Meet the Local Digital team: Phil James, Community Engagement Manager
In this blog series, we’re shining a spotlight on different members of the Local Digital team to showcase just some of the incredible expertise and hard work that goes on behind the scenes.
In our latest issue, Phil James tells us about his Civil Service journey, which spans 30 years, and how it has led him to his current role as Local Digital’s Community Engagement Manager.
Phil has over 30 years experience in the Civil Service, joining at just 17 years old. Over the last year, Phil has been busy building relationships with the local digital community through a range of events. You may have already met him at the Local Digital Roadshow or at one of many sector events that have taken place over recent months.
Kickstarting my Civil Service career
Like a lot of people, I left school not really knowing what I wanted to do as a career. After working in a department store in Birmingham, I quickly realised retail wasn’t for me. For a start I had to work weekends, and I was never great at getting up after a Friday night out! I saw a job being advertised by the Employment Service — now Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) — and entered the Civil Service as an Administrative Officer.
I spent 13 years with DWP before moving to the Government Office Network (GOs) in 2004. In this role I collaborated with local authorities on regional policies such as regeneration, local area agreements, and antisocial behaviour, as well as the education and young person’s agenda.
After the GOs were dissolved in 2010, I had to apply for another Civil Service role. One post that caught my eye was for a new team, the Resilience and Emergencies Division (RED), which was bringing together regional resilience teams into one national team.
I worked in RED for over 8 years as a Resilience Advisor, working closely with Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) on emergency planning. During my time I responded to multiple severe weather events, terrorism, industrial action, repatriation of British nationals and a dangerous hazmat incident. It was not your everyday post in the Civil Service!
Supporting local government during the pandemic
I moved into the Local Digital team in 2018 to work on the National Cyber Security Pathfinder Programme, supporting councils and LRFs to access free cyber security training and exercises. I enjoyed meeting passionate local authority colleagues who wanted to make their online systems much more robust and create business continuity plans in the risk of a cyber attack.
Unfortunately, coronavirus cut the programme short. In March 2020 I transferred to the Cabinet Office to lead the death management operations programme, part of the government’s COVID-19 response. Working in the Cabinet Office was a real achievement for me as it really is the heart of central government.
I enjoyed the challenges of the role and working closely with councils, LRFs, the funeral sector and ministers. Over the two years, I built trusted relationships and established effective and collaborative ways of working that were key to delivering the programme successfully. It’s really nice to now be back in the Local Digital team, and I use many of the connections I made during my time at Cabinet Office and RED today.
Continuing local government collaboration
My role as Community Engagement Manager is not a technical one — my strengths lie in government policy and local government engagement, helping to identify opportunities for collaboration and improvement in the sector. I work closely with colleagues in communications, cyber and the Local Digital Fund to help shape and communicate our expanding programme. I also support incident coordination if and when cyber incidents occur in the sector.
My key responsibilities are stakeholder management, community building, and planning and leading engagement with councils. It is an interesting role and what I enjoy most is external engagement, particularly in-person events, where I can get to meet and network with councils and partners that are passionate about driving change.
A flavour of my day-to-day work
I play both an advisory and facilitation role in Local Digital events. I identify speaking opportunities for the team to promote our work and grow the local digital community and, over the last few months, have supported the delivery of events to welcome our Local Digital Fund Round 6 projects, introduce our Future Councils pilot and share an update on our Cyber Assessment Framework for Local Government, which had over 200 attendees.
I also lead on the management of key stakeholder relationships, including iNetwork and LGA, representing the voice of councils and other partner organisations in conversations with the team. This involves having regular meetings across the sector to ensure that our programme continues to address the most pressing challenges.
My career highlights
With such a long career in the Civil Service there are quite a few proud moments. It’s always quite exciting to brief a minister, particularly in person, and I’ve been fortunate enough to do that on multiple occasions. I’ve also received a number of recognition awards — most recently for my work on the COVID-19 response — and got to visit Number 10 Downing Street. Holding the Olympic torch during the relay through Northamptonshire was also a once in lifetime opportunity!
I think my proudest moment however was working in Wiltshire on the recovery from the Salisbury poisoning incident in 2018. I spent 6 weeks embedded with the council as their Recovery Liaison Officer (RLO). It was an unprecedented time but I won’t forget how welcoming the Wiltshire team were. The fact they were able to successfully recover from this catastrophic incident makes me proud that I was part of their response and recovery.
My advice for others
For anyone considering a career in government, I would say go for it! The Civil Service is varied, modern and can be a really exciting and rewarding place to work, especially if you are interested in politics, supporting communities or looking for an opportunity to shape and develop national policy. There will be a variety of roles out there that will play to your strengths and draw upon both your professional and personal experiences. What’s more, you can easily move between roles and departments to find the position that’s right for you.
Follow our work
The Local Digital team works in the open, and you can read more about the work we do and follow our progress on Twitter, LinkedIn, Sprint Notes, the DLUHC Digital Blog or our fortnightly newsletter.
