Chief Executive Blog - October 2013
Dear Colleagues,
Hello again. With summer now a distant memory, cooler temperatures, cloudy skies and wind and rain are an almost daily feature. Nevertheless, as we move into October we may yet still have some brighter weather to look forward to.
Last time I mentioned that we were having a series of twilight budget sessions with senior managers using the peer review approach. I am pleased to report that this has worked very well with some robust ideas emerging from the process. Along with this, the implementation of Welfare Reform continues to progress as does the groundwork on the integration of Health and Social Care.
This month I have attended a number of local events including the Investiture of British Empire Medal recipients hosted by the Lord-Lieutenant for Moray and Battle of Britain celebrations at RAF Lossiemouth.
I also attended the 2013 Employee Conference at Elgin Town Hall on 3rd October where over 100 employees took the opportunity to hear about the Council’s plans for the future, and how we might get there. There were some very lively and interesting debates during the discussion groups and I particularly enjoyed seeing the ‘digital stories’ from three services where employees talked about areas of good practice, ideas they had which had been implemented within the service or the introduction of technology into everyday working practices and the benefits of this. Hopefully we will expand this for next year’s Conference so get your thinking caps on now for future ‘storytellers’.
The challenge of concluding the Area Based Review work for reporting on in November is nearly complete and this precedes the more detailed work that will be required following Council approval of the proposals.
As you will know if you are a regular reader, I have been in training for the Glasgow 10k which took place at the beginning of October – I can report that I completed the route in under an hour which I am very pleased with – I wear my medal with pride! Now I need to consider what my next challenge might be ….