I accidentally joined the public service. But I deliberately chose to stay.
That I came to work in this space we call “digital government” was an accident, a fluke, a random series of events (unfortunate or otherwise).
This story starts at university. I was a promiscuous academic, studying anything and everything — except medicine, I didn’t have the stomach for that. Everything else was in — law, calculus, french, spanish, economics… Through various configurations of my double-degree, the consistent pull was towards a Bachelor of Commerce but even then I wasn’t sure which side of it drew me in more.
Finally, in my third year, I sat in my first capital-S Strategy lecture and I knew that was it. That’s what I needed to do.
I talked to my lecturer after class who recommended the best way into Strategy was as a Business Analyst. Another 2 1/2 years and an Honours degree later, Christchurch was hit with a series of earthquakes and the only job I could get locally would have involved a hardhat. I had an option of relocating to Auckland or Wellington, and Wellington won out.*
While Wellington is our capital city, I’ve never been one for politics and had always assumed my strategic future lay in the private sector — “pfft, as if government would ever be strategic!” (I’d soon come to appreciate the potential and importance of government strategy!)
I started working in a boutique strategy consulting firm and loved working with and for my clients, but it wasn’t an environment that I could flourish in so I began putting my feelers out for a change. The rest happened very quickly.
I got a phone call from an agent asking if I could make a job interview with a government agency the next morning. I hadn’t seen a job description at that time (actually, I’m not sure if I ever did — that story is continued below) but I went along and had a really great chat with the project manager. I was called back for a second interview the same afternoon to meet the programme manager and they asked me how quickly I could join the team for a ten week government contract.
Seven years later (to the day) I haven’t left.
I’ve worked in a number of roles since, roving around teams and building my personal and professional capability in more ways than I ever could have perceived or planned way back in that first Strategy lecture. I’ve met some wonderful people and worked across technology, comms, strategy, investment, policy… there’s no shortage of new opportunities to learn and play with new things.
Government can be strategic, but more than that the public service bring a unique energy and motivation to work each day. We each embody the ‘spirit of service’ and go to great lengths to make our country a better place, each and every day.
And that is the story of how I joined the public service.
Seven years ago
My first role in government was with an ICT programme sponsored by the Department of Conservation. I hadn’t seen an advert so can’t say I really knew what the job was about and had to rely on mental cues to follow that first conversation as the project manager told me all about the Cloud Programme.
Conservation… cloud… do you see where this is going?
Yes, when she began discussing the roles across the team and how I’d be working with an architect and security consultant… I concluded that we would be designing some sort of secure tower to monitor clouds or something for environmental/conservation related data and ‘stuff’. It took longer than it should have to realise that perhaps they meant a different type of ‘cloud’…
What can I say? I’m a business strategist, not a technologist.
While I had never anticipated nor had the aspiration to work this close with a “bunch of techies”, I have learnt so much from them.
There is an undeniable gap (in some instances, a full ‘chasm’) between different professions. I’ve seen this to be particularly the case with ICT (who really knows what the internet is?) and even areas such as big-P policy can be inaccessible to outsiders. I’m thankful for the safe space I had to grow and learn, to ask the silly questions. I appreciate that not everyone feels they can be this vulnerable and many don’t have the capacity to learn. We can’t all be experts in everything. But we can demystify jargon and technical terms and ultimately translate between ICT, finance, HR, policy and business leads to communicate on the same wavelength as others. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if people weren’t able to access these ideas because it was simply outside of their realm of expertise.
As we move towards multidisciplinary teams, we need to find ways to remove barriers and draw our complementary perspectives together in order to inform decision making. I believe this is what delivers great results for our agencies and for the system. I feel privileged to have had the opportunities to grow as a public servant and am excited by how more I’ll get to learn and the wonderful people I’m yet to meet and learn from.
*The plan through my teens was to be a global citizen, adventuring around the world and earning sufficiently for a fabulous big-city loft apartment — but the reality of a giant student loan soon hit and if you stay in New Zealand after graduation the interest is written off.
