I quite often see buyers asking how they can make it easier and more attractive for suppliers to come and work with them. I was also reading PUBLIC’s recent report about government procurement that “Procurement continues to favour insiders and incumbents”. I’ve also recently had conversations with suppliers that some organisations appear to be closed shops to particular suppliers or groups of suppliers. This is all true. We all have biases. This gets talked about a lot in relation to recruitment, but not often in relation to procurement. We quickly form judgements about suppliers and what they’re capable of. Whether…
Leave a CommentRandom musings Posts
January January brought us Trump and wave of early protests. Proud to have joined in several of them. This was the first and biggest – the 21 January Women’s March. It was great to go with friends and my husband-to-be. Several more marches and demos followed this one. February This was a month into our healthy eating and exercise regime in advance of the June wedding. Dai ended up dropping a couple of stone. I lost quite a bit of weight and gained a lot of muscle definition thanks to twice weekly personal training sessions. March In typical Ann and…
Leave a CommentI’ve been working in central government, in various guises, for ten and a half years. It’s been quite a decade. I don’t tend to talk or write much about what I do. But today, I’ve sat down and made myself go through that career. It’s entailed: 8 roles 8 departments 3 general elections 5 administrations Tens of millions of pounds of budget managed Delivery of over 40 digital projects/services I’ve edited an multi-award winning staff magazine. Developed and operated the first cross government online community using an open source platform. I delivered same day payday loans iterations of G-cloud and…
5 CommentsI was reading Paul Sutton’s reflections on being freelance for a month and nodding vigorously. I started to write a comment and realised it was morphing into a post on it’s own. So, here are my reflections on having been freelance for almost 6 months. Freedom The sense of freedom is still strong at this point. It’s really hard to describe this feeling. Even when working a contract role which required me being in an office on a daily basis, I still had that sense of freedom. I have no boss putting expectations on me (though my own expectations as my…
Leave a CommentFor the past two years, I’ve undertaken a Goodreads’ Reading Challenge for the year. I failed in 2013, reading just 41 out of 52 books. I set the same goal for 2014, and succeeded! I was helped along the way with some graphic novel collections alternated with some epically long novels. So for 2015 I wanted to try something a little different. I’ve come up with the idea of still reading 52 books in 52 weeks, I know it is doable – especially with plenty of holidays planned for the year. So of my 52 books for 2015, 12 of…
Leave a CommentThere were four brothers: Arthur (my grandfather), Benjamin, Geoffrey and Albert. All born in Preston near Faversham, in a very poor working class family. Interestingly, having lived all over the world, I myself now live in Faversham where all this started. I know small two up/two down they lived in. I never met any of these men, but they have all had a profound effect on my life. Over the years, my father has written down parts of his family history. He is one of the only ones left now. This is what I know of his family’s history and…
Leave a CommentI’ve had a fantastic time working for dxw over the last year, but the time has come for me to move on to new challenges. I’ll be leaving dxw at the end of August. I’ve been privileged to work on over 20 great projects in the last year. A few that really stand out in my mind include the National Planning Guidance Policy Framework. From ministerial level down, everyone on the project was completely bought into agile, user needs & testing, from the very beginning. The site is now on its second iteration and providing important planning information in a digital-first way.…
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At the beginning of 2013 I joined Goodreads and joined their reading challenge. Initially I got a bit carried away and signed up to read 100 books in 52 weeks. Once I sat down and did the maths, I realised that I’d have to quit my job and live off fresh air if I was going to reach that target.
I soon snapped back to reality and set myself a slightly more realistic target of 52 books in 52 weeks, one a week. I got close, but fell short of the mark.
Leave a CommentI seem to have been talking about this topic a lot in recent weeks.
At CommsCamp13 and UKGovCamp13 I ran sessions with the lovely Simon Whitehouse on this topic.
I’ve been getting lots of questions and requests for a sort of how-to guide.
And hearing a lot of people saying things like ‘I wish there was an unconference on x’, ‘I didnt’ get a ticket to x event’. And I firmly believe the response to this is ‘okay, so organise your own.’ And Dave Briggs says so too.
Housing Camp was launched just days after CommsCamp.
So, go on. What’s stopping you?
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