Browsed by
Tag: government

Centralised vs. Decentralised Decision Making

Centralised vs. Decentralised Decision Making

The UK Government’s failure to achieve its target of 25,000 tests per day for Covid-19 provides an excellent case study on the differences and impact of centralised vs. decentralised working and decision making. Whilst accepting there might be a problem with the sourcing of reagent chemicals for the DNA testing, according to a former director of the World Health Organisation we are not making the most of the opportunities currently available to us. Public Health England (PHE) want to control…

Read More Read More

The Lean Machine

The Lean Machine

Much has been written about ‘Lean‘, and what a ‘lean’ organisation looks like. ‘Lean’ quite simply means creating more value with fewer resources. A popular misconception is that ‘lean’ only applies to manufacturing industries, but in fact it can be applied to any business process, including within service industries. Clearly it it is a concept that should be concentrating the minds of Government and Local Government in these austere times, though whether an intelligent and disciplined approach is being made…

Read More Read More

Utilising Web 2.0 in Government and Local Government

Utilising Web 2.0 in Government and Local Government

I note that National Computing Centre has featured an article I originally produced for ITAdviser Magazine on the topic of how and why local authorities should be planning to exploit the collaborative features of Web 2.0 technologies. I’m not sure I did justice to the large and growing variety of collaborative initiatives that are underway in both local and central government, but then again it’s difficult to include everything and yet keep to a fairly tight word limit (which I…

Read More Read More

International ePaticipation and Local Democracy Symposium

International ePaticipation and Local Democracy Symposium

I will be attending (and presenting) at the International eParticipation and Local Democracy Symposium on 28/29 February. I will be joining Diane Downey (Assistant Corporate Head of ICT – Delivery, Sunderland City Council), Richard Wilson (MD of Involve) and Matt Rhodes (Head of Research, FreshNetworks) in a joint session entitled “Citizen Empowerment: Where do we begin?” Full agenda here Symposium Agenda.  I’m anticipating (nay – hoping) the session will stimulate some discussion on the apparent dichotomy between empowering citizens to…

Read More Read More