Visionary Network
by Malcolm Gardner www.visionarynetwork.co.uk/
When Visionary Network launched earlier this year as an alternative to traditional seminars, We were nervous of whether it would really work. That is not quite true, we knew it would work, the format was familiar, the line-up was going to be interesting and engaging and the offering was at an affordable price. Real value-for-money, as they say in the inspection reports. We were nervous because we were unsure if council IT departments would create barriers to prevent staff from accessing the service.
We were using WebEx as the delivery mechanism. We knew that would work. It is a Cisco product and should be fairly robust and 24’s Tony Almeda , Jack Bauer and the US President were using it to prevent a biological attack by out-sourced private sector armies on the United States. So it had to be good.
As it happens we had very few problems with getting customers connected. We ran a number of trial sessions, to allow customers to play with the facilities. Some customers had to get restrictions lifted or get their IT departments involved or give approval but on the whole the trials showed that things would be ok.
This was until we got to the very first session. Paul Howarth of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and I did two rehearsal sessions. We were ready and prepared! However, on the day Paul used another machine somewhere in the bowels of the DWP. This machine was not set up for anything more than Microsoft word or a bit of minor websurfing. We learned a number of lessons that day. The first was the importance of ensuring that the speaker was comfortable with the equipment that they would be using on the day, that the equipment to be used could connect and if the DWP’s IT services were running the White House then everyone in the USA would be dead, having been killed by a bacterial bomb and 24 would have run only for seven seasons instead of eight.
Thanks to the heroic and selfless action of the editor of this magazine we were able to ensure that when Paul did manage to do his excellent presentation it was outside of the DWP’s firewalls.
Visionary Benefits Season One has worked very well. It will not replace traditional seminars but for easy and inexpensive access to important leaders in the field it has become an effective alternative and a supplement to conferences.
In the first season we heard from a range of speakers covering issues such as delivering customer care, lessons to be learned from shared services, and how the economic climate is affecting benefits and the direction of policy. The overarching theme of season one was the economic situation, governmental change and the impact on local authority services, in particular revenues and benefits.
The contributions were wide and varied and ranged from an update on welfare reform from the DWP, to maintaining customer service in a time of budget restraint presented by Sam Mickelthwaite of Rochdale Council to a view on the future of welfare benefits by Tim Horton, the Research Director of the Fabian Society. There was also a very useful contribution from Tim Saville at the Audit Commission on how councils are performing during the crisis and what key economic and service delivery issues were arising from the Commission’s inspections of Councils.
We still have one session to go to complete season one which will focus on business efficiency applied to revenues and benefits.
Season two of the Visionary Benefits Network is being prepared to start in September 2010 and we have some exciting speakers lined up – the current programme for Season 2 is shown below. The overall theme will be service delivery under the Collation. This season is being sponsored by Team Netsol, who you probably know from their Becs product.
Team Netsol are pretty committed to what we are trying to do with Visionary. We are also about to launch our Visionary Counter-Fraud Season and in Autumn, A Visionary Crime and Disorder season.
SO what are we trying to do? Visionary is being targeted at those who care and are passionate about their profession. It is to share more than just good practice but good thinking too. To stimulate debate and ideas and to influence policy and strategy. These are big goals but we are living in a changing world where progressive thinking and liberalism are merging with conservative goals. This is creating new politics and new strategies. Some of it will be good and some of it will not. The three main poltical parties are undergoing a radical change and the Greens have a place at the table. These are exciting time. A time for Visions.