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Government Office for the East of England
The Government Office for the East of England is part of the Department for Communities and Local Government, which covers regional and urban policy, local government, planning, housing and regeneration.
GO-East website
I started as an Administrative Officer in 2002, as part of the corporate group, and specialised in communications and events. I enjoyed the job, although it didn't particularly challenge me, and was always on the lookout for more responsibility.
I took started to deal with the odd and wonderful enquiries that came into the office but couldn't be categorised under any of the other teams, where my Trading Standards experience served me well. I also joined the editorial board for the internal newsletter, which at least meant that I got a chance to be a bit more creative.
Learning Support projects
In 2004 I spent six months on the Learning Support team, where they needed someone to create a database for the team contacts, and do some general event support work - but I was bored so I volunteered to join the in-office gym committee and was taken on as publicity officer to try and increase membersips and awareness.
I used my know how from Beauty & Health Publishing and managed to increase the membership by around 20% by introducing a web-based fitness & well being newsletter, publicising the gym facility across the office, and coming up with initiatives like a pedometer challenge and competitions to win personal training sessions. I also asked for more team responsibility and was given the chance to produce the Learning Support Newsletter.
Back to Communications
I achieved promotion to Executive Officer level in December 2004 and took on the role of Publicity & Communications Co-ordinator. I had two team members to manage, and a much bigger workload. I used some of my media contacts to get access to a better picture library for our web and print publications, and set up an image library for the office to use. I was also heavily involved in the introduction of an office wide database which was expected to replace individual teams' Excel and Access databases. The project involved me managing a group of 20 plus 'client editors' who were charged with keeping their team data up to date.
I took on the role of editor of the office internal magazine, and revamped it to include more staff participation and establish a list of contributors. I made the magazine more staff-focused where it had been a bit more corporate focused previously...which meant people weren't actually reading it.
I was involved with comissioning and writing articles for the external newsletter from teams across the office, and editing them (usually quite heavily) for publication. I had the same responsibilities for GO East Annual Reports and Business Plans, although these were produced externally.
I project managed and produced the Regional East of England Public Health Group’s external newsletter, when their own communications officer was on long term leave and they were in need of some support. I did the whole thing - commissioned the content, arranged the production, sourced the images, designed the layout in MS Publisher and delivered the newsletter virtually single-handed. Oh, and at the time I was also just about to fly to Canada to get married, and it was two weeks before Christmas...
Restructure and more web work
In 2006 the office restructure meant that I had to reapply for my own job, and that I was also going to be taking on more work. I successfully got the job back, and started to spend a lot of my time working on editorial for the external website as well as internal news stories. I learned the new CMS (Morello) and took on the responsibility of publishing content to the external site, sourcing web stories and generating articles. I organised training in Quark so that team was able to design material in-house and save time going out to agencies for simple projects.
The future...
From April 2007 the role was cut as part of another office restructure - and I worked on ad-hoc projects until taking the redundancy offer and making a run for it in September 2007. I'd always wanted to do my own thing and it was a case of "If I don't do it now...I never will!".
Leaving GO East
I left GO East in September 2007, after five and a half years...and set up Sarah Clark Copywriting.
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