Sorry about the quote its a bit of a red herring as this isn’t going to be a treatise on Taoism 🙂

After a little more than two and a half years (which is a pretty long time in Jukesie-years) I will be moving on from my current role in a couple of months and taking up a new position at the Office of National Statistics working for @lauradee who has recently departed OpenLearn at the OU to become Deputy Director of Digital Publishing at the ONS. Laura and I have led strangely parallel careers in many ways and actually first ‘almost’ met in Miami when we both attended a Carsonified conference there and we have kept in touch digitally and at a few events ever since (she spoke at both Bettr conferences and attended the first Bathcamp) and I am excited to have the opportunity to work with/for her. It will be the first time I have ever had a boss who knows more than me about this stuff which will be…interesting!

So back to the quote. The reason I found it amusing is that my rather grand new job title is ‘Head of Rich Content Development’ 🙂 Working in the public sector I am unlikely to ever get rich but in this I am content..

To all intents and purposes the role is part Product Manager, part Delivery Manager with a splash of Content Designer if you were to put it in GDS terms – I’ll work with a multi-disciplinary team to identify ways to best present ONS content for a wide range of users – including this idea of the ‘citizen user’ – which I think is trying to draw some kind of dotted line to the more established idea of the ‘citizen scientist’. ONS has some very passionate users and considerably more traffic than I am used to so its a big step up – my ideas are going to have a much wider audience.

I can’t express how much I am looking forward to embracing this remit. Despite increasingly being seen as a big project, CMS guy what I really enjoy is working on the smaller, discreet products especially when you create something interesting and replicable.

Anyway it will be a while before I start and until then this blog will remain shuttered though it will return once I start in Newport. Below is a snippet of the job description so you can see why I’m so chuffed!

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The postholder is responsible for inspiring and leading development of innovative rich content outputs for the ONS website and other channels, which anticipate and meet user needs and expectations, including those of the Citizen User. The role holder has an important part to play in helping ONS to realise its vision “for official statistics to achieve greater impact on key decisions affecting the UK and to encourage broader use across the country”.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Inspires, builds, leads and develops a multi-disciplinary team of designers, developers, data analysts and communications experts to produce innovative new outputs for the ONS website and other channels.

2. Keeps abreast of emerging trends and identifies new opportunities for the use of rich web content with ONS outputs.

3. Identifies new opportunities, proposes new directions and developments and gains buy in and commitment to these from Senior Executives and colleagues in other ONS business areas.

4. Works closely with business areas to identify, assess and commission new rich-content projects.

5. Provides, vision, guidance and editorial approval for new projects based on a continual understanding of user needs and expectations.

6. Develops and manages an ongoing portfolio of innovative content, maximising impact and value for money.

7. Builds effective partnerships with media to increase outreach and engagement with ONS content.

8. Establishes best practice in creation of rich content for the web and other channels, and works to improve practice and capability throughout ONS.