I have been self-employed for the last 4 years with assignments including
interim management assignments; design and facilitation of a number of
awaydays and workshops for central government departments together with
some general management consulting.

In the last year I have concentrated on consulting work, particularly focused on the use of blogging and social media for marketing and for internal communications. The main product is Richer Records of Events which involves producing multimedia blogs of one-day conferences or seminars mixing text, still images, audio and video to quickly produce an engaging record of the day for participants and for those who weren't able to be there.

Managing the Performance Review Team in Social Services who produce performance information to help manage the service. Bringing project management discipline to the production of annual government returns and bringing performance data to life for front-line managers.

Initially, this was to gain buy-in for a Stakeholder Management Strategy and to
get work started on improving the Department’s work in this area. It coincided
though with the launch activity around the Department’s 5-year strategy and
so I was drafted into project managed the launch events and distribution
activities for the launch on 8 July.

I was interim Head of Knowledge Management for the Commission for Patient
and Public Involvement in Health from December 2003 to May 2004. The
Commission was less than one year old and this involved managing the
introduction of an entirely open web-based knowledge management system for
the Commission’s staff, partners and the 570 local patient involvement forums
as well as leading a national team of 14 Knowledge Managers responsible for
day to day management of content. My main achievement here was to take a
system that was barely working and get it widely used and to prepare the way
for the system to be opened up to the public by establishing the required
processes for Knowledge Managers.

As the Commission’s Knowledge Programme Information Manager I
helped revise the Knowledge Strategy and gain buy-in from top management.
I then led the Knowledge Programme in collaboration with external technology
partners to completely revise the Commission’s corporate intranet: merging
four existing intranets with countless micro-sites into a single site based on a
new, user-oriented information architecture and supported by a devolved
content management system. I further led the content management strand of
the re-launch of the Commission’s website while developing and implementing
an information architecture to support the building of a data warehouse and
content repository to improve data and information exchange throughout the
organisation. I have also been involved in the creation and support of
knowledge networks that bring together subject experts from all parts of the
Commission in communities of interest.
Immediately before this, I spent just over a year as the first Best Value
Inspection Service Information Manager. Pulling together my own ideas
with the findings of other analysts, I wrote an Information Strategy for this new
directorate and, while creating some simple interim systems to help inspectors,
gained support and funding for a programme of work to create ISIS, the
Inspection Service Information Store. I wrote the Request for Proposals and
helped manage the procurement process. The success of that programme laid
the foundations of the current Knowledge Programme.
From September 1996 to July 2000, I was Information Manager for the team
performing Joint Reviews of Social Services. This role included creating from
scratch and constantly improving information systems for the programme of
reviews all over the country. I managed a team that ensured that staff had the
latest available data and information about local authorities; that they used
this data effectively in their reports and that sensible archiving or disposal of
information was carried out at the end of each review. I also represented the
team on several working groups that improved the information available in
social services.
I originally joined the Commission as a Placement Student in 1994. I
supported research teams in data collection, fieldwork, analysis and
presentation and developed audit guide data tools, running workshops to train
staff in their use. I re-joined the Commission as a Research Assistant
immediately after graduating in June 1996.