The government programme to support mobile and flexible working in local authorities has been saved from the axe.
Project Nomad has initially been split into two entities – Nomad North and Nomad Scotland — and will be run by teams based at Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council and Aberdeenshire Council, respectively. The former will lead the national programme and plans to drop the 'North' from its branding.
The project was due to close at the end of this week after Cambridgeshire County Council it was unable to continue to provide support funding. Nomad was launched in November 2003 as one of the National Projects, sponsored by the former Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to develop new uses of IT in local government.
A statement on the Nomad website says that programme director Ian Laughton and his team will stand down, with all intellectual property rights and operations passing to the two new bodies. Nomad North will be led by longstanding board member Ken Eastwood, and Nomad Scotland by Mark Baker. Both bodies are in discussions with regional groups on potential support.
Eastwood said on the website: "I very much hope to give Nomad an even stronger community feel and will be leading an early project to replace the existing website with a modern community site, making full use of social media functions including blogs, forums, groups and collaborative workspaces (as well as a catalogue of case studies, toolkits and related documents from the existing site).
"Working closely with colleagues in Scotland, I believe we can take Nomad forward in a sustainable way and maintain a national identity and recognition for the excellent innovation and practice in local government."
He also said on the blog that he is interested in getting bodies from other parts of the public sector involved. Eastwood has made presentations to the Department of Health and a strategic health authority, and says the Total Place initiative — focused on pulling together all the public services in a geographic area — may provide the necessary catalyst.
Baker said: "Nomad Scotland has grown into a self-sustained group that can now readily support its own activity. As the Worksmart manager for Scotland's sixth-largest council, I can see that Nomad is an invaluable asset to the public sector; not just in Scotland, but for the whole of the UK.
"We are continuing, and would encourage engagement and dialogue with the UK as a whole through our current online space on the (Improvement and Development Agency's) Communities of Practice website."
Ian Laughton commented: "I believe that though much still remains to be done to fully exploit these new ways of working, Nomad has contributed greatly to the progress so far and I hope that this will be maintained as we all seek newer and better ways of maintaining and delivering services."
Talkback
Regardless of the great and good reasons for NOMAD, it certainly cannot be said that it makes any benefit to the life of the people of this country. I always look at the many "bodies" established over the past decade or two and try to analyse what difference it would make to our life if they were immediately stopped.
In almost every instance, and NOMAD is amongst them, the only appreciable difference would be a reduction in public expenditure.