Pros
- ICT is all in one room in one office, meaning communication and “all one team” feeling is very strong compared to being spread out over different locations / sites - Senior IT management team are very approachable and always go around making sure all departments and staff (junior or senior) are happy and they do a walk around the office every morning - Council operates on a “flexi-time” scheme, so if you (for example) have to stay an extra 10 minutes at end-of-day, you can get those 10 minutes back - Job security (especially during COVID-19 era)
Cons
- Application process is very awkward and lengthy (as is the case with most public-sector organisations), you have to write out endless essays about your experience / knowledge on a specified topic all while being vague and not being clear about what is being asked for. I applied for a few internal ICT vacancies whilst trying to promote but was turned down each and every time because I had not completed the application form correctly despite it being very obvious based on my career history and knowledge / skills that I could have done the role I was applying for. Why can’t CVs just be accepted? - Was told off for trying to help out other departments within ICT for work and trying to “go the extra mile” in my own role to make everyone’s life easier, the work ethic very much favours staff who “do the bare minimum amount of work to get by” - If teams within ICT make changes on the network and break something (which triggers a large amount of phone calls / emails to ICT), it is the Service Desk team who have to deal with the angry end-users complaining and shouting as the specialist teams within ICT do not take communication from the users directly - While documentation and SLAs exist within ICT, end-users do not care about this and will endlessly chase their support tickets until it gets resolved (and will escalate to their manager / director as high as they need to go in order to get their ICT problem fixed). There is little to no enforcement of “putting your foot down” to end-users and as above it is the Service Desk who has to deal with the brunt of the angry emails / phone calls, not the teams who are not resolving tickets within SLAs - Noticeable drop in work performance output of various ICT teams if their senior / manager is off work - Staff across the authority are employed with little regard to their IT knowledge, the amount of staff who do not know what / where the Windows Start Menu is located is unreal! - More applies to the Council overall but endless issues with staff of all levels doing the absolute bare minimum amount of work, this would not be tolerated at all within the private sector and it is crazy how little work certain staff get away with and face no consequence whatsoever. There a few staff who are hard workers, anyone who has come from a private sector background will see straight away the culture difference between private / public sector attitudes to work - Witnessed departments buying unnecessary expensive computers and Apple mobile devices toward the end of the financial year because “we need to spend their entire budget before the next financial year”, are these people aware that this is taxpayer’s money being flushed down the drain? - ICT department isn’t really “growing” and the only way to move up is when someone leaves or promotes and their position becomes vacant, be prepared to stay here for years and years if you intend to move up (unless are lucky to enter a mid to senior grade position)