I’m taking advantage of one of the extra perks of my RSA Fellowship and drying out from a hailstorm in a warm room at their house on John Adam’s Street. I’ve spent the day on a work-exchange, just up the road in Smith Square, and having somewhere (which isn’t a major coffee shop chain) to warm up in and collect my thoughts, is pretty useful. Whilst it’s fresh in my mind I thought I’d draft a blog about my experience today.
So last June I saw an item on an NCVO e-bulletin advertising their A Day in the Life Scheme. In their own words: “it’s a free work shadowing initiative that provides a unique opportunity for staff in government and voluntary organisations to step into each other’s shoes for a day and learn about how the other sector operates.” This interested me for career development and I was given a placement at DEFRA . For me, as manager of WfCAP, it was the chance to see an organisation on another scale, and, in fact about as extreme another scale as you can get!
David Rowe, who I swapped with, is a Project Manager within DEFRA’s Information Services. They are one section of a government department which has over 10,000 staff at 120 bases across the UK. They comprise of 35 agencies and public bodies such as Natural England and the Environment Agency, and have a remit covering food, environment, farming and rural issues resulting in anything from snow to volcanic ash, from zoonotics to fishing quotas. The head office is Nobel House, a late twenties’ building in SW1, boasting wood panelling, art deco tiles and a stunning atrium café. So as you can imagine it’s a little different to Dawn and I hot-desking from someone else’s office, somewhere on a ‘90s business park on the edge of a market town in rural Wiltshire! And more to the point David’s job is vastly different also. Obviously his specialism is IT, but also in terms of operations, it’s a completely different way of working. As a project manager he is currently in charge of 16 projects, whilst also overseeing a number of colleagues’ work. His work is directed, whilst not having to account for every hour time-slot like some of his colleagues, it’s still a formal structure with detailed procedures for working through any piece of work from start to finish. And that’s what I was interested to have an insight into. It’s such a contrast to my role and the often ad hoc nature of the work we do. And of course the other major difference is the financial side. It’s basically like adding 4 zeros onto anything we have regular conversations about! Although what is similar is the year-on-year budgeting and the same current ‘unknown’ of what April will bring.
The long term project David is working on is a major change in DEFRA’s outsourcing of their IT systems, so that rather than IBM having a monopoly, they will use a number of smaller contracts, with the target of commissioning a minimum 25% SMEs. Good news for the IT industry, smaller business and the economy at large, plus the change will result in efficiencies from working directly with the providers, rather than forming a chain of profit on profit.
During the day I got to talk to various employees there and heard about their own roles. One of the most interesting was David’s co-worker who leads the Emergency Operations Centre – a room equipped with wall-mounted televisions displaying various 24-hour news channels, over-size printers for detailed mapping across the UK and the ability to ‘lock-down’ for crisis/high-security issues. He talked through the procedures, especially with severe flooding highlighting the other end of the emergency process from what is happening on the ground in communities in Wiltshire and how it links up. DEFRA have also been working with Google last year, by making their data public, Google held a Hackathon in London enabling tech industries to create Apps to aid in flood prevention.
Equally as fascinating, was to learn just a little about DEFRA’s role in the 2012 Olympics and ultimately the scale of planning behind the scenes for the whole event, issues included: horse passports and movement of livestock, algae levels in lakes used for water sports, potential flooding, smog and right back to sustainable procurement in the construction of the stadia.
We have the return visit next week and I hope David finds a day with WfCAP as useful and enjoyable a day as I found my experience. I’d definitely recommend anyone within the sector to take advantage of the scheme when it reopens for application this year.
WfCAP Blog 