21st century branding

So, day zero for Blackburn with Darwen draws to a close. There will be 500 or so compulsory redundancies and there is no way to avoid them. 500 more posts have been deleted - meaning a total, by mid summer of 1000 posts which will simply no longer exist. What that means for the people left behind wont be clear for months, perhaps not even before the end of the year, but for those 500 people, I have some advice. It's offered freely and for free, because I believe there but for the grace of god, but also because I am going to call it straight.

Disagreement and discussion are, as ever, welcome.

Whether you like it or not, a social media presence right now is a sensible thing. And I'm not talking about your personal Facebook page. Smart people network their way into jobs - not by preferential treatment, but by knowing about jobs which might not be advertised in the normal way any more because there is no budget, but will be tweeted or posted on LinkedIn because it's free.

Networking aggressively will get you nowhere. Bombing hashtags with your consultancy offerings or training solutions will get you ignored at best and blocked at worst. It's lazy and it requires no thought - and the people whose stream you're interrupting will think you're a complete idiot and if you continue to do it, will get very cross at you.

Networking is a subtly nuanced thing. Build relationships with people. Don't bombard people with responses to every single one of their tweets, but if you have something in common with someone, in the same way that you would probably chat about football before a meeting started, chat to them about your common interest. Small talk paves the way for the more complicated work based stuff.

If communicating well with words is part of who you are, start a blog. Don't sell yourself directly, talk instead about the things which interest you. Comment is free. Well researched posts which are thought provoking and offer a different viewpoint of a policy, current affairs event or scientific discovery are usually welcomed. Don't think of it as giving away good ideas for free - think of it instead as a way of allowing other people to see what they're going to get if they should ever have a post free which you might fit into.

Being made redundant hurts. Just ask the MySpace lot. The natural reaction is to kick back and kick out. Social networking is a quick and easy way to do that. Unfortunately, for your opinion to have any credence, you're going to need to use your real name. And everything you type and submit, every negative comment, every piece of snark, every inappropriate comment will remain there as a testament to how carefully someone should consider when looking at employing you. Leaving your social networking profiles off your CV or consultancy pitch or tender wont work either. People Google. Get over it. Watch every word - it's fine to be upset and hurt, it's not fine to make the lives of those left behind hell - it's not their fault the axe didn't swing for them. Make sure that if you must be angry, the anger is pointed in the correct direction.

Set up your RSS feeds. If you don't know how to do that, ask me, ask on Twitter. Assorted job sites allow you to customise a search for jobs and then RSS the results, so that every morning, instead of wading through tonnes of emails in various states of undressed formatting, you can skim down a list which will update the second a new job role is posted to the relevant site, meaning in theory you could get the jump on a job application a few hours before less tech savvy applicants. Not such an issue with application form posts, but a big deal with agency advertised posts.

Find the people who are influential in your sector and read their blogs. Educate yourself. Blogs are full of the current thinking, current reactions and current issues and problems, and they're free. They're also often written by incredibly well respected academics or leaders in their respective fields. The same people who contribute and write white papers which you've probably been reading as part of your job. It's not good enough any more to wait for the papers to come to you - find out the thinking before it comes to you, and if you're comfortable doing so, leave comments and get into discussions. Make impressions - but most of all, bring your learning, awareness and thinking up to speed.

If you're a local govvie - take advantage of the fantastic live Q & A panels which the Guardian are running on almost a weekly basis to help you get a job, should you need one, or to set up a social enterprise should you want to, or how to improve internal communications even if you're one of the ones left behind. They're free, the experts on the panels generally really are, and they're free. Did I mention free? If you don't want to be seen to be asking for advice then set up an account which doesn't make it obvious its you - and ask the questions under that - the nature of the website means you wont be accorded any less consideration for not asking under your real name. The Guardian Local Government Network content is all archived and is a wonderful resource.

Learn to ask for help. Swallow your pride if you have to, but ask. We're all happy to help and assist - some of us for free and some of us not. Don't assume free is better, but don't assume it's worse either. Some people know some subjects much better than others. 9 times out of 10, I, or someone else will be able to point you in a specialists direction. If we do, it will be because we know they're good because we read their blog - spot the theme here? If you pay, or if you don't, you will get the same time and consideration - some people are practising giving information and training for free to gain confidence and to practice before they charge for it.

Finally? Baby steps. Don't create a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile, a Quora account and then.... Pick one. Focus on it. Build a repuation and a profile, and yes, I hate the word but build a brand. It will follow you when you become entirely comfortable on one of those sites and decide to move to another - each of the sites has a subtly different etiquette and a very different way of building reputation - trying to crack all of them at once will simply lead to complete confusion.

#lgovsm - a redux

#lgovsm is a perfect example of why the JFDI approach to life sometimes just doesn't cut it. And I have learnt my lessons well.

Someone once said to me, make a mistake, own up to it, take responsibility for it, learn from it, move on. This is an admission of the first, definitely the second, a step on the path to the third and most definitely the fourth. And this, also, is what blogs are for, because through sharing mistakes, hopefully someone else will learn to, and thus never have to write a similar really rather embarrassing blog post.

The first session involved about 20 people. A similar amount took part in the second session, and it grew a little more by the time the 3rd one came alone. The core attendance tends to stay the same, with people drifting in and out depending on the subject - Councillors and representatives from the voluntary sector have all wondered in and out as well as local government entrepeneurs.

When I first launched it, I anticipated a few people chatting and it take a while to get off the ground. I expected people to be well out of ideas and things to say by the end of the session. I didn't expect journalists and think tank bods to have it on their radar - I wasn't sure anyone would have it on their radar - this is social media and things tend to be unpredictable.

I first realised there was a problem when Ingrid Koehler from the LGID mentioned some people had been pushing for a space to continue discussions generated on #lgovsm throughout the rest of the week. This has now been set up on the Communities of Practice and I am very grateful for this assistance. As an aside, the Communities of Practice is a fantastic resource for local government bods of all disciplines, not just those of us in social media - you will need to sign up for an account to be able to see the content, but I can highly recommend it - it's a brilliant forum to discuss issues and problems but also celebrate successes.

So, last night I did something I should have done right back at the beginning. Firstly, after discussions with @kazwccsocialnet we decided on a topic which should have perhaps been the first one - using social media to support social media evangelists in their organisations'. That right there is going to help enormously, I suspect, because it can be a lonely old place in the face of barrages of 'what exactly do you do for a job again?', blank looks from your mother when you try and explain, glares from colleagues who are facing redundancy, accusations of being peoples pet projects and assorted other rather negative attitudes which it can be difficult to shake off. Add to this that some people are running under the radar of their management in order to even create a Flickr group and the need for this discussion can be plainly seen.

Then between @carlhaggerty, @808kate and @kazwccsocialnet something rather awesome happened. We decided what was wrong with lgovsm, then we decided how to fix it, and then we decided to have lunch on Saturday at UKGovCamp to iron out the details. And suddenly, a bunch of local gov bods have formed a bit of a team, across geographical distances which still boggle me (West Midlands, Devon, Lancashire, London), built entirely over Twitter.

And this is why we bother. This is why I set up lgovsm in the first place. This is what social networking was built for - cross county collaboration between professionals who want to do things better, want to communicate better, want better tools to do better jobs. Twitter is not just a place to chat or network - it's somewhere to sew the seeds of collaboration out in the real world,. which then are applied back again to the digital world. It's where people with similar interests and drives can come together and assist, and build support networks.

If you ask me the value of lgovsm to others, I cannot answer. If you ask me the value of lgovsm to me, I can. It is becoming a professional development learning curve. It is teaching me about the need for planning and for collaboration and learning to stop being independant all the damn time, and to trust in others and ask for help. It's teaching me that geography doesn't matter any more. I am learning about organisation, planning, being agile, moving on swift deadlines and timescales, reacting to problems and solving them, but also on a personal level, I am learning very many things too. Because what we learn on a personal level benefits our professional lives and vice versa. And nowhere is this more true than on social networks.

If the conversations which happened yesterday come to fruition, lgovsm will go from something small and local to something massive and sprawling, but also useful, with interesting outcomes and ideas. There is not necessarily any actions on anyone at the end of these proposed discussions, only greater understanding and little sparks which can be stored to be lit at some future point. Social networking allows us to learn from a very great number of people from all sectors and all interest areas - a great many number of stakeholders.

No matter happens from this point forward, I have learnt, both in the running and hosting as well as in the participation of lgovsm. What makes me more happy than I can say, is that one of the people I originally thought of when setting lgovsm up, is now enabling me to make it more useful, more relevant and of more worth.

Funny how the world turns, isn't it?

My other half and me

A little off message, this. Nothing to do with social media or local government, but it is about geek. Specifically, it's about a pair of geeks, my other half and me.

The house is currently full of a ringing Blackberry. Al, my other half, who is a senior something engineer - network, systems, servers, I lose track - is on call. He works for a national IT company, a company who look after the servers, systems and telecommunications of a large amount of companies you'll have heard of. The first email pinged and he leapt up like all the hounds of hell had landed. Nabbed a piece of paper, muttering to himself, checked IP's, apparently it's not so bad that that one dropped. Remote logged in to servers somewhere else, hundreds of miles away, more than likely, phoned tucked under one ear, co-ordinating a response to a system failure, and a screen scrolling, black background, white terminal font scrolling frantically up the screen. Line breaks appear - 'that's really not good at all'. He was supposed to come off call at 10pm. It's 2 minutes past but he's still there, co-ordinating, talking, frantically tapping. He wont remember to claim the time. He's private sector, but his attitude isn't.

I'm public sector. My evening? I went to the hairdressers, I spent the money I don't spend in pubs drinking (I do drink, just not at the moment) chilling out, chatting to the girls there, explaining grit (I don't quite ever manage to get away from it), explaining BWD Winter, explaining whart social media is and why it's important, but also chatting about films watched, presents bought, plans for next year. I came home, ate, flipped to News 24 and stayed there, serenaded earlier by the sounds of Simons Cat leaking out of the speakers of Al's super shiny laptop.

My laptop is not super shiny but it is tiny and practical. My little 10 inch window on the world. I'm a bit ill, some days a bit more than others. It doesn't get in the way though, because while I'm at work my brain still spins even when other things don't, people are kind and ignore, painkillers fix the worst and I'm practised at this by now. Evenings are not so easy, and so this 10 inch little screen is my....link? It's my social life while the other real one is by necessity temporarily on hold, it's my link to intelligent, smart and inspirational people who tolerate my incessant ridiculous questions, my occasionally dummy throwing, but hopefully also, occasionally, just very occasionally something interesting which wings its way from my brain through my fingers and out into the big wide world.

This evening is not normal. Usually, the work life balance in this house is entirely the other way around - I'm the one working.


We are geeks. The lines blur. Often, geeks work doing the things they love very much. So when the things we love roll over into time we weren't supposed to be doing work things in, we either don't notice, or we don't mind. But, because of this, there is also the risk that we don't notice when we've had enough, because we still think of work as fun. And so we carry on, working and working, through hours which should be spent doing something else in order to retain some sanity, because we forget that those lines are there for a reason - so we can rest one bit of our brain and use another bit instead.

If you manage geeks, and you don't already know this, this might be quite an important bit of information. In order for your friendly neighbourhood geek to flourish, don't water them, tell them to stop. Have evenings. Have weekends. A little work in the evening, fine. A lot of work in the evening. Not fine. Reading things which hapen to be work related but out of genuine interest and out of choice? Fine. Discussing things on Twitter in passing which are work related? Okay. Doing nothing but talking about work or doing work all evening, absolutely not fine.

We might not be the best people to limit our own workloads. We need you to keep an eye and occasionally intervene.

Brought to you by some kind conversations with people who noticed and had words. Thank you.You're not geeks and you still noticed.

GIS is to #opendata as.......

GIS (Geographic Information System) is to open data as Microsoft Word is to a bunch of incohesive words and letters. Or at least, when you've been working with GIS for a bit, that's how it looks. A slightly distorted view of course, because GIS wasn't involved in the 15 minute dalliance with some data I danced the other night, but nevertheless, data and GIS is intrinsically linked for me and so I thought I'd try and explain why - with a diagram!

Look ma, no hands! Now, as regular readers will know, I'm not very good at diagrams. Or data visualisations or mash ups or whatever the cool and funky kids are calling them these days - I'm not a cool and funky kid either so I wouldn't know. But this is a pitiful attempt at an explanation, nevertheless because letters are boring and pictures are shiny.

Open data is the end of the story as I hope I've made clear here. Operations is the start. Operations is what generates all the data to go out into the open. Operations means childrens services, it means street scene or refuse collection and street cleansing with some park maintenance in there as well depending on what you're calling it this year, it's the actual day to day stuff like how many fly tips we collected or how many parking tickets we issued or how many library books we lent. It's our bread and butter, it's what we do, it paints a picture in numbers of the service we provide to everyone on a day to day basis.

The data from all that operational activity currently goes in one direction but eventually, one day, will go in two as shown here. At the moment, it goes into management information and in a lot of cases it gets fed, if appropriate and in most cases it is, into the GIS server and processed by our GIS software to make easy to understand visual representations of the data which our Managers can use to make informed management decisions quickly and easily, because the data is not 64,000 rows of ascii (raw letters), but instead thematic mapping, showing them where their hotspots and notspots are, where they need to focus more resource and where there was a problem 12 months ago but now isn't and so they can move resource. It's done more often than 12 monthly, but for the purpose of this, we'll call it 12 months.

The appropriateness of the information going into GIS software is generally whether it's spatial. Spatial means, relational, means does it have a latitude or longitude on it, does it have GPS data attached to it, will mapping it spatially make sense for the data to mean something. In a lot of cases, well actually, in most cases it does, from school catchment areas crossed with deprivation indices crossed with academic achievement levels to a thousand and one other 'mash ups' as they're now called.

Research and intelligence and policy actually have a two way relationship with GIS. They pull data out of the datasets parked there by ops and they crunch it, create 'mash ups' and provide it to Directors and Heads of Service to inform them. They do trend analysis and many other complicated and funky things. Policy take this crunched data too and they build our strategic advice on it. They tell people in words of one syllable (and yes sometimes more) where we were, where we are and where we will be if things continue as they are, but also where we will be if they do not. They don't hold crystal balls, they assure me, but I'm not so sure. GIS and much other non-spatial data is their bread and butter, I think (someone will correct me if I am wrong here, I'm sure).

The datasets which drive all this, will one day go straight onto data.gov.uk once signed off too. INSPIRE says they will. Please read the link, if you've got this far, you need to know about the existence of this Directive.

Which brings me to the other side of open data and the things in data.gov.uk which will sit next to the Operations generated stuff. The cost of satisying Freedom of Information requests was quoted at me by someone at a conference recently from their Authority and I will not post here what it was but it was enough to make my jaw drop. If we are transparent where it comes to information, if we are open, the assumption is that we will actually never receive FOI's ever again, because it will all be easily found, therefore cutting out the middlemen of the poor Administrators and Officers tasked with fulfilling these requests and instead leaving them to do their main job roles. But for the moment, perhaps it would be a nice interim policy for people to put the results of FOI's onto the web automatically, in the assumption that if one person wants to request the information, then perhaps a second will too? It's obviously of interest to someone, right?

And then there's spending data. Generated by Operations but kept by Finance. This is left to last, because Government have almost wrapped this one up. All spend over £500 will be published by local government in January 2011. All NHS PCT spend over £25,000 is already online.

Here ends the tour of data within local government. If you got this far, you know as much as I do, almost. Which in the interests of openness, is exactly the way I believe it should be.

The view behind the lecturn

It was like some kind of bizarre game of I have never. I have never given a presentation before. I have never used a projector system. I have never stood in front of a group of people I mostly didn't know and spoken, I have never stood behind a lecturn.

In the mindset of a woman who's answer to a large amount of questions is 'because it's there' or 'because I can' you would perhaps think that standing up in front of anyone and explaining what exactly I am involved with on a day to basis at work might be quite easy. Well, part of what I do. I was asked specifically to talk about social media and blogging in local government. It ended up, as you can see below, focusing quite heavily on social media in the presentation, though I spoke in greater depth about blogging and how it's been used and will be used in the future.

It's not easy. But it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be either, once I'd stopped shaking. I relaxed, the stats and numbers came without looking at notes and the usual ridiculous enthusiasm reared it's (ugly?) head. Actually, it was quite fun, and the interesting and challenging questions at the end of the presentation were a bit of an eye opener - I still assume everyone else is ahead of us or at least on the same page - it transpires some haven't even opened the book yet. The conversations afterwards were eye opening and fun too - though I don't still know why a man called Steve would spend such a ridiculous amount of time telling me I could leave the public sector and make a lot of money if I wanted to. It was an interesting perspective on an Americans perception of the value of working in public sector, mind.

My rather appallingly put together presentation can be seen below. I kept it simple because I needed to. There's an audio recording floating about somewhere which I might post at some point too.

Finally, I'd strongly recommend going along to the Northern Bloggers meet up which happens every month at the Old Broadcasting House in Leeds. Advice given, interesting talks, slightly geeky but not intimidatingly so. If you do, I'll see you next month because I'm a convert now too. If nothing else, they took a chance on a speaker they barely knew, were entirely complimentary in their feedback and as a result, should I ever be asked again, my first reaction will not be to run as quickly as my legs can take me in the other direction. Butterfly wings: flap flap.

Local government: Analogue to Digital

View more presentations from loulouk.

Butterflies and Hurricanes

Working in public sector is a challenge. At the moment, it is a massive challenge. The political, financial, economic and cohesive challenges are each massive issues in their own right. To be subject to each of these vagaries on a daily basis can be disheartening, can sap anyones relentless enthusiasm and determination.

Change everything you are
And everything you were
Your number has been called

Numbers up. Funding's gone. Grants pulled. Questions asked. Relentless questions asked. Quangos abolished, rules of the game spun 180 on us in the space of 6 months. Workloads doubling, will be tripled, eventually quadrupled? Who knows. Hatches battened and posts left empty, hanging swinging in the wind. A service on pause while those who are in power decide our futures, our funding, our frameworks and our hopes to deliver a service which is fit for purpose but also efficient; inspiring and innovative but also locked down to a tight budget.

Change. Change everything? Do you want to be a player in the digital future? Do you want your service to be accessible and relevant to the people you serve, who you were elected by? Can you conceive of a world where eyeball time is precious and reserved for those who are family and friends, where paying the bill is a slice of time carefully allocated, something to be whizzed through painlessly in 30 seconds, as easily as purchasing the weekly shop at Sainsburys or the aquisition of a new pair of shoes from Asos?

This country is going digital whether you like it or not. Your protestations that people use it only for fun and chatter are becoming akin to the sound of the last dinosaurs roaring as the meteorites came cascading down. Facebook brings people with similar concerns together, allows people to express the frustrations that previously were expressed across a garden fence. Except now there are 3000 garden fences and all the chatter becomes frustration becomes action and movement. Letters are written digitally through 38 Degrees. Potholes are reported through Fix My Street. People are connected through hashtags on Twitter. Connected. Digitally. Armies of people who care, who want to contribute, who have the time, who are asking the question repeatedly and relentlessly 'how can I contribute, how can I make a difference, how can I fix a problem, where can I give this time I have spare, I want to help, how do I help?'

If it isn't your job to convene these people, if it isn't your job to talk to these people, if it isn't your remit to engage with these people, then whose job is it?

No more talking. No more waiting for the floodgates to open. They are opening. The avalanche will drown you if you do not put into place the systems and workflows to deal with all of this. If you don't happen to have a friendly geek in your orgnisation who can and will explain all of this to you in words of one syllable, put a call out on Twitter, ask one of the many Heads of Service and Directors who you know who are digitally aware. Ask them the questions - if they can't answer the question, they will know someone who can. There'll be an innovator, a changer, an enthusiast, a geek - whatever you want to call us - near you who will come and speak to you and explain. There are conferences online and offline. Make the effort. Oftentime, all it will take is one question to the right person. If you don't know who the right person is, find someone who does. We'll help. This isn't some exclusive club. This is a patchwork of assistance and patience waiting on tap for you to call.

Best, you've got to be the best
You've got to change the world
And use this chance to be heard
Your time is now

Bridges have to be built. Someone has to stand in the middle. The external understanding of the challenges and directives that the public sector is subject to is limited. A few, a very few, understand because they left before the aspirations and shine could be pummelled out of them. The internal understanding of how digital will and can change is growing. Public sector has an image, it appears, of the antithesis of incubation of ideas, innovation, doing things differently and flying by the seat of the pants.

Wrong.

The challenge of the public sector where digital is concerned is to only understand this. Innovation happens in the wriggle room we all find in the spaces around the barriers. Great things are happening in little pockets of the country, ordinary people stepping up to the plate and doing extraordinary things. I am trying to be someone who finds the wriggle room, who remains relentlessly positive, who doesn't think about 'we can't' but instead thinks 'how can we?'. It's not an attitude I've always had in the public sector and it's a new feeling, I suspect, for quite a few people. It's as if a generation of leaders and inspirations were holding their breath, and the time to let it out and get to work has come and is finally here.

I don't want to be better than anyone else. I am not competing with anyone else. I have to be the best I can be. If that means brainstorming 100 ideas and only 1 of them being viable, only one of them having the capability to wriggle under the barriers, then so be it. If I am told no, then I will simply come back with a different idea, shaped differently, phrased differently. Public sector life doesn't have to be about being mediocre, it doesn't have to be about the bad pay cheque and the dwindling pension. It can be about forgetting all about that and simply seeing the challenge, focusing on the challenge and trying the best you can to do the best with what you are given, no matter how little that might be.

It is easy to innovate with endless cash. It is easy to imagine the world redrawn with funding streams and grants. Now the challenge is for us, all of us, in cities, towns and villages, in schools and in hospitals, to try and think of ways to allow us to deliver more for less. Digital has to be part of the answer. To ignore it entirely is to miss the bus. There will be no thanks for doing this, there will be no recognition. There's no credit or fame or glory in working in the public sector.

All there is is a challenge. A problem to be solved. A barrier to be wriggled under. A digital option to be considered.

Your time is now.

Why am I 'public service'?

Over on Spencer Wilsons blog he asks the question by proxy of why people are public service. I work in the public sector and have done for a while now, with a brief foray into private sector life at a shall remain nameless multi-national auditing consultancy, and I hope it's where I will be allowed to stay.

It started with a temp job in the HR Department with the London Ambulance Service, went via an admin post with the Community Service section of the London Probation Service which became a stint as a Probation Service Officer supervising young repeat offenders on the Intensive Supervision and Monitoring Scheme which then became, due to relocation, a stint as a Systems Tech/Admin for a Local Authority which has now become a post as a Multimedia Communciations Officer.

That list spans 13 years. There were gaps in between, as ISP connection tech which became Team Leader when I was but a bairn out of university, and as the aforementioned Team Secretary for the 4 letter auditing employer where I got the highest score on the inbox exercise they'd ever seen but where I fit in about as seamlessly as a penguin in a lion enclosure.

Over on Spencer Wilsons post, someone has already commented, and quite fairly, that there are two kinds of public sector employee.

I'd like to make the point that there used to be two kinds of public sector employee. That the sector is moving on, in some areas quicker than others. That my experience over 13 years has changed, that the people I meet in the jobs I work in have changed.

My current team is a beautiful example. There are no coat tail riders. There are no questions about working as late as necessary to get the job done. If there is an 'emergency', people change plans and work around it. If weekend or late evening working is needed, to attend Board meetings, well so be it. There are jokes made about tedium and hours lost forever, but they are jokes, they are not meant. They are passionate about their jobs. They love analysing, thinking, dissecting issues from numerous different directions. Opinions, I am told, are welcome and I believe that absolutely, and am already expressing my own, carefully. Others tell me there is no blame culture, and I believe that too. I can't think of a single person in the whole department who I would not go to to ask a question of, and not expect to receive a well thought, well reasoned, well argued response back.

I know not all Departments are like this. I know this very well. But every person in that office could be paid oh so much more somewhere else. Every single person in that office makes a conscious decision to stay, despite the 30-40% axe shaped numbers floating above their heads. They pay infinite attention to detail, but they do their jobs with grace and humour still.

None of these things, and I do mean none of these things, have I found in the private sector. Perhaps the difference is a motivation to work hard to earn the fabled 'job for life', perhaps they stay because of the pension promise. I don't think they do, but perhaps I am wrong. Instead I think they do it for the same reason I do it, because they don't mind waking up in the morning. Because going to work isn't a hassle or a chore. Because every day is different and no one knows in the morning how the world will look by evening. Because they are led well and with commitment. Because as a result that commitment filters down, as does the communication. Because thinking outside of the box means jumping up and down on it until it's absolutely flattened with treadmarks printed all over it. Because it's a challenge and it's hectic and it requires keeping very many plates spinning at once, but that's fun, that's the point, that's the challenge and that's the reason.

I perhaps paint an idyllic picture. It's entirely possible I couldn't walk out of the door tomorrow and go and work for some digital media agency and instantly double my salary. Perhaps I might not get such good pension deal somewhere else. Perhaps I might find inspiring passionate people who make me laugh, feel comfortable enough to actually express my opinions and where being a woman hasn't even crossed my mind since I stepped across the threshold of the Department.

I don't really care. I work as hard as I can to earn the money the public contributes to paying my salary. I think as fast and as thoroughly as I can, with as much enthusiasm and passion as I can, for as long as I can each day. I don't sneak off for appointments and not make the time up. I don't sneak off to go shopping for presents either. I don't take inappropriate gifts from people and I never make promises that I can't keep. I try as hard as I possibly can to be the kind of person you would want to give money to to do their job.

I am not alone. I am one of millions. I am proud to be one of millions, just one little cog in the wheel which means my little piece of the public sector keeps oiled and running. But most of all, I am proud to be in the company of an army of people who feel exactly the same way I do. Armies can win battles - and I fear that with the cuts which are coming, it's going to take an armies organisation and attitude to keep things running.