Quality is king

April 23, 2008

Posted by: Richard Steel

Geoff and I met with Bob Heaton and Steve Swayne to discuss business improvement with ICT. I am convinced that the Data Quality review that's in progress, and the planned approach to data quality improvement, and "evangelising" the benefits of shared information for service efficiency, provides the basis for a sound evidential approach.

We discussed related issues, including finance, optimising use of appropriate channels and leadership/ ownership.

I have got myself into a lot of hot water in my brush with Mark Ballard and the Inquirer. The information I sent on benchmarking mistakenly included the other participating authorities (although did not match them to their scores). I have written to apologise to colleagues in the boroughs concerned.

In a meeting with Socitm's Adrian Hancock and Vicky Sargent, who manages our public relations, we had a wide-ranging discussion covering things like desk-top publishing standards, archiving of presentations, a speaker panel, the engagement diary, policy development and related member consultation, a policy library, use of web and e-publishing, and marketing to non-members.

Following Socitms's AGM on Thursday, we plan for my blog to also appear on the home page of the Socitm web-site, and this will be opened-up to the other members of the Presidential Team. I hope this will prove an effective way for Members to keep track of our activities on behalf of the Society.

In the afternoon, I was at Microsoft's new offices in Victoria, with Alan Kirkham, CIO of Wakefield (and fellow Shared Learning Group member) to be filmed being interviewed about our views, good and bad, of Microsoft for content to be shown at Microsoft's MGX (Microsoft Group Exchange) event in July.

This is Microsoft annual conference of around 10,000 staff held at a mega-dome in a US city. (I can't remember this year's location; may be Denver.) Afterwards, we went for a pint at the "Bag o' Nails".

Newsletters

Your daily injection of CW news and expert analysis: we’ll bring the news to you.