The Professionals...

...government IT professionals. Following on from my blog posts last week on mentoring and how good mentoring can only improve your professionalism, the theme for this week's blog posts is Government IT Professionalism.

On Thursday 27 January 2011, the Home Office Government IT Profession facilitated a Focus Session entitled "Government IT Profession as a Key Resource" by Kate Silver, Deputy Director of the Government IT Profession. The Government IT Profession is a team in the Cabinet Office responsible for leading government IT as a profession. Kate was keen to stress at the outset of the session that the "key resource" is not the Government IT Profession team themselves but the people who are IT professionals in government.

So, dear Reader, what is driving the government it profession and makes that resource so key in the first place? Well, there is a strong push in the current climate to achieve "Better for Less". Not more, better. There is also the need for transparency and open information management. And finally I should mention that good government IT professionals are key to putting pressure on suppliers in order for government to deliver better for less and be as transparent as possible.

Supplier pressure has seen 800m pounds shaved off contracts already. This is principly achieved by leveraging Crown buying power, delivering shared services in a more service oriented way, such as G-Cloud, and reducing reliance on external resource; consultants/contractors/interims.

Reliance on external resource has been brought before parliamentary committees by Sir Gus O'Donnell and Ian Watmore. 1bn pounds was spent on consultants/contractors/interims in the financisal year 2009/10. 60% of that, up from 50% the previous year, was spent on IT and Project and Programme Management (PPM). 4 out of every 10 pounds in the Home Office is spent on IT and PPM. So, dear Reader, you can see the importance of good government IT professionals as a key resource.

There are 7 government professions; IT, HR, PPM, Procurement, Comms, Analysts (statisticians and economists), and Knowledge & Information Management (KIM). Each of these are important in there own fields but you can see the importance of a strong government IT profession. It is possible to change profession in your career or even be dual profession.

If the government IT profession is a key resource then what is being done to make it as strong as possible?
The Government IT Profession, centrally from within the Cabinet Office, provides government IT professionals with a toolkit to enable them to progress and strengthen their career. This toolkit consts of; Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), qualifications framework, role profiles, redeployment service, knowledge bank, job space. In addition, the team are also responsible for the Technology in Business Fast Stream (TiB).

SFIA helps us to map out the skills we have and the skills we need and the qualifications framework helps to accredited those skills gained from professional experience. These both feed into the role profiles that describe the ideal model for staff to fulfil a position appropriately.

Once government has ideally skilled and qualified staff in the appropriate roles, then we need to ensure that this expertise is shared across and held within government. This is where the redeployment service, knoweldge bank, and job space come in. These are hosted on the Government IT Profession website http://it.civilservice.gov.uk

Government needs a strong resource of IT professionals and the Government IT Profession has provided a toolkit to enable those professionals to strengthen their careers. So what can government IT professionals do to help? What can we do to put ourselves in a position to go forward?

Firstly, know your skillset from:
- your current role
- your previous roles
- where these fit to SFIA
- your 10 strongest skills

Secondly, know your core competencies that can be evidenced from actiivities outside work or previous work.

Finally, take responsibility for your career. Know your current situation, the opportunities and threats. Keep your head up - do some horizon scanning and see where the business is going - sign up for Computer Weekly, it's FREE!. Invest now in your future career - don't expect to stay in the same department.

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Ask yourself a question...

While I am on the subject of mentoring, here are a few choice questions and techniques for you to take a look at your situation and progress your career.

What do you want people to say about you?
What do you not want people to say about you?

meetings with your mentor; first inrtoductions, second boundary setting, third objective setting (what do you both want from the relationship), fourth initial feedback.

Do a career decision tree
Work backwards from a possible and desirable future. Hypothesise; future, present, past - especially if you are unhappy with your current situation.
Reflect on not just why you went to your new job but also why you left your old job. This will stop you being confined by what you may have perceived at the time as one-way gates.

Who is your ideal mentor?
Who can you grow with, develop with, understand and relate to?

What do you want to get from your mentor?
Once you have identified the answer to this question, let your mentor know what you want to achieve.

Can you get everything you need from just one person?
Multiple mentors can be useful.
It is IMPORTANT that your mentors are in a position to observe you.

Should your coach or mentor be male or female?
What is stopping you from contacting them right now?


Find yourself a mentor, establish how you want to present yourself, develop your emotional intelligence, build relationships, build networks, do a career decision tree.

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The Importance of Being Mentored

At the Home Office they have allocated all of the Technology in Business Fast Streamers a mentor each. Six months ago I didn't appreciate the significance of this and today, dear Reader, I was clearly shown the reason why it is important to have a mentor, especially in the early stages of your career.

I was approached by my professional development manager, who asked me if I would like a mentor. I immediately jumped at the chance because I had been hunting for a mentor. I needed an insight into the advanced levels of my career and knew that a mentor could help show me more.

There is a big difference between Coaching and Mentoring, which I found out at an IntellectUK event on Wednesday 8 December 2010 with Jackie Elliott and Marina McGoldrick. Coaching is goal driven, whereas Mentoring should be mututally beneficial for both the mentor and the mentee. Mentoring is an open engagement that is usually industry, knowledge or skills specific and is relationship focused as opposed to being focused on outcomes of the relationship. This is where I have been extremely lucky. Purely by chance I met a manager who gave me some small tasks to do on the side of my main work. I was happy to help out and she seemed pleased with the first drafts of my work. When I was approached to become a mentee, I was really pleased when I was told that my mentor would be that enthusiastic manager.

Now, dear Reader, people who look for coaching are already confident & successful even before they are coached. Coaching is not remedial but accesses your strengths and develops self-awareness. However, mentoring is a soundboard for your reputation.

My first meeting with my mentor was focused on introductions and boundary setting for the relationship. What we could say to each other, what we couldn't disclose outside the relationship. What I could expect from and what I could offer to my mentor.

A mentoring relationship is heavily reliant upon the power of connections, business connections and personal connections. I am able to offer my mentor contacts and information from my network that she may not have direct access to and my mentor can offer me feedback.

Feedback is important because you MUST connect with people on a deeper level than just simple contact engagement. Just trading business cards or email addresses is not enough. You need to be able to open-up and be able to show your vulnerability, not just pay lip service to your mentor, your team, your colleagues.

The most recent meeting with my mentor has been an eye opener that I was not totally prepared for. We had built up a relatively firm relationship over four months or so. She had never been my line manager over that time but we had met up at work before and after the New Year in between our busy schedules.

So, after the IntellectUK Young Professionals Network event, "Mentoring and Coaching - why all the fuss?", and also a WIG Graduate Network event in January, I asked my mentor for feedback and I was instead given a double-edged question: What do you want people to think of you? What do you not want people to say about you?

It made me look at myself in a different way, through the eyes of my team and colleagues. Why is that important, dear Reader? Without fully appreciating how my team sees me, I can lose their respect for me. The team falters as a result and the project is less successful.

And that, dear Reader; is what happened to me today. I asked a team manager on my project what I thought to be a minor question. It must have been the way I said it or the timing but it was not received very well. I asked why we were doing something; why we were releasing something in a certain way. The question annoyed the team manager, who was clearly busy, and she told me as much.

This is the importance of being mentored. I considered how the team would see me as I reacted to this situation. I could feel adrenaline pounding through me has my pulse started to rise. I was ready to fight my point but knew that to "flip my lid" and let my brain become overloaded would be a very unprofessional thing to do.

I identified the emotion, gave it a name; anger. I calmed down and re-assessed the situation.

I don't want to be seen as hot-headed and unapproachable. I don't want to be seen as emotional and irrational. For a moment, while I tried to explain myself differently but failed, I lost the respect of my team. I could feel it. But I did not lose my cool.

You may not be able to see this connection, dear Reader. It did all happen in a flash and I did not pass the team feedback forms after the event to see how they matched up to my ideal model that I would like to present to my mentor.

Somehow pieces of the relationship that I have with my mentor and the lessons I am learning through professional seminars after work are making their way into my professional day and that for me, dear Reader, is The Importance Of Being Mentored.

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StorageOptions Scroll - review of an Android tablet

The surprise present this Christmas was an Android tablet, StorageOptions (SO) Scroll tablet PC. Here's a review if you have been considering one of these.

The SO Scroll is a 7" tablet with a touch screen that runs the Android operating system. It is a convenient size, about the same size as a diary, which is very unobtrusive. I've already used it as a handy cocktail recipe reference. It was just as convenient as a hardcopy cocktail recipe book and did not get in the way like a laptop might.

The desire for an unlimited cocktail recipe reference that can be dynamically updated online was, dear Reader, not actually the main reason for my brother to get me a tablet PC this Christmas. It was a quick conversation that we had when I mentioned that I had 5 hours of spare time per day on my train commute to and from work when I could be doing something productive, like writing blog posts.

Besides making better use of my time, I also need to communicate better with friends and colleagues. My mobile handset uses a Symbian UIQ operating system and I have not found any good Twitter or Facebook clients for it. This has caused me to miss last minute messages with details to meet up with friends.

Missing these sorts of messages prevents me from targeting influencers with engaging assets to access platforms for conversation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUNntV8jdqM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

How does the SO Scroll match up to these needs, I hear you ask, dear Reader? Does it enable me to recover my brand reach through dynamic reactive organic engagement?

It has five key disadvantages that I have found over the last 3 days
1. Wifi only
The SO Scroll is wi-fi only so you can only access the Internet and run those all important Twitter and Facebook clients when you are at a wi-fi hotspot. More expensive tablet PCs (iPad or Samsung Tab) can access the Internet over a 3G mobile connection.

2. Resistive touch screen, rather than capacitive
The SO Scroll has a touch screen (YES! Love touch screens. So useful when you have a mouse and sometimes handy even when you do) that uses resitive, rather than capacitive. Resistive means you have to push on it pretty decisively. This is the same tech used on my Sony Ericsson w960 mobile phone that can be a frustration sometimes. More expensive touch screens use capactive tech, like on the iPhone, that can support multi-touch pinch zoom etc.

3. No Java support
The SO Scroll has no Java support so some software and websites will not operate as they were designed.

4. Android 2.1, unupgradable, so no Flash support
The SO Scroll runs the 2.1 version of Android that does not fully support Flash. This means that you won't be able to use it to play the miriad of free online Flash games. The SO Scroll website FAQ makes it clear that it will not be possible to upgrade it to v2.2 Android. I must be very clear about Flash support. The packaging states Flash as a feature but I think this is only for FLV movies played from memory. Several websites that use Flash (such as BBC News) do not open correctly on the SO Scroll.

5. 800Mhz ARM11 processor
The SO Scroll uses an 800Mhz processor, which is a similar speed to the CPU that can be found in the Sony Ericsson Xperia x10 Mini. This means that it can be a little unresponsive when running a Twitter client, Facebook client, Yahoo client, Last.fm client streaming music, Blogger client, and web browser.

Having highlighted these cons, I have to say that the SO Scroll is impressive for an Android tablet available at under 150 pounds.

The SO Scroll can stream music online from Last.fm and write a blog post while running Twitter and Yahoo clients and receiving alerts. That stretches it and it crashes a few times but it can still be done.

The touch screen can be annoying, like any resistive touch screen. However, I cannot stand typing on touch screens and StorageOptions has a leather-look case cover accessory that has a keyboard, which uses the mini-USB on the Scroll. This is a really big advantage for the Scroll, in my opinion. The keyboard case makes the Scroll soooo easy to use!

Here are six good advantages
1. Photo and video camera
The SO Scroll comes with a camera for photos and video. This should be suitable as a QR Reader and also for some low quality video blogging on YouTube but I have not had chance to test it for that yet.

2. Long battery life
The SO Scroll has an impressive battery life that lasts at least 4 hours with several clients running simultaneously.

3. Headphone jack
The 3.5mm jack on the SO Scroll really makes it useful as an MP3 player.

4. Nice design
The SO Scroll is a very convenient size and good-looking design with good, intuitive hard buttons. It is easy to see it as a replacement for a diary and also as a digital photoframe.

5. Plenty of memory
The SO Scroll has 2Gb memory built-in plus microSD card slot expandable to 32Gb that is more than adequate for my music collection.

6. Responsive accelerometer
The SO Scroll responds quickly when it is rotated. I recently had a chance to try the latest Symbian 3 mobile handset, Nokia N9, and I am more impressed with the SO Scroll in this respect.

In conclusion, the StorageOptions Scroll is impressive for an Android tablet PC available at under 150 pounds but it is wi-fi only, has no Java support, and is only Android 2.1 that cannot fully support Flash plug-ins for webpages.

I have yet to try transfering videos and music from my PC onto the SO Scroll. I'm hoping it is simple but I'll update you, dear Reader, on how successful it is in due course.

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pushing the envelope

Compared to last year, this Christmas sees a number of changes for me, both professional and personal, which necessitate me to "push the envelope".

At the moment at work we are being asked to provide better for less; better services and efficiency improvements whilst still delivering over 20% spending cuts. This makes us go to the limits of what is technologically and physically possible - pushing the envelope.

Technologically we are getting the most out of what we have and sharing services where appropriate, which is a slight departure from what I was doing at my previous job last year before the cuts, where we were delivering service improvements and business change but not always sharing services.

My job as a Technology in Business Fast Streamer is pushing the envelope for me physically. This Christmas I need to do coursework, revise for an exam, write an essay, and read technical material. The coursework is for the Postgraduate Certificate in I.T. Professional Practice through the Open University that is part of professional development at work. The exam is for PRINCE2 Practictioner certification that is also part of professional development at work. The essay and reading material are for projects that I'm involved with professionally. Fitting it all in will be a physical challenge for me, which is totally different compared to last year when I had a clear break from thinking about work.

So, dear Reader, how am I pushing the limits of what is technologically and physically possible in my personal lifestyle, I hear you ask? Well, last year I had a 25 minute walk to work in the morning. Now I am getting used to a two and a half hour commute, door-to-door, each way every weekday.

This is pushing the limit of what is physically possible for me. I am torn between working in London and living in my beachfront appartment. So, dear Reader, alas I must move to the Big Smoke because I would like to spend more time with friends and less time in a relationship with British Rail.

What is the technological limit for me personally? My PC at home is 8 years old and showing signs of strain as the minimum requirement of modern technology (not even the latest, state-of-the-art technology) passes beyond the capabilities of my ShuttlePC still running XP.

Meanwhile my mobile phone is over two years old. There have been a number of significant improvements to phone technology over that time. Where the need for always-on Internet connection in your contract and 3G connectivity was rare, it is now a commonplace necessity. Hand in hand with unlimited mobile Internet, social networking now also pervades mobile devices.

For one reason and another I have not upgraded my handset. I am still using a Sony Ericsson w960 with a Symbian UIQ3 operating system. All mobile operating systems (Apple, Android, Palm, and the latest Symbian operating system) all have App stores. There are some apps for UIQ but unfortunately the latest apps are not being developed on that platform.

This means that my mobile handset is showing the signs of strain as I push it to its technological limit before it crashes; run a Blogger client, download emails, surf the web, upload photos onto Flickr and Tumblr, check Facebook and Twitter to keep up with friends and colleagues.

To push the envelope I had two solutions in mind; to upgrade to a Sony Ericsson Xperia x10 Mini Pro android mobile handset (250 pounds), or to splash out on a Sony Vaio z13 in carbon fibre (2500 pounds). However, it seems my brother and father may have found a middle option... StorageOption Scroll. Expect a review coming very soon...

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Close up with the 9 o'clock Tar Barrel in the square at Ottery St Mary 2010

I visited my cousin in Devon and we watched the Tar Barrels in Ottery St Mary. Here is a video of the 9 o'clock Tar Barrel 2010.

better connected

Being as prolific on the Web as I am, it makes sense for me to type something once and for it to be syndicated everywhere. For example, I use Twitter as a single port of call to quickly update my status across a number of networks; Facebook, MySpace, YahooPulse, ICQ, and Tumblr

I am not going to try to convince you to use Twitter, dear Reader. I am going to tell you how you can make your online time more efficient by being better connected. You may be reading this note on Facebook but that is not where I wrote it. It is actually imported automatically from my blog. Simples.

I never really understood the use of this until Vodafone told me that I could tweet by text for free (to begin with). It was great because I didn't have unlimited fast Internet access on my mobile. That's how it started. I wanted to update my Facebook status because most of my friends are spread far and wide and I don't get to see them often. I was already sending mass texts to try to organise new year's parties etc, and as Facebook became more popular so it made sense for me to use it instead of texting. I connected my Twitter account to Facebook and this enabled me to send out quick news to a wider audience quickly and easily from anywhere. I asked a friend how he did it and I in turn have passed this on to another mate. So if you want to link Twitter to Facebook then check out the easy tutorial.
http://www.ajvaynerchuk.com/how-to-link-twitter-to-facebook-a-twitter-tutorial-3/

You can link a lot more things to each other. A friend of mine recently posted a youtube video to his Facebook wall. Go to YouTube, watch a funny video, then press the share button, choose Facebook, wait for the share window to open, choose a thumbnail, press share again...

so many clicks! and why must a share it to just Facebook? I have old friends on Bebo, American friends on MySpace, and industry friends on Twitter. I want to share it with all of them. I also want to share the music that I listen to and the photos that I take with all my mates, not necessarily only with the ones in a single network. I can only do all of this quickly and easily because I have authorised their official website applications to my Facebook wall and, dear Reader, you can too.

Check out the apps you have already authorised on Facebook. Here are some official ones...
Bebo
FriendFeed
Last.fm
LinkedIn
Tumblr
Twitter

Other than their Facebook app, there are a number of websites that allow you to connect your account with them to Facebook. Some of these include
I Move You account settings
ICQ Edit Profile - Settings - Feeds Settings
YahooPulse Settings - Manage my linked accounts
YouTube Account Settings - Activity Sharing
Disqus settings - connections
Digg settings - connections
Tumblr Account - preferences
MySpace Account - sync

So what are you thoughts? Is it a good idea to authorise website apps to access your account and post things for you automatically? Does it save time and effort having things connected automatically? Do you feel it is a risk opening your info to third party software agents that you do not know what they are doing? Or is it just dangerous... you accidentally share a video from YouTube that your boss sees from your Twitter feed but you really really should only have shared the video with your best friends? (but this cannot really happen if you have your settings right, especially with Flickr photo security - top notch)