Mining for Information

It's Good To Be Back....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 23:28:00 +0000

Almost six months since my last post. All I can say in my defence is that the twelve-hour days (including the three and a half spent driving to and from work) and the tough IT security network at work (which bans all blogs) has certainly had an effect....

Since my last post in November I have received praise for my information management initiatives; as well as the shared drive clean-up and restructure (almost complete), I have set up and implemented a centralised archiving folder structure, the aim being to capture all business-critical information for the department in a single area (traditionally this has been done within each department, so trying to track down documents used to result in having to ask six different people and then search through five different folders on the shared drive). Our project analyst has moved on to a different part of the business so we have had to train a new starter from scratch who, like me, had no knowledge of the business....

The job is good, the people are great, the commute is a nightmare. £320 of my monthly salary goes on petrol. A similar job in the City would be £5,000 more a year at least. So I am on the hunt for something either local or London-based once again. The problem I am finding, once again, is that although I have a lot of good cross-sector experience I don't have enough specialism in a particular area....

However, I do have three applications out in the fold, all in different sectors. I should hear from them all in the next two weeks, fingers crossed....

Look To The Future Now....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 23:28:00 +0000

So I had my meeting to outline my objectives for the first six months today. And I take it from the fact that I have got to develop records management, archiving and information management policies for the department and, eventually, the organisation, suggests that I am expected to stay around for a little while....

We have a team meeting next week, which is rapidly turning into he 'me' show. Not only have I go to co-present on the recent site visit I also have to stand up and give a run-through of the proposed shared drive restructure. Fun and games....

My colleague had an email today mentioning that there were spelling and grammar errors in one of our case studies. The word 'grammar' was spelt wrong in the email....

It's A Long, Long Road....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 23:27:00 +0000

Time for a work update I think. Once again I have reneged on my promise to post at least once a week but, in my defence your Honour, access is restricted to social networking and blog sites and what with the travel meaning it's more or less a twelve hour day door-to-door so it's as and when I get a spare few minutes....

So, what's been happening at work? Getting to grips with the information requests - tick. Special projects still ongoing - tick. Getting on with my colleagues - tick. I am getting positive noises from my boss and get the impression that she thinks she s very lucky to have me in the role. Now if I an just shrink my head back down to get through the door....

The company 'grab and go' information pages have been tested and agreed, and these will all go up this week. My colleague is orchestrating this - the powers of delegation! Following on from a meeting with staff in the team I revamped the proposed shared drive reorganisation report and re-sent it to my manager - it weighed in at 31 pages and took her three-quarters of an hour to wade through today. I got a great email from her thanking me for all the effort and saying what a thorough job I had done. The upshot is that it looks like we are 90% there for kicking off the project, and I have to present a proposal to the team meeting in a couple of weeks....

The Birmingham visit went ahead last Wednesday and it was very enlightening to learn more about what goes on at one of the contracts; I now have a contact that I can pester for case studies for our collection to support work on other projects. This has led me to become case study author and put together a couple of them for my Brum contact to check and approve....

I have been teaching myself Visio to do some diagrams to show alternative IT structures for the proposed archive library/database, and I have my wonderful MA professors to thank for giving me such an excellent grounding in database creation and structure all those years ago; without this, I would never be able to get my head around the whole shooting match....

Finally, I have started working on collating metadata for an image library; at the moment we have thousands of photos on the shared drive in folders that are difficult to search on; you have to go to a particular folder and browse. So I have set up an Excel spreadsheet to start recording keywords and attributes on each. At some point they will have o be moved to a database and it would be great if the metadata was already waiting. I am sure that a lot of the photos can be archived as some of the photos are virtually identical but it's the work of seconds to copy and paste to another row....

I have a progress meeting tomorrow. I am feeling quite positive about it....

They Were Neither Up Nor Down....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 23:27:00 +0000

A week or so of consolidation at work, the biggest task to date being finally getting a first draft of the shared drive reorganisation report done today - just checking a print-out for any mistakes and changes before submitting it to my manager tomorrow....

The other project to get company-focused pages up on the intranet is just waiting for the small pilot project to finish, then that will be finished by the end of the week hopefully....

And possibly off to Birmingham on Wednesday to visit one of the contracts that our company runs, to gain an insight into a different area of the business, which should be interesting....

Onwards and upwards....

We're Jammin'....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 23:26:00 +0000

About time I had a work update I suppose. It's been a bit busy and I had an interesting drive to work that involved a number of road closures and diversions but still got in early. Had a discussion with my boss who has suggested I start and finish 30 minutes earlier which may just work for the journey home....

More project work to do, as well as the day-to-day stuff. The hard copy archive report is with the management team and I am awaiting the next step on that one. I hope that it is a suitable solution to what is a very straight-forward problem.....

I finished the report on the system for populating an archive database of previous bids and contracts; the upshot is that, instead of using two systems to populate two databases we should be able to push a set of information from the one through two different 'displays' of information. There was some monies earmarked for another, now redundant project, so the hope is we can recycle it in this way. It certainly would be an excellent coup for us....

the other big chunk of work is the reorganisation of a shared drive that, at the moment, verges on anarchy. What I thought would be quite a straightforward report has now gone on to 22 A4 pages of 10 point font and I reckon I am about 75% through. Once again, this has involved going through each folder, sub-folder and document in turn to evaluate its worth in the current system and whether the current folder structure is adequate. It needs a bit of work, put it that way....

Finally, what looked on the face of it to be a one-hour job turned into an all-day quest as my colleague and I looked for a solution for re-packaging company-related links and information into a 'grab and go' style document that would enable people to fill in about 70% of pre-qualifying tender documents (the first stage for any bidding process) without having to search elsewhere for the information. In order to preserve quality and currency of the information we have we have to link to the source documents rather than re-package the actual information. We developed a way of using inline frames within a html document which involved a fair bit of tweaking, especially when we couldn't cross-reference the separate documents until we had loaded them into the live DMS....

All good fun. I'm really enjoying being back at work. Someone who has been on holiday until this week, and who I met for the first time on Monday, said that she had heard good things about me 'on the grapevine' so I guess I am making the right sort of impression.....

The Long And Winding Road....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 23:24:00 +0000

Almost two weeks in and I am slowly finding my feet in my new job....

The team is friendly and approachable, I am slowly getting used to my new boss and I have yet to see my colleague eat any lunch. And the workload is a fair size, but manageable....

I think our team has had a fair bit of extra work foisted on it because my colleague is a really good problem-solver, especially with IT equipment. So I am getting roped into setting up web conferences and meeting rooms for presentations and other stuff like that. Quite different to what I am used to but nevertheless enjoyable, and it is also getting me closer to the key people within the team.

I have already been given a host of project work to do, and have already produced two reports inside a week. One of them is to reorganise the hard copy archive store, which at the moment has a rather idiosyncratic look to it, and another is to create some 'grab and go' guides to help people find the information they need within the DMS.

I have spent most of the last two days compiling a 14-page report on the suitability of a current system to help populate an archive system that our department needs to have in order to centralise electronic archive material. This has meant systematically going through each display page and analysing each field, the data within, and whether the fields are mandatory, populated from pick lists, etc. Sounds tedious but this is just the sort of work that I love. My previous database and DMS experience is starting to come to the fore, and as I have mentioned before I am the only member of the team with information management experience.

Certainly lots of reasons to be cheerful in my work.....

A New Flame Has Come....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 23:24:00 +0000

A busy few days and a busy weekend, but thought I'd better update the interested amongst you about my first three days in my new job.

So far, so good. Quite a journey in the car (110 mile round-trip but I have already got a route that avoids some of the busiest patches) but I really like driving so that doesn't bother me.

The job itself has an awful lot of scope, and there are plenty of projects coming on stream to keep me more than a bit busy over the coming months. I think personally they have been crying out for someone with my skills and ability to steer things along as the other two people in the Information Management team don't have my more 'traditional' background and experience.

It almost feels like a consultancy role at the moment, as I am trying to get to grips with the information streams and content and trying to learn all processes and procedures. Three days in and my list of ideas and suggestions almost exactly mirrored those of my manager, and there is already talk of getting another person in and mentions of me on a long term basis. Always a good sign....

The organisation is vast, working across a number of different areas of business but basically it provides services mainly to the public sector; local government, rail, highways, etc. Our job is to support the bid teams supplying information, knowledge and related services for the tenders and pre-qualification questionnaires. Some of it is checking specific information to be supplied but a lot of it is directing people to previous best practice documents and stock answers from other bids that will prevent duplication of work.

On a day-to-day basis it is answering information requests and building up FAQ lists based on previous queries but long-term we are looking at getting core pieces of information together in single places so that we have a 'grab and go' approach to filling the forms, making it easier and quicker. There is also the need to develop an archive of previous bids so that it is easier to identify similar areas of work to support new bids - these are stored but on a shared drive, which is difficult to interrogate. And, despite there being a lot of useful information in separate areas, there is no federated search at the moment so that's another piece of work....

We also need to re-visit the people around the organisation who we support, get their ideas and information needs and see what we can do to improve the entire service. Competitive intelligence is something that's not really been tackled, and traditionally 2.0 initiatives have been restricted by IT - it might be good to get RSS feeds Incorporated and look at ways of getting cross-fertilisation of ideas from all aspects of the business; sometimes we have people in different divisions working on different bids involving the same companies but without there being any interaction between the teams, and we are already trying to grease a few wheels to get this happening.

That's kind of about it; plenty to do and, it seems, like I will be part of things long-term. Three days in and I am already starting to get a handle on things. Let's see what the next week brings.....

You Make Me Feel Brand New...

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 23:23:00 +0000

Just a very quick update to say that I am two days into the new job and so far, so good. Beginning to find my feet a little and there has been plenty to suggest that I could be here a while....

I will write in more detail tomorrow about the job and the company. There could be quite a few long-term projects on the horizon and I may be picking more than a few brains on here it regards to a number of KM and IM related topics, dear readers......

Breathe Slow, Count From One To Ten With My Eyes Closed....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 23:23:00 +0000

Forgive me if I sound a bit paranoid but after a week of not hearing anything about my new job I started to fret....

Decided yesterday I would ring to see what was happening. Unbelievably, as I reached for the phone it started to ring and it was the HR manager from the new company. Apparently the scanned copy of my passport was not of sufficient resolution for their needs - why it took a week for them to get round to this I don't know....

Anyway, it involved a trip to the local library to use their far superior scanner to email a better. All is well and, barring a massive hold-up in the postal system, I should get the paperwork through early next week.

Then it will really feel like a job.....

Girl, There's A Better Life For Me And You..

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 23:22:00 +0000

Well, I can only apologise for the two month delay since my last post. I kind of got very down what with the whole lack of job thing and I vowed that I would not post again until things improve.

Also, and it may sound extremely stupid and daft, but I felt that if I did post any updates on my job searches, I might actually put a hex on myself. The reasoning behind this was the job with the satellite company that I went for back in April/May when I got down to the last two and came mighty close to getting it. Incidentally, I still haven't heard back from the HR department for that company to say that I didn't get it. Perhaps it was just as well....

The low point for me was driving down to Southampton (a good 200-mile round trip from home) to be interviewed for an NHS post, which they then offered to me on the journey home. It wasn't an ideal position to be honest; only a 9-month contract and it was too far to commute to, so I was going to rent or stay at a B&B Sun-Thurs own there, so I would have needed the top end of the salary range. Unfortunately, their wage expectations were at the lower end of the scale (there was a 9k difference between the two) and, had I thought about it more, I would have realised that all NHS posts are offered on a grade scale, with people receiving increases within that scale every so often based on performance and experience. It was at that point that I realised I had spent £40 in petrol and half a day in time chasing what was effectively a lost cause.....

So what am I doing posting then, if it's all doom and gloom? Because, after ten months of trying, missing out, and being offered jobs that I couldn't take, I have finally been offered a job that I can accept, at a wage which is liveable. It will mean a 100-mile round trip by car every day but in actual fact is will take no longer than the commute into the City used to, by the time I had walked to and from the various stations at home and work.

The other real bonus is that, unlike the majority of vacancies I have looked at, this one has great scope for development. The company is expanding into different areas of business quite rapidly, hence the creation of this new Assistant Information Manager post to help support the bid teams as they prepare tenders for contracts. I was also told in the phone call offering me the job that a number of extra projects had been agreed so there is a ton of stuff to get my teeth into. At my second interview they were quite enthused by my ideas for developing ways of capturing competitive intelligence and for getting a standard repository of information for each separate bid, and I did come out of that interview thinking "I've got a bloody good chance here".....

My new manager, who was part of the interview team, told me that I would have to wait about three weeks to hear. It was actually six days. A bit of surprise but, discussing it with my wife afterwards, we came to the conclusion that I was the best candidate interviewed so far and perhaps they just took the next best few CVs and offered then a first interview to see how they measured up. It's all irrelevant now anyway....

I start on 30th September. I will let you know how I get on.