I had attended the first LocalGovCamp in Birmingham in 2009, not knowing quite what to expect. I was impressed with the overwhelming enthusiasm and interest in developing creative solutions to everyday problems. The ‘grass-roots’ feel of the event made a refreshing change to the polished corporate offerings I’d grown so accustomed to. I learned a lot from attendance and subsequently presented proposals to my Chief Executive to enhance our use of social technologies, including an innovative ‘BarnsleyBUZZ’ enterprise social media pilot and an ‘Innovation Week’.

I found my use of online networks, particularly Twitter, grew quite rapidly and I connected with many interesting and innovative people who seemed to really care about local government and about making a difference to people’s lives. You could say I caught the bug. Along with a fellow village resident I’d met online, Kevin Campbell-Wright (@kevupnorth), I organised LocalGovCamp Yorkshire and Humber last year. We were really keen to move the game on and to make our unconference a little different. We had two main aims; to attract [some] senior managers and to engage with elected members. Regrettably, despite our best promotional efforts, supported by the region’s Chief Executive’s, we failed spectacularly on the first point.

The event was still judged a success and the online conversation had a social reach in excess of 35,000 people, but we failed to interest the movers and shakers, the people of real influence in local government who by and large are still living in an analogue world.

We were more successful on the second aim and ran interactive sessions for Councillors with the assistance of Carl Whistlecraft and Steven Tuck from Kirklees (@gr8governance and @steventuck) and Councillors Simon Cooke from Bradford and Tim Cheetham from Barnsley (@simonmagus and @cllrtim).

So, I attended this year’s event hoping that the pressures upon local government finances would have encouraged more senior officer participation. I’d imagined more of my peers would be searching for innovative and creative solutions to the problems we face, leaving no stone unturned so to speak. I was a little disappointed to find otherwise.

The 200 or so attendees again demonstrated that there is genuine talent within the sector and an interest in innovation that transcends the traditional 9 to 5. However, it was all too apparent that many of these people are held back, they are blocked from affecting change, from doing things differently and from doing different things. In many cases they are frustrated by their lack of influence and by local government’s resistance to change and bottom up innovation.

It seems clear to me that this needs to change. We need to be more agile, more adaptive and better able to encourage and nurture grass-roots, low cost creativity. I’m less clear on how we actually do that.

Local Government has barely acknowledged the many opportunities presented by digital and social technologies. The scale of disruptive change is not fully appreciated by some senior decision makers. Meanwhile citizens and communities are increasingly living in digitally enabled ways and their expectations do not map onto our largely 19th century models of service delivery.

LocalGovCamp left me wondering how we can translate grassroots innovation and enthusiasm into change across local government. It seems to me that will be important in shaping our future.

Kilimanjaro is the highest peak in Africa, located in northeastern Tanzania and is 19,340 feet (5,893m) high. Whilst the former volcano can be scaled without serious mountaineering skills, an ascent to the top of Africa represents a very serious challenge.

Barnsley Hospice provides care and support for hundreds of local people each year. Their main priority is to achieve the best possible quality of life for patients with a life limiting illness, whilst supporting their families, during the period of illness and bereavement.  As a specialist care provider, the range of skills offered includes, pain and symptom management, emotional support and terminal care at the end of life.

Barnsley Council has a strong history of supporting the Hospice through charitable activities, including walking events over the last couple of years.

You can read more about the trek and track our progress at www.bkct.org.uk or make a donation by credit/debit card using PayPal.

Oxfam hope the event will raise £600,000 for projects helping some of the world’s poorest people. The charity is looking to build on the success of last year’s inaugural event, which saw 664 participants – some from as far afield as Australia – raise almost £400,000 between them.

The 62-mile circular walk begins and ends in Skipton, taking in the stunning heights of Malham Edge and 2,100 ft Pen-y-Ghent as well as the rolling hills of Langstrothdale and Wharfedale. 

I find myself in serious New Year training mode, abstaining from all things grape related and dieting hard. 

The thought of attempting a challenge originally conceived as a training exercise for the Gurkhas has certainly helped focus my mind on the task ahead!

To be eligible to enter the event I need to raise a minimum of £500 for Oxfam. If you can, please visit my online fundraising page to make a donation to this very worthwhile cause.

Company sponsors should email a copy of their logo to mail@publicsectornomads.com for inclusion on this page and for front page mention in future updates on my progress.

“Finding balance and satisfaction in both professional and personal lives,” a nomad mantra for sure.

Responsiveness and accuracy are reported to be remarkable, with the multitouch feature accommodating as many fingers as you can fit on the screen. There’s pressure sensitivity too and users can even use the thing with a paintbrush. Yes, a paintbrush.

Scalable from 2.5 to 30 inches, this can do all the gestures, swipes and rotations you could want. At face value, very impressive technology. Watch the video.

My Slides are here;

  Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Twitter posts (Tweets) from the day and the parallel infosecurity sessions are aggregated here.

The day finished with a good discussion on the future of Nomad. I was very pleased to hear that delegates see a role for Nomad going forward and grateful for the kind words of support and thanks for our efforts in saving the community (phoenix from the ashes)!

We talked about plans to build a new web2.0 platform to support the Nomad community and enable groups of common interest to collaborate and share learning.

It was suggested that Nomad should also;

• Have a role in procurement to leverage value for money (including by joining up organisations developing similar solutions)
• Consider a Nomad offer to the private sector
• Act as a strong voice for the public sector including on Gov Connects
• Evidence what didn’t work (‘warts and all’ approach)
• Represent all of the public sector
• Broaden scope to include all technology enabled change (transformation),  including use of social media, development of smartphone ‘apps’ and transactional services
• Explore a low cost subscription model (tiered)
• Develop a project database to encourage and facilitate collaboration

It’s not too late to let us know your thoughts. Complete the mobile working survey, including specific questions on Nomad. Or contact us directly at mail@nomadpublicsector.com

“QA operates simply, cleanly, and quietly while still giving you a full physical presence. It allows you to see and be seen, talk and listen, and collaborate in ways and places never before possible.”

Amazing but somehow reinforces the perception of work as a place we should attend rather than an activity we can often do from different locations.

Still pretty whizzy though. I wonder if they do a ’Transformers’ version, perhaps with weaponry? Autobots or Decepticons? 

NICE have published, “Promoting mental wellbeing through productive and healthy working conditions: guidance for employers”.

 Guidance for those who have a direct or indirect role in, and responsibility for, promoting mental wellbeing at work. This includes all employers and their representatives, irrespective of the size of the business or organisation and whether they are in the public, private, or voluntary sectors. It may also be of interest to professionals working in human resources or occupational health, employees, trade union representatives and members of the public.

 Interesting comments on flexible working and the role of line managers including, “Managers’ ability to manage teams with flexible working patterns may need to be developed.”

 Nomad is increasingly being asked about leadership and management techniques.  Managing a dispersed, 21st century mobile workforce certainly requires new skills.

 This may be an area Nomad should look to explore further in the future.  

 Access the report and slides here.

Quite impressive but then again, given future congestion predictions, we’re probably going to need the car to be a [mobile] office more often!

I’m very pleased to have brokered transitional arrangements with Cambridgeshire County Council to ensure that Nomad can continue. Under new arrangements I will assume the national lead for Nomad and I’m working on proposals to develop a revised and rejuvenated programme, supporting regional groupings including Nomad Scotland.

I am particularly interested in exploring the opportunity to broaden the community to include all of the public sector.

I recently presented on local government experiences to the Department of Health and a Strategic Health Authority and was struck, for example, by the synergy and overlap between work just commencing in the NHS and our experiences in local government. The state of the public purse surely means we need to find ways of collaborating across the public sector and ‘Total Place’ may well prove to be the strategic catalyst we need here.

I also hope to take Nomad into new and emerging areas and to get closer to the leading edge of technological and social innovation.

We face challenging times and I genuinely believe that by working together we can find new and creative ways of delivering services in the future. Widespread adoption of new work styles is going to be critical to that.

The forthcoming swingeing cuts in public expenditure will mandate radical and creative thinking, including around options to deliver services across organisational and geographical boundaries. Changes of this nature will inevitably require remote access to different back offices, effective data sharing and the ability to work across these boundaries in a time efficient way. Mobile and flexible working and associated technology implementations are going to be fundamental here.

Across the wider public sector there is significant opportunity to implement new work styles. NHS community health services, for example, overlap with local authority social care services and present enormous opportunity to take a whole area approach to re-engineering service delivery. Even modest efficiency improvements in these areas could net £billions in savings and there is proven opportunity to implement mobile and flexible working solutions in these and other areas.

Nomad is well placed to support the public sector in implementing change. It seems essential that in striving to deliver efficiencies we avoid duplication of effort and take steps to ensure we share what we find works and, perhaps even more importantly, what we find doesn’t.

 I am in detailed discussions with potential partners and possible sponsors and have been working hard to put Nomad on a sustainable footing. I have also given some thought to a possible future low-cost subscription service as a means to support Nomad’s future.

I would be very interested to hear from others on how you would like to see Nomad progress. Share your views and enter a draw to win an iPod Touch by completing the short mobile working survey, designed with our friends at Public Sector Forums, accessible here.

Alternatively, post comments below or get in touch directly at mail@nomadpublicsector.com. Please let me know how you think Nomad can help support and develop 21st century public services.

The existing website at www.nomadpublicsector.com remains accessible pending replacement with a new community site, harnessing social web functionality to support a vibrant online community of Nomads.