’s a lot going on in this area, potential projects I’m trying to get off of the ground so watch this space for now.

So yeah…. busy, busy, busy despite Purdah and a new Government in place.

Ending of an Era

Switching off the lights

And with that……

The United Kingdom has voted and Labour are no longer in Government.

For me personally, it feels strange.

I was a child of the 80′s, and come from a staunch Labour voting family, a Labour city (it was at the time) and a Labour Country (Scotland has always voted in my lifetime for a Labour Westminster Parliament). I grew up on a housing scheme, or down south I believe these places are called ‘sink estates’. I had a happy childhood, but we were piss poor. I saw first hand the devastation of Thatcher’s policies on the places and people that I grew up with. The despair as jobs were lost, industries torn apart, families ripped apart. My parents worked hard, did what they could to encourage and support us as we grew up. Proud of what we achieved despite not being able to afford things that most people took for granted i.e.

• Holidays - I think the first proper holiday we had was when I was around 11yrs old. And by proper, I mean going away on a train down to a caravan park in England, Great Yarmouth, Scarborough, Filey, Berwick Upon Tweed etc. Going abroad was out of the question, it was simply too expensive. However it was *so* exciting for me just to be on a train! Previously for holidays we’d ‘swap’ houses with my Gran who lived in Carnoustie for a week and got to play down the beach, go for walks and even if we were really lucky, got to have a ‘pub’ lunch! I’ve got some very happy memories of our low budget ‘do-it-yourself’ holidays. Package Holidays, Planes, Cruises, sunny Spain, France, Disney Land etc where just things on the TV to me, things that other people talked about.
• School - I was a free school meals child, despite all the hard work, loving and caring my parents put into our lives money, was always tight. There simply wasn’t enough of it to go round. Fancy school trips, having the latest ‘must haves’ toys, clothes, gadgets didn’t happen. Mum used to make our clothes, she would also do alterations for the neighbours to scrimp some extra pennies together. Dad would fix and build furniture around the house. Buying new was out of the question.

Having free school meals, Labour council vouchers to buy school uniforms, funding from the Labour council to pay for school music lessons, after school ‘clubs’ in local community centres, Labour led Access courses for people from financially disadvantaged backgrounds and deprived areas to gain the opportunity to study at University did all had a dramatic impact on my life.

Labour policies in Scotland enriched my life greatly. Gave me opportunities that I perhaps might have not had if  I’d lived in Conservative England in the 80′s and 90′s.

Whether I realised it or not at the time, Labour has had a massive influence in my life on the opportunities and choices I made in education or when I first came into the civil service back in 2000 to work in as it was then known at the time the Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR). I’ve grown up under Labour (Scotland), and started my working life in a Westminster Labour Government.

But now that’s all changed

Change

It feels strange for me to have ‘Conservative/LibDem’ masters. I’m not sure how personally I should react to this. Professionally it’s more clear cut. I’m a Civil Servant, therefore impartial to whatever party holds office – my duty is to administer their policies to the best of my abilities in service to the public. I may still live in a Labour Council Area, but this is the first time I’ve ever ‘seen’ a change in Government thats no longer Labour, and if I’m being honest with myself. It’s un-nerved me.

Of course, work wise I will do the best that I can and push hard to do things better and more efficiently as that’s who I am. It annoys the hell out of me when I see people taking the piss or doing things just for the sake of doing it because they’ve always “done it that way”. I want to be constantly pushing myself to deliver projects, deadlines, products better than before – but I would be lying to myself if I didn’t admit that the new administration we have in place makes me feel uneasy personally.

Not that the last Labour Government covered itself in glory – there are many documented incidents in the press over the last few years of failings of the prior Government, most infuriating for me was the abuse of the Parliamentary process to force through;

• Digital Economy Bill – forcing it through Parliament via the ‘Wash-up’ process without a proper Parliamentary debate. http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ourwork/reports/digital-economy-bill-briefing
• Civil Service Compensation Scheme – using a ‘Parliamentary Order’ to make changes to the compensation scheme law without any proper Parliamentary debate, and not engaging in constructive dialogue with the PCS Union http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/news_centre/index.cfm/id/B487C672-FD54-4A34-87B4A0D65749229E. The PCS took the Government to court and won. Following a two-day judicial review hearing in the High Court in April, Mr Justice Sales ruled that the previous government acted unlawfully when it introduced, without PCS’s agreement, a new redundancy scheme reducing the rights staff had accrued over time. In what is a dramatic win for the union’s 270,000 public sector members, the judgement quashes a revised scheme that the government had sought to impose from 1 April. It means the next government, must reopen negotiations with the union if it is to agree a new arrangement that protects existing members’ rights.

Both incidents pissed me off greatly.

• And then there was the farce of Election night, where people in my own constituency were denied their right to vote which was replicated in other areas of the country. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1274485/UK-ELECTION-RESULTS-2010–750-compensation-polling-booth-fiasco.html . How on earth could we let something like this happen in this day and age?

So perhaps it is time for change?

Perhaps it is time for a new type of politics, a new way of thinking and delivering public services. Whether it’s the current administration or another one – time will tell.

I will hold off judgement for now and wait and see.

Has it really been half a month since I updated this? I guess it has. I guess I’ve been rather busy. I guess I haven’t really had a lot of free time, because actually I haven’t. It’s been a couple of weeks of fun, frustrations, loud shouty meetings, drinks, travel, trains and being honest a lot of it has kind of blurred into one great big wibbly wobbly ball of randomness that is my life.

So in this randomness I’m going to try and make some sense of it all, and to do that I consult;

• My work Blackberry
• Photo’s and random texts on my iPhone

Which actually is rather quite useful because it’s a good way of marking time and I’m crap at remembering things. And low and behold I can start piecing back the last couple of weeks relatively easy. Yup. I’ve been busy. So lets get this thing kicked off.

1st Week of Feb

Five things made the highlights this week

• Drinks and the Smoke Faries
• Meeting up with Comms to debrief on UKGov Camp
• My very first Teacamp http://teacamp.co.uk/
• Lunch with an old Team Member David
• And a trip to Lincolnshire to meet up with Stuart

So sets start with the Smoke Faries http://www.smokefairies.com . Work for once, wasn’t too bad. Monday is usually spent catching up on all the priorities for the week with my Team Leaders meeting and my separate team meeting, setting out the agenda for the week, various deadlines and what needed to be delivered. After all of that is taken care of it’s time to head across to Eland House

To pick Tim up and travel up to Camino’s http://www.camino.uk.com/ for some munchy tapas at Kings Cross before we wander up to the Lexington http://www.thelexington.co.uk/ to pick up the tickets I’d booked online for a gig that I had no idea who was playing, what they sounded like, what they looked like, who the support acts were or if indeed they were any good?!

Ah… the strange things that we do at times.

So, after we’d eaten and went to the pub, there were no tickets to collect because they would rather dab a great big ink stain on your hand for proof of entry. Bollocks.

They always say that these ink stains will wash off easily. No bloody way do they do. I had ‘The Lexington’ stamped on my hand for days. It took forever and a lot of scrubbing to get the damn thing off!

Now the gig… well… that was ‘different’.

Very different.

I can’t remember who the first support act was, but suffice to say she was easily forgettable. A girl with a guitar singing about her crappy life. Well, newsflash lassie. Move out of your parents house and get some real problems to sing about.

Harsh?

Possibly. But you weren’t listening to it. I was.

Now, the next support act.

Uhm…. I have never seen anything like that before. It was a;

• Bloke
• with a piano
• a overhead projector (like the kind you got at school)
• a puppeteer who was changing the slides to the music
• Singing about a ‘Flyboy’… half fly, half boy…..

Mathew Robins http://www.sadlucy.com/matthewrobins.html was the guys same;

And being honest… I kinda liked the quirkyness of it all. It was a not bad set, I think we both liked it. A vast improvement on the 1st support act.

So, moving onto the headlining act.

The Smoke Fairies.

They had a couple of good numbers, sort of Folks/Blues…. but after a while it all seemed a bit samey… I did buy a couple of CDs which I have to admit that I still haven’t listened too yet but I’ll get round to it.

The next day…

Oh the head was hurting, the hand still had the ink stamp on it but it was a well deserved sore head. I’d forgotten that I was supposed to be debriefing our Communications Division on my stint at UKGov camp….. with a sore head.

Was I expecting more?

Yes. Of course I was expecting more. I understand that the very nature of the Civil Service is to avoid risk, to avoid anything that might be construed as being engaged or listening… *sighs*

Slowly, central Gov is coming to terms with Social Networking. But it’s a slow and cautious approach, and I suspect across most other Central Government Departments it’s all external looking and not looking to address the dire situation that our own internal comms is in.  That’s just my opinion/observation it might not necessarily be the case as I only interact with a certain cross section of people across Gov and freely admit to not being exposed to the bigger picture.

Whilst we are moving in the right direction, it’s still too slow. The whole world is changing around us in how we communicate, in how the younger generation are communicating – most access the internet through their mobile phones, not computers and here we are in Government posting large bulky PDF consultation documents onto websites that haven’t been optimised for the mobile.

It probably hasn’t even occurred that this is an issue, and it probably never will.

But at least it’s a start.

I think that we are beginning to realise that Web 2.0 isn’t going away, Social Media isn’t going away, Social Networking isn’t going away and somehow we have to start tackling that. We have to start ‘listening’, and engaging.

Of course I’d like us to be moving faster, and doing more, but as has been said to me many a time ‘Baby Steps’. There’s nerves here, it’s new, it’s interactive, you can’t control it, it’s almost realtime, it generates conversations, it generates controversy, it doesn’t require rules and regulations - everything that the traditional Civil Service isn’t. So, we are gingerly dipping our toe in the water, and I’ve been asked to sit on my Departments Social Media Group to help shape the Depts Social Media policy and advise on how we take things forward…… and I’m all for shoving the rest of us into the bath. But perhaps an inch at a time….  :-)

Who know’s what the election will bring? Are we going to face an election Obama style? Where there was a big push through Social Networking to get the politicians message across to people that didn’t normally engage in the political process. Could this same enthusiasm filter through into Policy decisions in the next Government? Into the very operational model of the Civil Service?

I guess it’s just a case of watch this space for now.

Wednesday came and went, and suddenly I find myself well into Thursday.

And to be honest, a little bit down after the comms discussion and frustrated at the slowness of change, but all that soon fell by the wayside when I joined other digital people from across Government at #teacamp http://teacamp.co.uk/, at Cafe Zest in the Army & Navy shop in Victoria.

A lot of people from UKGov camp were there, which was fantastic to see, all that enthusiasm bubbling away about wanting to see change happen and it’s a great place to swap ideas around, talking about problems and issues we are facing.

Oh for the joys of simple communication!

I’m feeling a tad bit more enthused now. Roll on the next teacamp!

At some point during the week I did manage to meet up with David T

Who used to work in my team developing and maintaining our Corporate Infocube in SAP Business Warehouse. We had a lovely lunch, David was surrounded by Karen, Kate, Allison and myself which I think he rather enjoyed! But it was good to catch up and it was such a shame that I had to let him go from the team

Friday, Saturday, Sunday

It’s a weekend up Lincoln to meet up with Stuart! And I would write all about it, but why bother when Stuart already has! http://stuart-intimations.blogspot.com/2010/02/visitor.html

Sitting on his parents sofa before the trip back to London

Suffice to say it was a great weekend, great to finally meet up and fantastic to chew the fat over several glasses of wine, whisky, brandy and tasty food.

I’ll be heading back there at some point

Last Week

Highlights are;

• Drinks with Anna on Tuesday
• Drinks with Treasury(Nilesh) on Wednesday
• Dying on Thursday
• Drinks & the pictures on Friday
• Drinks & Rugby on Saturday
• Recovering on Sunday

Monday

I’m rather tired, the weekend festivities I guess have tired me out. But hey, it was fun Work is survived, and it’s a  quick couple of drinks with Tim and relatively early night cause I’m beat.

Tuesday

It’s Karen’s last day in the office as she’s off to Florida for a couple of weeks. Damn lucky thing! So it’s just sorting through things during the morning, getting everything wrapped up before we all head to the PCS Union meeting

about the changes to the Civil service compensation scheme and about a looming strike should members vote yes for Strike action.  Given what I heard at the talk, and the amount of passion in the room about these matters I can very well see a large proportion of the Civil Service out on strike, and I might be one of them.

Unfortunately the union meeting over ran, making me late for the MI Board meeting but luckily I was able to catch up fairly quickly and I do have nagging doubts in the back of my mind about how MI, Shared Services etc all fit in with the Government ICT Strategy…. but I guess with most things in Government, we are all holding our breath to see what happens after the General Election.

I had got dragged into yet another MI meeting which was due to run until 5:30, which normally wouldn’t be a problem but unusually this time Anna had left work early and wanted  meet up in Victoria, so I have to make my apologies and dash off to the Brass Monkey to find Anna there with her laptop out, working away with a large glass of wine by her side.

Perfection.

A bottle of wine later, it’s homeward bound and for some serious zzzzzzz’s.

Wednesday

It’s amazing. I manage to have a whole day without *any* meetings what so ever. And more importantly I manage to pile through a shed load of work and e-mails. Yay me!

Oops, I tell a lie. There was one meeting, but it was more of a networking thing. Our Spending Team in Treasury wanted to meet up for drinks (late postponed Christmas drinks) in St Stephen’s Tavern next to Big Ben, and opposite the Treasury.

Drinks with them only ends in one thing.

Thursday

A bloody stonking sore head the next day.

Oh my head hurt like hell. And boy was I going to pay for it today, because I’m straight into a 3 and half hour meeting where people argued with very loud voices constantly. There was a lot of shouting at one another and not a lot of listening.  This upset me greatly. We need to work together, listen and understand. Not shout and talk *at* one another.

I was sick fed up by the time it had finished. I *never* want to go through a meeting like that again. Steve & I were so annoyed and upset off we needed to let off some steam after enduring that and nipped to the Royal Oak for a quick couple. Even with my hangover, I just needed to get out of the office or I would scream.  The nerves needed soothing after that marathon session.

Once back in the office I’m still upset and quietly fuming to have experienced that. I try and concentrate on the remainder of tasks to be done but it’s difficult and I can’t quite get the sense of frustration and failure out of my mind that eventually I had enough of all it and had to leave. I’d pop over to Eland house to meet up with Tim for a couple of drinks to calm down and shuffled off home. Tired, annoyed, and so needing to sleep.

Friday

It’s yet another meeting, but at least this time it isn’t in a room of 18 people shouting at one another. It’s only 6-7 of us and we do manage to work through the costings more easily and start seeing some direction to follow.

I pop over to the Marquis with Allison & Kate for lunch (Scampie & Chips) which helps settle me down as on my return to the office I need to get my head around a few things and figure out how to draft the issues raised at yesterdays disastrous MI meeting. Once that’s finally out of the way, and another quick briefing on the UKGov ICT Strategy it’s off up to the West End to Ed’s Diner with Tim for

a quick snack before we head to the cinema to watch Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll http://www.sex-drugs-rock-roll-thefilm.com/

Not that I’m a big Ian Dury fan but the movie was ok. Not shite, not fantastic, but a decent enough movie to watch.

Yesterday

Urgh…  I watched the Rugby yesterday down the pub with Jay.

I cant even bring myself to talk about Scotland’s suicide on the pitch. I just can’t. I just can’t go over that again.

Great time with Jay, sufficient beerage, and no more talk about the Rugby.

Today

Jay had crashed over as he’s never been to a part of London that didn’t have a Tube station and would have easily gotten lost last night if he attempted to travel back home! I send him homewards after a pint of juice and I settle down to catching up on e-mails, TV programs that I’d recorded, and sorting out the blog.

I should really start doing a lot of domestics as well but just can’t seem to get motivated……

And Episode 2

Of course, I was kinda sad and watched via Twitter the launch of Apple’s new iPad, and I love how the comedians have already started on it!