#1515gov

Every day, for the next month, maybe two depending on how annoyed my followers become, I'm going to do something a bit bizarre.

I'm going to tell everyone what I'm doing.

I think you should too, if you work in local government and here's why.

I read a comment by @ermintrude2 (she's a social worker, doesn't want to use her real name) on this lovely post by @welovelocalgov explaining the things she knows local gov does - but that maybe the general public don't.

I didn't either.

That's wrong.

So in order to fix the wrong and turn it into a positive right, if you'd like to join me, feel free. If you're in Australia, or the United States, tweet at your own 15:15 (3:15pm) in your own time zone but use the same tag #1515gov. I promise to read every single one. At the end of the month if I'm not the only person doing this then I promise to somehow collate every single one into some kind of document and upload it to this blog.

I want to know what you do. I want to see a snapshot of your life, every single day for the next month. I want to know how you serve, how you clean, how you care, how you protect and how you support.

But most of all, I want to paint a picture in a thousand words of why local government is a many wonderful thing. I can't do that alone.

So please join me. Thank you.

Kicks for free

This is going to look like an attack on one person no matter how I pen it. I apologise for this, it is not meant to be. It is simply the culmination and articulation of months of frustration and annoyance.

When I first joined social media, it was much discussed that it was all about sharing. It was about talking and discussing and sharing best practice. As a result, and believing the hype, I set up #lgovsm, a weekly chat to talk about things and share knowledge. Contributing to the chat were a lovely balance of people working inside local government and those who wished to sell services to them. As long as no one blatantly pedalled their own services or products in lieu of contributing anything useful, I felt this was acceptable and I'm not a great one for over moderation anyway.

I got some stick, when after resurrecting the chat last week, albeit jokingly (?), for stating that I'd like assistance with running it and asking that the volunteers worked within local government.

I'm going to tell you why I made that request. It's possibly going to sound arrogant and it very probably will get a lot of peoples backs up, but here it is:

We don't have any money.

I sometimes wonder if some people think we're lying about this. That the 33 million quid we found was a magical number plucked out of the air, or that I am somehow lying about the colleagues who aren't any more. That I imagine the slight showings of strain on the faces f friends working within VCS locally, or that we have no training budget and I pay my way as much as I possibly can while still being able to have the opportunity to learn something - anything. 

We don't have any money.

We know you've got bills to pay. We know you've got children to feed and mortgages to sustain. Thousands upon thousands of people relied on local government for their pay cheques. I know this because I am getting war dialled on a daily basis by companies I made the mistake of expressing a vague interest once upon a time. Just a quick tip - phoning me every day is going to make me hate you, not want to do business with you. The bare faced aggression I have encountered has been unpleasant at best, and bordering on harassment at worst. There is no excuse for this, I'm not trying to lie to you when I say:

We don't have any money.

We just don't. 

But my real irritation is reserved for the people looking for new and innovative ways to resell something  back to people, underneath the whole ethos of which was 'free'. 

Like the recent discussion on Twitter about the localgovcamp which someone is charging to attend. No. Localgovcamp's, as an ethos, are free. Camps are free. Unconferences are free. They're based on a cultural evolution and not a money making scheme. They should be free. I do not understand exactly which bit of this is difficult except it seems to someone it is.

But it is, sadly, just one example of an increasingly common theme - taking advantage of local government. Want to be innovative? Pay a consultant to tell you how! Want to learn how to map things? Pay a consultant to tell you how! Want to work out who has the ideas in your organisation? Pay a consultant! Want to win an award through doing something really cool and different? Pay a consultant!

Never mind that the ideas and innovators are already sat inside your organisation getting bored and, frankly, pissed off. Never mind that they are like helium balloons, constantly bumping their head on the ceiling of  bureaucracy and hierarchies. Never mind that they'll suck up all the learning they can get for free, self teach themselves everything and take charge themselves of keeping up with industry advancements. 

These people are left to fester and quietly die. Or quit.

Because for some reason, paying a consultant with a badge on their fleece is listened to. Believed. Respected. 

We do not have any money.

Time to ask some questions internally, now, don't you think?

NB: BWDBC has asked this question. It's finding some rather fabulous answers and fixing some things along the way. If you want to know more, shout, I'll tell you.

For free.

24 hours

In conclusion in the interim: there is absolutely no point in worrying about what might or might not be. I might be out of a job at some point in the next 12 months. I might not. Some of the fear and insecurity is being generated by an unfortunate mix of incredible stress at home (the fall out of the previously blogged about NHS shenanigans on the 'friend' and his mother continue to be horrid and understandably so) combined with a complete bolt out of the blue discussion with a doctor resulting in some 'interesting' tests which I'm rather hoping are negative (nothing life threatening but er....yes). 

There's other stuff I wont bore you with. Why is this here? I am human. I am struggling with the constant ever shifting landscape of local government, the 'industry' I work in right now. I think to pretend I were not would be pathetic and cowardly and so I'm not going to. 

So how do you deal with this? Well you can either let it pull you down or cheer the hell up, frankly. Batten down the hatches, head down and determinedly get as much damn well done as possible before the spreadsheet says no and you're gone. 

So. I am involved with a sudden emergent movement to bring local gov camps to the North West of England and am super excited about it. I am possibly actually really going to set up a social enterprise, quietly, simply, with no complications and simply JFDI and get out there and share what I know for free. With passion and enthusiasm. I spent this morning talking to our Speech and Language team about parent driven digital support networks and information feeds as well as breaking down barriers to entry to their services by being 'more human' and this afternoon yet again discussing the lack of agility in local government but responding with solutions.

In actual fact, I spent the afternoon identifying where we are now in a number of different areas relating to young people, identifying challenges and gaps and then identifying solutions. And everything I identified as a problem or challenge or gap I also identified a deliverable solution for.

Deliverable with resource, that is.

Me. Or someone like me.

So I suppose you might say, I spent the afternoon talking myself into a job. Except I didn't see it like that at the time and those who know me, really know me, will know that that's the truth. And someone else could very well come and deliver those needs I identified.

But answer me this. If someone is good enough to identify the problems, and then immediately list all the solutions, should they not then be good enough to actually deliver the solutions? 

Am I good enough? Am I performing? Am I running at full speed? Have I taken the brakes off?

I can't answer that - it's not appropriate to. But I do know I came home feeling achieved. Like I'd contributed. Like I'd made a difference somehow.

It felt good.

Disruptive networking

I think there always were disruptive networks. In the same way that tech has enhanced so many things, proliferated and amplified them, networks are the same. The difference is perhaps the organisations the networks are in - because I am of course speaking for the public sector here.

4,000 people struggle to keep in touch. Silos appear, because they have to - you simply cannot keep everyone in the loop of day to day decisions and so silos develop and inevitably sub cultures. Different identities, different paperwork, different evolutionary systems of recognition, praise and promotion.

Tech is pulling those silos back together again. And in the process of doing so, new discoveries are made of the different eco-systems. It would be easy to focus on the negative comparators - instead I believe to do so would be a missed opportunity.

Yammer is not it. Yammer should not be the sticking plaster that we slap on to these disparate ideals and goals within our organisations. Yammer simply proliferates the myth of one organisation using one system. We are a multi department, multi section organisation, not one. One would hope we are united in our goals, yes, but that of course still requires the acknowledgement that goals are vague hand wavy things to some people, people who are far more focused on hard and fast outcomes - x number of people fostered, y number of peoples BMI's dropped. But Yammer does not acknowledge these disparities, I feel, it merely compounds the differences instead of encouraging the people who rarely speak to have a voice. Our front line staff are not in front of a PC. Our front line staff should not be expected to log on from home - home for them is often a refuge from horrific tales and difficult case studies and reviews. No.

Instead we need to understand the duality of engagement with our own staff and understand that no one answer fits all in organisations where one's working life involves needle disposal and the other confidential document disposal. We need to not leave our staff behind internally, upskill them first, perhaps before we rush to upskill our residents - or at the very least run these programmes in parallel. And even then this training must not just focus on the value of technological networking. I believe that connections are valuable, that support is something money cannot buy and that the fine art of sitting and simply listening and letting someone vent are just as important. I cannot vent by tapping words into a computer. It just doesn't work like that. We are human beings and we want to splurge, release, vent. And then, most of us want to move onto the bit where we fix the cause of our dismay.

Connection and networks allow us to do that without repeatedly burdening the same people. Without always getting the same persons point of view, or more to the point obtaining a variety of views from the selection of different agendas, understandings, informed backgrounds and insightful wise words. They allow us to subvert - to run under the radar, discussing the difficult things, the hard things, the severely challenging and fear inducing things with people who feel no impetus to 'do something about it', but simply to listen and understand.  They allow conversations to happen and decisions to be made which should be made, with the added value of input form the people who need to be involved because of their expertise, not just because of their job title. They escape hierarchies. The go around the back of barriers. They break down silos.

But most of all, they are unofficial, undocumented, unnoticed by most and uncontrollable. They are a risk and they are breaking the rules. But they are also a source of solace, of hope, of support and listening ears.

Yammer is one side of the coin. For some it's a yet another neat little visible box to park staff in so that no one wanders off and does something silly or unpredictable or uncontrollable. For others it is an opportunity - and used well it should always be so. But never underestimate the value of face to face meetings, of passing it on, of coffee shop meetings and clandestine under the radar discussions off the record. They are the places where the little people scheme, where the indicators are never mentioned, where outcomes are focused and refocussed on and where ceilings don't exist to bounce off. And don't for a second think your job title excludes you from this. It most certainly does not. But to join this little club, all you have to want to do is change things. Make things better. And most important of all, know that no matter what your job title you have something to contribute, are allowed to think and put the world to rights and that one day, some day, your time will come.

Still a grain of sand. But a slightly more positive one.

I also met the author of Powerlines today. She's awesome. Utterly. But you know what - I can be too.

Cored

It feels a little like Apple has just been cored.

This morning, I don't think I was alone in shedding a tear. The difference between a geek, a nerd, and everyone else, was probably actually how you felt this morning. Because you see, for the nerds among us, he was more than a genius, an innovator, a visceral businessman and a cunning media manipulator.

He was a nerd.

One of us. One of me. 

I picked up a book about the History of Computing on Charing Cross Road many years ago. It had zeroes and ones on the front. I've never studied computing, I've never studied anything to do with them. Never. But I know how binary looks and I know I love computers so I wanted to know how come I suddenly landed in this magic world where I can tap and you can see and there's nothing but a Submit button between us.

I read about machine cards, punch cards. I read about stealing time on these machines by teenagers with big ideas and a gaming habit to feed. I read about sneaking time, and heat and a dot in the wrong place meaning hours of re-feeding card. I read about electronics stores like Maplins now, with bits of kit, soldering irons, metal, boards and bauds. I read about personality clashes and ethics, disagreements and disappointments and I understood a little better why among nerd friends, Microsoft were the dark side and unix was the source and Apple were the cute little quirky kids on the block trying to break peoples heads.

Apple always tried to break peoples heads.

I first surfed the web on a Mac. I taught myself how to use it. I then moved onto Unix (x-term) and then onto Microsoft then iOS. But I remember the clack of the keyboard. But then I remember the clack of every keyboard. I have had good keyboards and bad. 

What Steve Jobs did was remove the sound. He took away the barrier between me and you. He removed the physical keyboard and gave me touch and tap and tactile. Swipes and smiles. Apps and aspirations.

I felt like I'd made it as a geek, the day I brought my iPad 2 home. It is, to this day, my most prized possession. I adore it, more than any pair of shoes or handbag. Almost as much as my bike. Almost.

But it's easy to forget that the beauty for a lot of other people, the magic for a lot of other people, is surface. It is cool. It is consumer. It is brand. It is Apple. It is keeping up with the Jones for a whole new generation.

For me, it's about being a nerd. It will always be about being a nerd. And my nerd hero has died. The propellers spin no more. The machinery will no longer compute. 

Apple has been cored.

Running a Council Twitter stream

It's terrifying. There. I said it.
Judge all you like, if you've ever run one yourself. Have you? Or have you just sat there in your comfortable ergonomic chair in your comfortable study in your comfortable house sniping at everyone else getting it wrong?

Because I hold my hand up freely - I was in that camp for the last 18 months. And then redundancies meant I inherited our Twitter stream and well, gosh, it's not as easy as it looks.

I've sort of found my groove a little bit - it's only been a few weeks. I've messed up already and I will no doubt mess up again. I don't mind admitting I was embarrassed about messing up all things considered, but I figured learning curves are called curves for a reason and I will learn.

So what's the issue?

• Pick your voice. I didn't really think about this before, but the tone of voice I use on my own Twitter account is absolutely not appropriate on the Council's stream. No awesomes. No yays. No smileys.
• I lied about the smileys. I personally think smileys are absolutely the only way to indicate in text that I'm joking, using irony, being sarcastic or any one of a hundred other things lost in text translation. If you think that's unprofessional, that's cool. I don't.
• I'm a digital native. I breath this stuff. Apparently. Except I am used to speaking as me, not as an organisation. And as I have alluded to before, do the public want us to speak to them as human beings, or do they want us to retain the aura of authority and organisationalism (?) that you historically have associated with Councils. Are residents ready yet for chatty reps from the Council turning up on their Twitter feed? Well, I kind of think about it like this - the tone and demeanour of a social worker is entirely different to a Communications Officer is entirely different to a Teacher. My tone on the official stream is appropriate for the environment it finds itself in, which is Twitter. It is not appropriate for an official press release imparting information on a serious case review. For example. Right communication for the right audience for the right channel for the right words.
• Spelling. Oh god I have agonised over whether it's okay to use pls or whether someone will come and hunt me down and lynch me for grammatical abuses. In the end I just figured, I couldn't fit the message into 1 tweet if I didn't use pls and so pls it was.
• Not knowing the answer. What the hell am I going to do if I don't know the answer? Well, as  it turns out, I'll reply with the digital equivalent of a please hold message and then spend hours finding the answer and doing the best I can to assist the person requesting the help. I will obtain email addresses on DM, I will keep in touch and ask for updates on progress and in the process I will something about the organisation and the people in it that I did not previously know, improving my own networking ability in the process. Win:Win.
• What if I have to delete a tweet cos it's wrong? Or I say the wrong thing? Well. I already did that. Lesson learnt. Move on, keep going, remember the lesson, don't screw up again.
• Slowly but surely, I am becoming more comfortable about tweeting and less 'hung up'. It takes a bit to relax into it but once you do it's fine. As with everything on Twitter, it's better to retweet other peoples content to and be useful to people - like if most of your residents are suddenly experiencing a water outage - than chatter and other inanities. 
• Some people are watching your stream very closely and that's likely to be the local media too. Don't be surprised if you tweet something and your team receive a phone call shortly afterwards asking for more details.
• Be careful. People are watching your stream very closely and if you mistweet something it's going to be really really really difficult to pull it back.

No pressure then?

No pressure then.