2020 06 12 — Weeknotes
2.23 — new SOCITM Vice President — wow!
What a couple of weeks, so much really good stuff going on but wow has it been busy! Why I thought it was a good idea to throw my hat into the ring for the SOCITM VP during this time, I do not know! But I was thrilled to get the news that I had actually won and was the next SOCITM VP joining the President team. I am so excited to get involved in the work that SOCTIM are doing. I’ve enjoyed the virtual conference this week as well — showcasing all the work that a number of organisations are doing, both Covid-19 related and not.
We had another Hounslow Leadership Group on Wednesday of this week and yet again it was an excellent session. The music that I tried using when we had a break and at the start didn’t really work, who knew the Chief Exec wasn’t a fan of U2! We have a new set of corporate values, which are excellent. Five colleagues, including Simon Klee from IT (Business Relations and Programmes manager), presented a story representing one of the new values. Simon presented a compelling story on how Digital & IT have embodied ‘Do New’. It was an excellent summary of the work and approach that we have taken over the past three months — some of the comments in the chat during the meeting were just awesome. It is really good to see how the organisation is using the technology to provide innovative services and have a new found appreciation of the work that we have done.
Thursday saw me attend the weekly live Q&A session with all staff that the Chief Executive does. A great opportunity to showcase what we have been doing in digital, introduce some of the Digital Strategy and some of the projects for transformation that we are starting. It was one of the most stressful / crazy things I have ever done — will all the questions coming up — and trying to get through them all, publish them as well as actually answer them — in the end I had to be told to shut up (nicely :-)) and give Niall a chance! We had over 300 people view the session and there were nearly 90 questions — needless to say I didn’t get through them all. I was told after the event that Niall’s haircut comment got more likes than any Digital comment!!
We also had virtual cabinet on Tuesday that went really well — there is a really good team across Communications, Democratic Services and Digital & IT that is making these happen. There has been a number of virtual committee meetings now and they get better and better — we have started to think about how we can improve these for the future.
Some good news with Information Governance this week. Our compliance with responding to Freedom of Information (FOIs) and Subject Access Requests (SARs) had been under the 90% target. An improvement plan was put in place across the Council, with the IG Team and Customer Relations including: drop in sessions, training, creating top tips and attending various team meetings. For May the council’s compliance with FOIs and SAR was 92% — a great achievement across the council.
Tune of the week: With everything that is going on in the world at the moment his feels appropriate: Heal The World — Music Travel Love (Michael Jackson Cover)
