Recently I went to a musical performance by the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. My seat was in the choir seats behind the orchestra and I was right in the middle so I was directly opposite the conductor and therefore able to see exactly what he was doing in leading the team…
Deja Vu All Over Again
I am personally inspired by the folk who are driving forward the LG “”Digital”” agenda in multiple ways, through events, blogs, tireless work and at significant personal cost in terms of time, and, um … cost. From several local gov camps and similar, and much tweetage there seem to be a whole set of recurring…
Councils in 2043 – the Next Thousand Words
I was delighted to be asked recently to contribute a piece to LGiU’s 30 birthday celebration work, an imaginative idea that asks 30 people to project what councils may be like in thirty years’ time in 2043. The post is here: http://www.lgiu.org.uk/30birthday-jonathan-flowers/ and is an imagined conversation between two un-named individuals at a mono-bus stop! In writing…
What became of the broken hearted?
There was a really good session at the Public Sector Launchpad (#pslaunchpad) last night (5th November 2013) and this blog is about one tiny offshoot of one of the conversations. The conversation was about resistance to change in organisations. A young and enthusiastic local government worker was discussing the difficulties of getting a long-term workforce to…
What sort of “no chief executive” are you?
This article was first published in LGC The growing diversity of local authorities in their local situations makes it very difficult to generalize about local government. Some are tempted to say that “all councils should always have a chief executive come what may”. This is quite interesting – clearly there are a number of local…
Recruiting for Commercialism
This article, which appeared under the name of myself and Veredus colleague Evelyn Dougherty, was first published in the MJ As we travel around the country visiting a diverse range of local authorities it is clear that “commercialism” is on the rise. We are often asked about the practicalities and pitfalls of recruiting people with…
#UKGC13 – Notes on Session re Big and Small Companies Innovating Together
At UK Gov Camp 13 I pitched the idea of a session about “How Big and Small Companies could Innovate Effectively together”; about 20 people came along and whilst I think it’s fair to say that we did little other than scratch the surface of the subject I undertook to record key points that did…
The CIO at the Top Table?
(originally published as a Veredus blog here ) In an article this week on Government Computing I drew out some points that had emerged at the Socitm Conference in 2012 with conclusions for 2013. In particular I mentioned that: “The role of the IT profession within local authorities’ wider change agenda got some attention. Many of the people…
Four Futures of Local Government
My Guardian Professional, Local Government Network, piece about Four Futures for Local Government is here, and the more detailed paper can be downloaded from here.
#Socitm2012
This blog first appeared here and here. This was my first Socitm conference but far from being my first conference of the year, and as I encountered the Socitm crowd for the first time it was interesting to spot the similarities and differences with other events, summits and conferences I’ve been to recently. Anything I…
Building a Platform for Evidence Use in Local Government
This blog was originally published on Demsoc’s Open Policy Blog. I attended the “Informed Future” workstream at the 2012 Solace Summit, and whilst I won’t try to give a blow-by-blow account I want to share here some of the key things which emerged, for me. There is a lot of hard work at many levels required before Local Government…
Reflections on the Solace Summit 2012
This is a slightly modified version of the blog originally published at localgovernmentmatters. As with last year’s summit a formal communiqué will be issued so I will take some space here to talk about the mood of the meeting and offer a personal perspective, rather than trying to be comprehensive. The bulk of the work…
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