Category: Work

Left, Staying, TBD

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In Nov 2015 I wrote Leaving, Moving, Staying to tell folk that I’d soon be leaving Dstl, moving to London and (hopefully) staying in the #OfTheGovernment community (HT Jason Caplin for his phoenix moment blog post).

After a break and some freelancing I rejoined the Civil Service in July 2017 to do A Regular Job in the CO. This was to lead the Better Information for Better Government (BI4BG) programme – trying to start transforming how government manages and uses information. 

After two shifts of job title and business unit over four years, and a roller coaster of ups and downs, I ended up as Head of Knowledge, Information and Records Management for central government in April 2021. And it’s that job that I left, after much reflection, at the end of last September.

I’m staying in London. And I’m taking some time to reflect on my experiences in and around government. What’s next for me is still TBD (to be determined).

Part of that taking time involves giving myself some space, so I’m not going to be at UKGovCamp today. I’m sorry not to be there – GovCamps and the events they’ve inspired have been regular highlights in my last decade of work. I hope that the lovely organisers and participants have a great day.

Camping (and #camping) again

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Two years ago I wrote a post called On camping… and #camping contrasting the familiarity of holidays under canvas with the novelty of my first gov/tech unconference experience at UKGovCamp15.  Sitting in a tent near the Wye valley in Herefordshire (in a camp site that has a “quiet field” and a “very quiet field”) it feels like time for an update.

We didn’t get the tent out last Summer as much of our time was taken up “getting our house rental-ready”, which turned out to be harder and more time consuming than I’d imagined when I wrote that phrase in Leaving, Moving, Staying. Read More »

Helping Civil Servants help Citizens

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Ed Vaizey MP, Minister for the Digital Economy, is leading the call for suggestions from public and industry on the UK’s Digital Strategy.  He sets out 4 key ingredients for success, the second of which, under the heading Transforming Government, states:

“…government services need to be as good as the best consumer services. My colleague Matt Hancock is bringing renewed energy to this agenda, driving a transformation to create what he calls a ‘smartphone state’. Renewing your passport should be as easy as buying a book online, so what more can we do to make sure interacting with government is as simple and seamless as possible?”

I support the aspiration to make interacting with government as simple and seamless as possible, but as a Civil Servant I also believe there is a strong case for making interaction within government equally slick. Read More »

Leaving, Moving, Staying

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Just over 7 years ago I hung up my Royal Navy uniform and became a civil servant working for Dstl (the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory).  It’s been a challenging and hugely rewarding time.  I started in the geospatial intelligence team, working on a variety of research projects as technical lead or project manager (occasionally both).  Working with some great colleagues I was able to play the lead role in establishing MOD’s spatial data infrastructure – a technical coherence framework that formed the basis for a major investment in the Defence Geospatial Services programme.

An internal secondment led to a new job in the CIO’s team Read More »