RichardS

This week I have been away from the office for 3 days - but through the wonders of NLC remote systems and the internet I have been quite productive and certainly able to keep on top of email etc. The things that have bugged me have been the few (and it is only a few) things you can't do without access to the server storage for existing saved documents (not available to me remotely), and in particular the extent to which our organisation is still meetings and paper driven. If we can combine culture change and technology to break loose of some of that through our WorkSmart process that will be good. On balance my enforced WorkSmart this week has been the eating of a pudding...only without the pudding....

If you are a North Lincolnshire resident, you can now put batteries in the green kerbside box. All portable batteries (including rechargeable batteries) can now be recycled including AA, AAA, size C and D, and “button” batteries from watches and cameras. 

Car batteries still have be taken to a household recycling centre (the dump to you and me) to be recycled.  But you can recycle batteries from just about any battery powered device via the green box – including batteries from mobiles, laptops, toys and toothbrushes, hearing aids and shavers as well as the standard stuff above. After batteries I wonder what the next opportunity will be?

North Lincs is close to being the best recycling area in our region – can we be the best this year? Yes we can! 

Another transformation breakfast briefing took place this morning. Again we had a mixed group across services, and in terms of length of service. As WorkSmart gains some momentum more people come to the meeting having a handle on what it’s about and today, as in the last few meetings we got into a wider transformation agenda in addition to talking about WorkSmart. Here is a summary of some of the comments people made. As before if you have a comment click on “write a comment” and let us know what you think!

• We need more innovation eg solar street lamps, grey water in new buildings, little by little we can change our towns and villages
• Young people need a stronger voice, a student or youth council would help
• Council priorities sometimes seem out of step with community needs – infrastructure eg roads is lacking investment sometimes – do people want some of the things we give them?
• There are huge advantages in remote and mobile working through WorkSmart but the IT has to work and we need to realise that some jobs need constant access to information and data – server efficiency and speed seems variable at the moment
• WorkSmart can’t stand alone – it’s linked to value for money, business process review and efficiency overall
• There are too many management groups re-circulating the same people talking about what? Rationalise meetings as well as buildings! We could save money from this and many other simple things
• Access in the field to core systems is a must if WorkSmart is to work
• We have too many bottom quartile indicators – that should be a priority for us to fix
• Short term financial solutions like selling assets only work once
• Sharing back offices eg HR, finance and IT with other councils and partners could save a lot of money
• Customers want the human touch – they need to know the council person at the other end of the phone knows them, their area etc
• Advertising the area outside more, including abroad, might help - our selling points are affordable houses, good schools, good transport and communications and quality of life
• Satisfaction with the council needs to be increased
• The council needs much more robust press response – the newspaper often gets in wrong – we should put it right!

So, what do you think??

A busy week this week. At BIS/LGA in London on Monday - train delayed - "ice on the overhead wires in Scotland". Corporate Induction - keen new staff who will show us established people up if we aren't careful! Turner and Townsend WorkSmart progress meetings - lots of progress. several other WorkSmart meetings - still not smart about too many meetings. Leadership meeting - big things being monitored and shaped. Meeting with Audit - more monitoring. Several IT related meetings with various IT folk - none of them virtual. Full Council - and it was a full agenda too. A visit to the Registrars - escaped without a birth, marriage or a death, but with lots of information and better understanding. Good news about investment in Scunthorpe - more please. And then more WorkSmart. A busy week - but it's supposed to be, and in fact I think we all prefer work to be like that don't we? And at least it's rain falling from the sky this time and not that other stuff. The Pods swimming pool looks to be filling already!

And so it goes on.....getting to work is taking 2 to 3 times as long as usual, and things may get worse before they get better in my part of the world, but they will get better. The weather, and my current inability to predict arrival times at the office, has led me to cancel tomorrows Breakfast Briefing, but otherwise things are as usual on the whole. We are seeing a 30 year weather event at the moment they say, so its only fair to recognise that some things cant be quite as normal. Remote access to council systems is coming into its own this week, proving that our capacity to WorkSmart is perhaps already greater than we realise.

My local paper  - The York Press - has some great readers snow photos - http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/pics/galleries/snow_january10/ - And this video and item from the Scunthorpe Telegraph shows how things around here -

http://www.thisisscunthorpe.co.uk/news/Icy-blast-snow-problem-town-fights/article-1678817-detail/article.html

In a week when many councils have had some stick over gritting - in North Lincs "we have, we do, we will" as Caesar might have said - it's right to thank those who have in fact been working round the clock to keep our transport systems available. And also to remind ourselves that, with many of us focussed on finishing off things with the coming holiday period foremost in our minds, many parts of a local authority don't stop for Christmas and New Year. OK, so holiday working is accommodated in terms and conditions, and staff get time off maybe when the rest of us are at work, but all the same, thank you to those who will keep North Lincs 24/7 services going this Christmas time. And when you have your time with family and loved ones this festive season - enjoy!

The new year will be a challenging for all in the public service - that's been said before - but this time it's maybe more true than ever before? The state of national finances into the future will have a bearing on all we do. I have already made my New Year resolution - "do things differently, and do different things". If we stick together it will be ok!

Today's briefing was with a lively group from across a wide range of council services, with some new colleagues and some long term NLC people. The main talking point was WorkSmart, especially after the local paper's coverage a few weeks ago and the related councilwide message to all staff. The main points made were as follows. If you agree, disagree, or want to add something please use the comments tab. You can see previous meetings' comments by choosing "WorkSmart" from this page.

• The distribution of services and teams around council buildings is hard to understand
• Service user fears about loss of access/services needs to be calmed with good information to them and our staff soon about what is going to happen and when
• Some changes will have long lead in times - eg where legal requirements are concerned
• There is lots of duplication of the back office in particular, and too much software that doesn't talk to other systems
• Mobile IT is patchy due to mobile phone network coverage problems in parts of North Lincs
• "Hearts and Minds" is the really the big issue not buildings or IT
• Office based staff are concerned about open plan and hot desks, space for confidential meetings, and they need some reassurance
• Those at the top have to model the new ways  - do as we do, not as we say....will CMT be WorkSmarted and if not why not!?
• WorkSmart's PR needs to talk about the improvements it will enable to service users and staff a little more
• The IT service is variable and not always "customer friendly"
• There is a lot of technology out there the council could use, but doesn't eg swipe cards for system or service access
• There is too much travel between sites - sometimes because teams aren't located in a common sense way
• Teams are not together - and facilities get provided on grounds of status not need sometimes eg mobile phones
• Homeworking productivity is good - but culture needs to change to allow it
• CMT need to visit more places and talk to more staff

So - what do you think?

Well done North Lincs - another first! On Monday we had the presentation to the 4 partners (NLC, NHS North Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire Homes and Humberside Police) of the new NLTV facility available now on Sky and Virgin digital TV services. The partnership has established this service to provide a new channel for information and access to services in North Lincolnshire. It is a particular benefit to those who perhaps don't have a computer, but do have an interactive digital TV service in their homes ie Sky or Virgin in our area.

We haven't yet promoted the service to the public  to any great extent, but already more than 7000 hits have been received from around the country - and a number of people have already used it to request a service from one of the partners.

In simple terms you get interactive access to partners' information and services on your TV, in your living room, using your TV remote to pick from menus or complete forms just like texting. It's simple to use and works.

There is a web based version you can see on your PC at http://www.lookinglocal.gov.uk/LookingLocal/  - on your TV go to interactive services and enter TV key 6588.

Oh, by the way, it's the only such scheme in the Humber region, and in fact the 4 partner set up is the first in the UK. Well done North Lincolnshire - again!

We are making good progress!

In the last few weeks we have seen a number of digital development projects come to fruition including e-petitions, embedded video on our website, extension of an SMS scheme in Adult Services, new e-forms, and exciting news about DigiTv to come soon....but it's not all new. Some facilites have been around for a while.

For example, how many NLCers know about NLPrint and the Skyline service from our Digital Printing Services team? Accessed via Intralinc you can get a quote for a volume print run, selecting paper, finish, binding etc at the click of a mouse from any NLC terminal -  and send the job straight to print if you accept the quotation. "Simples!" as the meerkat says. It was news to me, but it's really efficient and easy to use.

The enthusiasm of staff across all services and at all levels to see the council be as good as it can be is really encouraging. We are already a good council to work for, and we provide good services to our local community. Together, working smarter like this, we are going to be better still.

The cycle of WorkSmart/Transformation breakfast briefings continues. It was good to meet with a very mixed group of colleagues this morning from several Services and parts of the council, including the 3^rd floor of Pittwood House – very close to home!

As before, here is a summary of some of the main comments made by those at the session – as always further comments and ideas via www.readmyday.co.uk or otherwise are very welcome.

• Our accommodation doesn’t fit the WorkSmart idea too well in every case – the culture of the team or the approach of an individual doesn’t change because the system does – “people don’t like hot desking”

• Team by team WorkSmart roll out doesn’t break the barriers down and makes it possible for old ways to go on – WorkSmart a whole building and take away  teams’ private spaces
• Electronic documents and files are key – paper is a justification for no change – paper that isn’t needed shouldn’t be kept
• Space is wasted by giving part time and job share staff their own desks and phones
• North Lincs IT infrastructure is lacking – we need more Web 2.0 technology
• One persons (a managers) need to work at home can mean others can’t
• Home broadband contracts may not allow heavy use for work purposes
• Managers will need training and development to learn how to manage a flexible working team who are out and about much more – monitoring output not presence will be hard for some
• The promotion of the area by big events– The Tour of Britain for example  - is good – but we need more of them through the year not just something huge very occasionally
• We need to reach more people and not rely on the local paper so much – the web and discussion forums could help a lot
• The areas strengths are clear – good place to live and work – but how do we promote it to visitors better?
• What do we want to promote ourselves as being?

Well what do we want to promote??