2020 07 31 and 2020 08 07 — Weeknotes

2.30 — the week with the LGA Peer review (and then a week off)

A very short week for me last week with some leave, so a very short weeknote.. Plan A was not to do a weeknote this week but time slipped away from me last week, so going to have this one cover both weeks. Still going to be very short!!

Back to last week. I was on leave on Monday so was nice to switch off but Tuesday and Wednesday I had agreed to do an LGA peer review at Northampton. As you may be aware they are in the process of creating two new Unitary Councils and merging the County Council and the seven Districts and Boroughs into the two new Unitarys.

They requested an LGA peer review across a number of areas, including whether their plans on the various IT systems and changes are going to be sufficient for day 1 on 1 April 2021. Certainly LOTS going on and the various systems and changes underpin everything that is going on.

This was my first LGA review that I have completed and have to say it was a really interesting experience. Very intense meeting with so many people over two days, the majority via teams but some face to face (all socially distanced of course). It was nice to have a bit of normality, or what constitutes that at the moment. Actually stayed in a real hotel, ate in real restaurants and went to a real office building. Everybody was really open and honest and it was a challenge to distil this into some commentry and recomendations into the final report (but actually really fulfilling).

It was a great experience for me, really pleased to have been asked to be involed in something like this and will certainly keep an eye over the next few months for progress.

It gave me the opportunity to really get into my running as well, there was a lovely park and river moments from the hotel so enjoyed a run every day I was there and ended up running 4 times that week.

Thursday was in the ‘office’ for Hounslow and tried to get a million and one things completed before being off again on Friday… and the week after…

As part of our annual refresher for Information Governance and Cyber Security I completed the annual online training this week! Always good to ensure that you do the refresher training and I actually learnt something today, ‘smishing’, like phishing but with SMS text messages! Who knew!

Another new feature of Teams this week — together mode! The aim is to make us feel, at these times, of being together in a single room. The result is this… Well we certainly look like we are, sort of, in the same room!

This week. Off. Some more normality, having a weekend away in Amsterdam, was booked ages ago and we were meant to be going for Pride but that was cancelled, we went anyway. All felt very safe, lots of face masks, hand sanitisers and social distancing…

And a heatwave at the end of this week to continue my doing nothing…

Tune of the Week: Queen — I Want to Break Free — https://youtu.be/f4Mc-NYPHaQ