Weeknote 2024.43

A week of making sure we have solid foundations for all our work.

Saturday

Another day out, another delightful town, and another long walk. This time from Rochford, along the Roach seawall, around a derelict flour mill and back into town. I was very mindful to leave plenty of time to get back while it was still light. I really didn’t want to be stumbling around by the water in the dark.

Sunday

I really must do more with my Sundays.

Monday

A day with two very straightforward meetings on the same tricky issue. My team and our partners are all over the issue, and it will be resolved, step by step, and our preparatory meetings hint at several workarounds that will relieve the pain in the meantime.

Onward to a photo competition on Zoom. I hadn’t entered, so could enjoy the judging and commentary without the frisson of wondering what they would say about my pictures. I didn’t think I had any photographs that fitted the topic, however seeing how others interpreted it, I could and should have entered.

Tuesday

My first out of hours call around 3.30am. My phone did wake me. And it took about five minutes to be ready to act. By the time it was clear I wasn’t needed it was too late to go back to bed, so picked-up my morning routine, then a normal day of meetings with report writing interludes.

Wednesday

When we talk of bureaucracy, we often describe seemingly pointless forms, petty functionaries, computer-says-no answers, all adding up to interminable delays, however bureaucracy was the mechanism that allowed large and complicated organisations to act as one.

Either way, there’s of bit of me that likes a little bureaucracy, the clarity of filling in a form, the thrill of the hunt for the right signatures, and the mental exercise that comes navigating ambiguous multi-step processes. It was a good Wednesday.

Thursday

An early start to get to the Local Government Partnership Network (LGPN) on the other side of London in good time for the first session. Then a day of meeting old friends, making new friends, and filling another notebook with observations, ideas and thoughts. I’ll write about these separately once I’ve collated them over the next week or so.

Especially good to meet my former colleagues Hemanth Shanthigrama from Tower Hamlets and Martin Sadler from SharedDigital and is now an author and Director of Digital and Technology Services at Birmingham Council. I bought a copy of Martin’s book Aspirationally Idle, and then found it missing when I returned to my table after doing the rounds. I hope someone who can make use of it picked it up, and I’ll think of it as an anonymous donation and buy another copy.

Friday

A second day at the LGPN, and the talk turned more explicitly to data. It was amazing to see what some council’s have achieved, often piecing together resources from here and there, and in a few cases on the back of bet-the-farm multi-million-pound investments.

Come and join us!

You are running out of time to apply to be our new Head of Digital Delivery. https://starfishsearch.com/jobs/enfield-digital-delivery/

Track of the week

Kill Bill by SZA

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