On My Transformation from Social Worker to Public Servant

I read somewhere that the (median) average age of entry into the Canadian federal public service is 34 years old.  That fits me reasonably well; this is my second career.  For my first 10 years of "professional" employment I was a social worker, and my speciality was child and adolescent mental health.  It was the most valuable contribution I'd ever made to society, and it was with palpable trepidation that I realized that I couldn't do it anymore.

Social work can be the shortest career of a person's life.  I've known people that lasted less time in the field than it took to earn the degree to get them there.  To say it's a hard job is a grievous understatement.  It's frequently misunderstood — even feared and hated.  It's societally undervalued, emotionally draining, and woefully underpaid.

I'm ashamed to admit that it was the last of these which finally forced me to take down my shingle.  Decisions I'd made to improve my own life — marriage, children, a home of my own — made it an impossible wage to live on.  But where to go?  Well, if you read my previous piece, you'll know that life led me back to university, then into the government, despite it being the last place I expected to work.

Read more »

Posted in: career,Government of Canada,On...,personal brand,public service,social work,structuralism

Embracing Serendipity

I came to work for the Government by accident, or so it would seem.

Failure to earn a livable wage as a social worker with a growing family was what drove me from full-time employment and part-time Master's courses (whenever I could balance them), and into full-time education and voluntary unemployment.  Leaving employment had obvious repercussions, but the coursework was not as hard as I feared; a decade of experience in the field gave me a wealth of perspective which was not too difficult to reconcile with academic theory.  And in the instances where theory did conflict with real-world practice, my academic papers were even more interesting.

As with my BSW, a field placement was just part of the requirement; practical experience to balance academic learning.  While I acknowledge the value and necessity of this component, for me it was an afterthought.  I knew I could easily slip into a counselling role at some social services agency and pass the course, but that seemed ... well, almost like cheating.  Certainly much too easy.  What was the point in using the placement to demonstrate skills I already had? But then, doing so would certainly free up my mind to concentrate on other pressing things...

Read more »

Posted in: career,Government of Canada,public service,social work,WebX.x

Why Wiki Isn't New to Government

In government, where change is recurring and often stressful to the employees affected, Web 2.0 can be a tough sell. One of the biggest hurdles in implementing technology in the workplace is not resistance to technology per se, but the cultural shift that the new software represents.  But when a technology is introduced which replicates an existing work process in a more efficient way, is it really "new"? 

When I joined the public service I often heard it said, "In Government, everyone is an editor."  For recent graduates — or others just accustomed to the experience of creating polished work and having it accepted verbatim and with full attribution — this is a warning about the process of government.

Read more »

Posted in: GCPEDIA,government,Government of Canada,WebX.x,wiki

The Thousand Tiny Knives

In privacy management, it's the major data breaches that grab the big headlines.  In personal brand management, it's the high profile embarrassments resulting from carelessness, ignorance and poor judgment that capture public attention.  Janine Krieber, Nathalie Blanchard, Stephen Fry, Tiger Woods... who'll be next?  Not you, certainly.

For most of us, risks to our privacy and reputation aren't a significant danger, provided that we do a reasonable job of managing ourselves.  Managing user profiles is relatively easy, provided that we treat anything posted on or transmitted through the Internet as public, even if it's shielded behind passwords and privacy controls.  Unless we can positively guarantee the fidelity of each person who views our personal information, each software and security measure that stores and safeguards our information, and each legal jurisdiction where our information exists, there's no certain means of protecting and containing data that we choose to share with others.

Read more »

Posted in: career,personal brand,privacy

MythTV - The Do-It-Yourself DVR

My television watching has decreased exponentially with every passing year. It wouldn't take much statistical analysis to determine a correlation (and probable causal relationship) between this trend and the additional children that have also arrived at Chez Lyons over the years.

I'm not complaining; it's two blessings in one. More tangible enrichment; less etheral mind candy. Still, it's nice to be able to pig out every now and again, and a DVR (or PVR) fits the bill nicely.

There are a lot of reasons not to rent a box from your cable company: the monthly cost, limited storage space, no user-upgradability, automatic deletion of programs (whether you've watched them or not), and the inability to back up your shows on external media (funny that VCRs should have a technical advantage in that respect).   Plus, if you want to have DVR access in additional rooms, you need to rent additional boxes.

TiVo is now also an option for Canadians, but the unit price is high, storage volume is low, expandability is nil, and the electronic programming guide costs are significant (details here).  EPG costs are a fact of life with any DVR, but with MythTV the charges are not for profit.  Currently I pay $20 US per year  for excellent service from Schedules Direct.  In comparison, TiVo charges $13 per month.

Read more »

Posted in: gadgets,open source

blog.grader.com: Useful, or...?

After reading a recent blog post by Spydergrrl, I was moved to visit a number of twitter monitoring and grading resources she suggested.  While she didn't specifically recommend "Blog Grader", it's in the same suite of Grader.com tools that encompasses Twitter Grader, Facebook Grader, Website Grader, and (the completely nonsensical for-fun-only pseudo-tool) Personality Grader, among others.

My blog is reasonably new and I didn't expect a glowing report, so I wasn't surprised with what I got.  But when I compared my blog to four other well-established and greatly superior blogs, the results were surprising.  Here's a snapshot of the numbers:

Monday, November 30, 2009

Blog	Rank	Traffic Rank	Inbound Links	Frequency	Rating
toddlyons.ca	5,741	n/a	7	Weekly	37
cpsrenewal.ca	2,594	7,793,980	1,134	Weekly	63
spaghettitesting.ca	6,202	5,358,849	776	Daily	26
blog.gc20.ca	3,874	2,844,675	4,724	Weekly	63
eaves.ca	672	385,538	20,482	n/a	89

Read more »

Posted in: blogging,humour,tools,WebX.x