My time in the public sector

My time in the public sector

Being in the IT industry one hears stories about incompetence in the public sector, but I can assure you, none of them measure up to actually how incompetent the public sector really is.

I recently completed a short contract for the NHS and spent my time working with the board of the trustees, the IT department and the department of Information. It was quite shocking how the staff at all levels of the organisation are primarily concerned with passing the buck and making life harder for others because of some petty gripe for procedure.

I sat in a meeting where one of the managers actually asked the team how he could make life harder for other members of staff who had not followed his protocols. Other members openly discussed innovative new ways of saying no to genuine requests for support.

The board itself, stated they didn’t care if what we were doing made life harder for staff, they just wanted the project done because they had inadvertently promised it to someone else.

We even had one example where a six month project, that produced nothing, was supposed to have produced a whole new set of reports. These reports it turns out were already being generated by other members of the manager’s team and the project that went wrong would only have duplicated work if it had actually worked.

The upshot is millions of pounds of tax payers money wasted on nothing.

It seems the NHS is being held together by a minority of very hard working people carrying the buck for the majority. These key individuals are not recognised for their hard work and incompetent members of staff are promoted over them. HR recommended about one employee who consistently failed to do what was asked of him, was lazy in his work and did not have the right skills to complete tasks assigned to him despite numerous training courses, to promote him up the ladder until he could not achieve his job. Surely this must be illegal?

My opinion of the NHS has swung back to privatisation. When I hear both parties calling for more funding for the NHS, I shriek in horror, as it is just more money wasted. The only way to save the NHS is to sack the whole lot of them and start again.

 

Next steps on the journey

 

For some time I have been deliberating about the next course of action. The last post relating to this was written on April 5th entitled ‘Exposing a larger surface area to increase opportunities‘.

 

I have managed to secure a basic I.T. contract working in the client’s office that allows me to pay the bills. This contract is a junior position and hence does not require me to be responsible other than to do the work at hand. The hours are 8am until 4pm which allows me to get back to me office before the working day ends. The money suits the position and wont get me rich but it does provide me a ’status quo’ on the cash flow situation enabled me not to slide into debt.

 

Now that outgoings are covered. I am focusing on winning business and building the company by following up on prospects that did not come to fruition due to the recession. I have noticed that since April the number of inquiries and opportunities have risen and I expect my company will have enough business for me to work full time on it very soon.

 

I am working on a proposal for a very large company at the moment and if that works out, we will be back in business.

 

I have been trading using a demo or practice account (see previous post). My trades are winning and losing and I have been bouncing around my start capitol so far. So no where near making a living from trading.

 

I am learning a lot about economics at the moment in particular about supply and demand and the maths behind the market. I can already see this shaping the way I think about the business world and changing the way I make decisions. I’ll write about this in a separate  post.

 

So all in all, I have covered the downside, working on the upside and making sure I am exploring opportunities and learning.

 

Life is good.

 

Exposing a larger surface area to increase opportunities

 

I was thinking about opportunities and how they arise in the bath last night and just like Archimedes in a similar situation over 2000 years ago, had a Eureka moment.

 

Opportunities are always there. It is a matter of seeing them. So how to see more opportunity. This was the question playing on my mind.

 

I deal a lot with writing secure web applications (when work is around!) and the key thing about security is to reduce the amount of what is a termed as ’surface area’. This is the amount of interfaces, or aspects of the program available for people to look at and potentially attack. By reducing the surface area, you are reducing the points vulnerable to attack.

 

The exact opposite is required when looking for opportunity. One must open up your ’surface area’ or entrepreneurial activities to ‘catch’ opportunities as they arise. This is akin to expanding one’s awareness.

 

I have reviewed my ’surface area’ in terms of points at which aspects of my life are open to making money. These are points such as running a business or trading. There are also ideas I have to make money, such as a video commerce idea and affiliate selling online. All of these concepts or actual activities are areas where I am open mentally to making money.

 

By taking all of the ideas and putting a very small amount of effort in to increase their potential in the market place, making people aware of them, I am increasing my surface area and potential for spotting opportunity.

 

I am now working out a plan to sew the seeds of some of these ideas and see if any opportunities come back.