We don’t take well to change at HCC, although having lived though numerous re-organisations and restructurings over the last few years we ought to take it in our stride.
Despite the changes to organisational structure, we have, more or less, continued to do what we’ve always done… only in the very recent period has the department begun to operate in a more joined-up way, where the formerly impregnable service silos have opened up little doorways to allow others in and out.
One of the biggest changes we still need to address is the move to digital media. Yesterday afternoon (Thursday), I listened to, and occasionally watched the online, streamed Government 2010 Live conference, which discussed how local government can move the Digital Britain agenda forward.
Whichever government is in control after the next election, we’ll have to continue to become ‘more efficient’. Moving more of our processes to ‘customer self-service’ is the best opportunity to cope with real reductions in budgets… it’s substantially cheaper if a process doesn’t involve so much human intervention!
While most of us are quite comfortable using e-documents and using the internet, when it comes to communicating with customers, it is still appears to be paper first and web after. We are slowly changing, but some of us are moving too slowly and not looking for innovative ways to streamline or change processes via the web.
Yesterday morning at about 9.20am I drove down to the Park’n'Ride at Bar End. I parked my car and began the pleasant walk, passing the delights of the Recycling Centre, and up the steps to get the bus to Mottisfont Court.
At the top I could see the green bus at the bus stop. I broke into a gentle trot to make sure I would catch it. I was reassured that a pensioner was also heading for the bus and was about 30 seconds in front of me. The old man got on just as I passed into the area covered by the Bus divers sideview mirror. As I got to the back of the bus, he closed the doors and drove off.
It is not the first time this has happened…. if it was earlier in the day, another bus would have appeared within 5 minutes… but this time it was going to be a 20 minute wait, more or less the same as the walk in. Of course the walk is the healthy option. I arrived at Mottisfont Court, somewhat hot and sweaty but just in time for my meeting.
There are some pleasant drivers on the Park’n'Ride buses who are helpful, courteous and drive carefully. Driving off when passengers are clearly in view is not acceptable and must be done on purpose. It must be mind numbingly boring to continuously circle Winchester, but that is no excuse. I will recognise the driver the next time I see him… you have been warned!
Going into the Winchester Discovery Centre last week, I noticed that all WDC staff were uniformed. It varied between white shirts and blue polos shirts, but all were embroidered with the striking sticks logo clearly identifying them as members of staff
We all wear uniforms in a way, as the clothes we select to wear to work reflect our personal view of ourselves but also offer an outward manifestation of how we want others to perceive us.
Staff at Mottisfont Court demonstrate a wide range of dress styles and work wear, often helping to define their roles by their clothing. Even though they’re unlikely to be on the sport’s field, the “Sport” office on the first floor is a tracksuit/trainer/shorts environment, and on the floor below “Arts” are naturally more artsy in style. Staff in “Countryside” often appear in green, khaki and brown even though their day will be spent indoors in the city.
I once paid a visit to the environmentally controlled, windowless Castle basement which housed all the servers which run all our IT systems. I met two of the IT techies who keep it all operating. I was amazed to see them both dressed smartly in shirt and tie, even though they spent their whole day with inanimate machinery.
For me, the biggest fashion disaster at work must be the corporate sweatshirt, worn when staff are representing Hampshire County Council at public events. They don’t look good on anyone but look particularly dreadful when you see a senior manager with the sweatshirt over shirt and tie, suit trousers and sensible lace-up shoes.
Do you think that more of CCRAs public facing staff wear uniforms? As always add your comments and views below.
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You shouldn’t have had any trouble reading the above but if so
According to an English university study the order of letters in a word doesnt matter the only thing thats important is that the first and last letter of every word is in the correct position The rest can be jumbled and one is still able to read the text without difficulty
OK, so it’s been a couple of weeks since the first Hantsweb challenge was issued, and either you couldn’t find any websites that were as good as ours or possibly you couldn’t be bothered to look. Whatever the reason, I’m going to assume we do have the best local government cultural heritage website in the UK!
In a fair world this would mean some sort of IPP special award for the webteam, however I expect that it will just be thought that we’re doing the job that we’re paid for.
So the next challenge is in two parts
- What’s missing from our website?
This could be some important information that just isn’t there, a new topic that supports the work that we do or anything else. - Identify transactions that we do in the workplace that could also/better be done online
Such as online booking, ordering, purchasing etc
It doesn’t have to be within your area of work so look right across the CCRA website. The best ideas will go onto the ‘to-do very soon list’… so over to you!
The CCRA Family History Fair which starts on today (5 October if you are reading this on Monday) got me thinking about the topic…not about my family who I can trace back to persecuted immigrants from mainland Europe… Poland two generations back and Latvia three great grandparents ago.
I was thinking about the sitter of the portrait hanging on the wall in my home-offfice. My mother left the painting to me in her will along with a sizeable fortune… ok, the fortune is not true, especially when any estate is split amonst three additional siblings, but the painting was something I always coveted.
My mother bought it in an antique shop somewhere in Devon in the 1970s. It’s an interesting, but fairly ordinary oil painting dating, I guess, from sometime early in the 19th century.
Early in my career as a museum curator, I persuaded an art restorer colleague to clean and restore the painting, so it’s almost as good as new!
But I have no idea when the picture was painted, nor do I know who the old man is…but he will be someone’s distant relative… and that’s it… his descendants are out there somewhere, but there’s no way that they will ever be able to get to meet their ancestor!
We seem to have escaped swine flu for the time being… indeed I don’t, personally, know of anyone who has contracted the virus. However the experts tell us that from the latter part of October there will be a surge in the number of cases.
As a local authority we have set contingency plans to allow us to continue to deliver sevices even if our staff succumb to the illness. It’s more difficult where we rely on external suppliers who will be equally affected by staff absences to ensure that supplies we may need to operate get delivered.
The webteam have set in place a system which will allow us to update changes to services across a wide range of web pages throughout the CCRA website from a single source… and we have fall-back editors able to take over if we end up sick ourselves.
The authorities also appear to be expecting a significant increase in the numbers of people who fall ill with swine flu but sadly don’t survive. It will be a busy time for Coroners who are less likely to have time to investigate, in detail, the increased number of deaths… so if you want to plan the perfect murder, pick your time and make it look like it was swine flu.
Those of you you who are regular followers of the always emboldened Culture-all will have come across Hampshire Heroes … and now there is a set of “ lesser known heroes“ from Culture-all (now moved to Hampshire Biographies) , a somewhat more obscure bunch than the previous lot.
Now I must admit to only having heard of two of the people on the new list, but maybe you are aware of more than I am?
However missing from the list is Reg Presley, a real “Hampshire Hero” and certainly someone who anyone who remembers the 1960s will know. For those of you who did not experience, at first hand, one of the finest decades to be alive in the 20th century, Reg Presley was the lead singer with the Troggs… and the Troggs came from Andover!
It was rare for pop groups not to be metropolitan, and coming from deepest Hampshire was unusual… I recall the DJ on Radio Caroline saying that they came from Andover which he described as a rural backwater rather than the thriving urban centre it is today.
Some of their best work, the singles ‘Wild Thing’, ‘With A Girl Like You’, ‘I Can’t Control Myself’ and ‘Any Way That You Want Me’ were perfect for the time and latterly the Wet Wet Wet release of ‘Love is All Around’ revived interest in Presley as a songwriter…. and anyone who rhymes waitin’ with hesitatin’ gets my vote as a hero, although his funding and interest of the study of crop circle may slightly diminish his heroic status.
So who else has been left off?
There is a perception that the County Council is overstaffed by bureaucrats, and this view is often reinforced by the way we express ourselves. I’ve written recently about jargon words and phrases often used by local government staff in publications or on websites, but not understood by the public.
Writing for the web requires a more concise and basic form of writing… plain English. Indeed the style of writing web content might also make reports and publications more accessible!
Here’s is the challenge for this week. Below is a Hantsweb page about Corporate Strategy… your mission should you accept, is to rewrite this in a more user friendly way. Post your versions in the comments box. Remember the fewer words the better, and meaningful short phrases or sentences. It’s 323 words… you’ll need to reduce it by at least half! And, of course, I will also give my version in a few days time.
Corporate Strategy of Hampshire County Council
Welcome to Hampshire County Council’s Corporate Strategy. These pages set out clear improvement priorities and targets looking foward and progress and performance looking back. The site is intended to inform the public, staff, Members, partner organisations, inspectorates and central government.
These pages aim to do two main things:
Set out the Council’s priorities to address the needs and aspirations of Hampshire’s residents
Provide an annual report of the Council’s overall performance in 2007/08
Hampshire County Council is a top performing authority, rated as ‘four star’ through the CPA process by government. Our ambition is to keep it that way, while we continually improve our performance in the interests of the communities we serve.
Looking after Hampshire, our job is to ensure the county is safe and secure and to work towards enhancing the County’s quality of place. Looking out for our residents, we want to work with them to feel safe and secure and maximise their wellbeing. Our aim is to lead and work in partnership with other organisations to remove barriers and improve choices whilst encouraging people to make their own decisions on the way they access services.
Our priorities are:
- Hampshire safer and more secure for all
- Maximising wellbeing
- Enhancing our quality of place
These three priorities are designed to reflect the political vision and direction of our publicly elected councillors and give a clear statement of what the Hampshire community can expect in terms of service delivery and the focus of our work as a local authority.
The way in which we aim to work is encompassed in “Driving Success” – Hampshire County Council’s Performance Management Framework.
We measure and monitor our performance against these priorities and progress reports can be found within these pages. You can also see national performance targets and results which are used to compare our performance with other local authorities.
These pages also constitute our Best Value Performance Plan.
I’m a naturally modest and unassuming person, so it may come as a surprise to you if I say that I believe that the CCRA website is probably the biggest and the best local government website for cultural heritage in the UK.
It’s come a long way since our first pages appeared over 11 years ago. Most recently the new corporate design has allowed a good degree of creativity to make our content stand out. But with your assistance the web team have managed to create a really useful set of over 4,000 web pages.
The better the website, the better it helps our customers to make the very best use of our services.
I am not so big headed to recognise that the website is not perfect, and even if it was today, things change and it might no longer be OK tomorrow… that’s why we rely on you to help us keep it up to date with your news and information about additions or changes to services.
So here’s the ‘challenge’…
I’d like you, CCRA staff, to go out and see if you can find better local government (District or County council) websites for libraries, museums, countryside, arts, archives and all the other services we provide.
If you can, please post links to them in the comments box on this blog, explaining what you’ve found and why you think it improves on what we do on the CCRA website. Then together we can make our bit of Hantsweb even better!
If we hear nothing back from you we’ll assume we already are the best!
