Tag: public sector

Blogger’s Block

 

Flickr: Bianks

Have been suffering a bad case since October, brought on first by overwork, then by Christmas, and lately by the absolute certainty that I will never work again, which has reduced  all waking thought to “how long can we last on the money we have before we have to start eating the cats?”

Admittedly I am prone to panic about this kind of thing, and have to keep reminding myself that it’s not long since the holiday season ended, and it’s quite likely that at least one of the three prospects I’m waiting on will come off and I’ll back to complaining about overwork by the end of the month.  This does feel very different from last year, though. Usually, in the public sector, the last three months of the financial year are  manically busy as departments realise they have to use the under-spend they’ve been hoarding against a rainy day before March 31 or they’ll lose the money.  This year it’s ominously quiet on the government front and the cats are starting to look tastier by the day.

Political reality and the NHS

The McKinsey NHS story might be an illustration of what a surprisingly tin ear many very smart people have when it comes to basic politics. Or it could just show how very simplistic political debate has become.  Cutting 10% of NHS staff  maybe an intellectually brilliant way of dealing with a funding problem in the health service (personally I don’t think it is, but let’s give McKinsey’s bright young things the benefit of the doubt).  However it would be so politically damaging, so completely devastating to any governing party’s claims to be trustworthy custodians of a public health service, as to be impossible to  enact.  The press coverage I’ve seen is all focused on this element of the report and the condemnation is pretty universal.  However, if you look at the Health Service Journal’s summary of the story, McKinsey recommend much more than just taking an axe to staff numbers.  A lot of what is being floated seems unpalatable but possibly unavoidable if the NHS is to survive – we should at least be talking about the options honestly.  Instead the government have instantly disowned the document ,  the opposition are scoring cheap  political points, and everyone gets to vent some rage about the use of consultants in the public sector.  Thanks chaps.

Square pegs in square holes – please

Here’s another way the press influences politics – see posts passim…  I’ve been trying since November to bring in  some additional support for a project I’m currently working on.  This is an entirely new, very large,  public sector project.  It is adding massively to the output of the department and generating a lot of additional work which needs people;  experienced and highly skilled people;  to do properly.  If we want to get it right, first time, without causing the additional expense or delay which comes when you have to rub along with the second rate, we have to spend a bit of money.  We don’t have exactly the right set of skills in-house, and the people we do have are already stretched to breaking point.  The fear of the press and the dreaded FOI request (and the shame of having to own up to hiring consultants (boo, hiss)) means that we have to jump through hoops of fire to even get close to justifying having extra people on board.   Even if I finally get the go-ahead today it will be 4 – 6 weeks before we can get anyone on board  if we go through the proper procurement procedures  (which of course we will).  By then it will be getting on for six months since the need was identified.  When the project finally limps into public view, will it be lack of professional support at the right time, or incompetent civil servants who couldn’t run a whelk stall who will be blamed for it not being everything it could be  – first time?

Thinking out loud

This is more writing therapy for me than a considered blog entry – but your thoughts and  suggestions would be very welcome…

I am about to start working on  an internal comms programme for a public body which is both security conscious and has offices widely dispersed across the country.  One of the things I’ve been asked to look at is developing the intranet and making it into a more vibrant form of cross-departmental communication.  I am convinced that the words “vibrant” and “intranet” don’t generally belong in the same sentence – no organisation I’ve ever worked for has had such a thing,  and some have sunk large amounts of money into failing to develop one.  I’ve used systems where the intranet is the compulsory first screen on everyone’s pc so company messages can be shoved in front of people as they log in, but that’s always seemed to be easily ignorable – for most people the log-on process is as automatic (and memorable) as brushing their teeth.   So, examples, please of intranet systems which really work and which can be set up and maintained with a minimum of woman-power in the back office. I evidently shouldn’t have opted out of the internal comms module on the course!

I’d love to find a way to make it a properly participatory network, but the spectre of the Virgin Facebook debacle keeps floating in front of my eyes.   With this in mind, I was intrigued to see reports of a Demos pamphlet about the impact of social media in improving collaboration within organisations.  The public sector seems to come out as mistrusting the use of social media networking tools by staff.  Admittedly the stuff I’ve seen about this is from New Zealand rather than the UK, but I find it hard to believe that the UK is more adventurous! So, is anyone aware of any innovative use of this stuff in the public sector – which preferably won’t land me on the front page of every newspaper in the country as a threat to the nation’s security?