GIG AGM 2020 update

The Group’s 2020 AGM was held online on Wednesday 11 November 2020. At least 23 members attended, with 3 observers. The meeting approved the Minutes of the previous AGM held at the Supreme Court, London on 16 July 2019. These approved Minutes are now available for our members to view on the GIG web pages (https://www.cilip.org.uk/members/group_content_view.asp?group=201301&id=691967). The meeting also approved the Annual Report 2019. A copy of the confirmed Annual Report is also available at the above link, but a condensed version is given below.  Draft Minutes from the 2020 AGM will be available in due course.

 

At the AGM we were also delighted to celebrate the success of the National Lottery Community Fund UK Knowledge and Learning team who received the GIG Annual Award 2020.  We were also very grateful to Nick Poole (CEO, CILIP) and David Smith (Deputy Director – Knowledge and Information Management Unit, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and also Government Knowledge & Information Management Head of Profession) who provided brief presentations outlining their views on the challenges that lie ahead in 2021.  A future blog posting will summarise these sessions.

 

CILIP Government Information Group Annual Report 2019 – condensed version.

The Government Information Group represents the professional interests of Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) specialists working in government departments and agencies, parliamentary and national libraries. Our members work in a wide variety of KIM roles. GIG also welcomes members from any sector of the profession, particularly those who have an interest in government information and documentation.

 

Overview

2019 has been a successful year for GIG with the establishment of an effective committee, continuing liaison with CILIP and other relevant special interest groups, 7 visits / events, and the launch of our new blog platform. We also celebrated achievements within the sector through our Awards scheme. Group content was migrated to the new CILIP web site, and we communicated with our members via our blog, Twitter and eBulletins. Our business plan was ambitious and broadly fulfilled.

Group Governance

The Group’s Annual Business Plan was accepted and consequently we received our annual capitation payment from CILIP (£1500). The Plan included objectives to:

·        increase GIG membership

·        provide learning and development opportunities

·        contribute to the CILIP Strategic Plan

·        support the CILIP Conference 2019

·        provide a programme of visits

·        mark GIG’s 40th Anniversary, and

·        to secure GIG’s future

 

Progress has been made on all of these objectives excepting membership numbers. We entered 2019 with 628 members registered on the CILIP web site. (636 members were recorded in October 2020. Data for end of 2019 was not retrieved).

Our Vice-Chair attended Member Network Forum meetings on 10 May and 17 October 2019 representing GIG. These forums provide an opportunity for two-way dialogue between CILIP and the Special Interest Groups and Member Networks, and for inter-group communications. Paul Caton, CILIP Member Networks Officer, attended the February 2019 Committee Meeting.

The Group’s electronic document archive was relocated to cloud storage from the CILIP VLE during 2019. A data subject deletion request identified the inadequacies of the VLE for document searching, a contributory factor in necessitating this move.

Committee

We had a productive and effective committee throughout 2019, with good levels of attendance at committee meetings. We welcomed Rebecca Dorsett as Chair of GIG Committee from January 2019. Kate Lander and Foteini Karagianni joined Committee at our February 2019 meeting. At this meeting Tom Meechan also kindly agreed to be our Honorary Treasurer.  Full details of the 2019 Committee, and dates of the three Committee Meetings held in 2019 are provided in the approved copy of the Annual Report.

Group Finances

We started 2019 with over £5600 in the GIG Bank Account and received total annual income of £1500 (CILIP capitation). We spent £600 on the GIG Awards, and £401.16 on other expenses (mostly marketing materials). We also paid an outstanding VAT charge from 2017 of £5.00. The closing bank balance on 31 December 2019 was therefore just over £6100.  Our accounts were independently examined by CILIP. Full Income & Expenditure Accounts for the Group are available to members on request.

GIG Awards 2019

Single nominations for each of the Annual and Lifetime Achievement Awards were received. The Annual Award was made to the GKIM Knowledge Management Task & Finish Group for their collaborative work on developing a Maturity Model to support implementation of the HM Government Knowledge Principles.

The Lifetime Achievement Award was made to Fiona Laing (National Library for Scotland) for her extensive work on Official Publications, including with SCOOP and SWOP (Scottish Working Forum on Official Publications). 

Visits and Events

We ran an excellent programme of visits in 2019 including London-based venues (House of Commons Library, Weiner Library, Supreme Court and the Victoria & Albert Museum Library), as well as regional visits (Welsh Government – Cardiff, National Railway Museum – York, and STFC – Didcot, Oxfordshire).  Fifty-eight members attended these visits in total and two blog postings resulted. We are extremely grateful to these organisations for hosting our events, for each committee member who attend an event to ensure that it ran smoothly, and to our members who made these visits so worthwhile.

The Group’s 2019 AGM was preceded by a visit kindly hosted by the Supreme Court Library in Central London (16 July 2019).  Twenty-two members greatly appreciated hearing about the creation and evolution of the Library in the first decade of the Supreme Court’s operation. The AGM was attended by 23 members, and 22 members joined us at The Two Chairmen to belatedly celebrate the 40^th Anniversary of GIG.

Our Chair attended CILIP Conference (3-4 July, Manchester) and chaired a well-attended and appreciated session focussing on K&IM in the government / defence sector. Despite best efforts we were unable to provide bursary places for attendance at the conference.

GIG was once again well represented at the 2019 GKIM Conference (26 September 2019, Central London). Our Chair presented 2019 Annual Award certificates to members of the GKIM Knowledge Management Task & Finish Group at the Conference.

Communications 

Blog - We officially launched a new blog on the Blogger platform in November 2019 -  www.cilipgig.blogspot.com/. Three postings were published in 2019.  Prior to launch of the Blogger site we continued to post to the CILIP blog channel. Content posted during 2019 included:  notifications of the 2019 GIG Award winners, reports from Tina Reynolds and Louise Ashton on their experiences of attending CILIP Conference 2018 as GIG bursary winners, and visit reports from the National Railway Museum and The Wellcome Trust Library.

We are grateful to all post contributors and warmly welcome content for the blog from our members and others where relevant.

Website and eBulletins– Extensive work in migrating content from the former CILIP web platform onto the new one was undertaken. Two eBulletins were sent to members (23 April 2019 and 11 June 2019). A final eBulletin scheduled for delivery in December 2019 was delayed because of technical difficulties with the eBulletin platform. We know that not all members are receiving our eBulletins. Members are reminded to check their CILIP membership communication preferences through the CILIP web site.

Twitter – We continued to user Twitter to advise members and supporters of our events, visits and blog postings. We also tweeted about relevant LISJobs vacancies, news items and reports. Throughout 2019 we tweeted more than 70 times and had over 450 followers.

Links with other Groups

GIG maintained productive links with SCOOP, Information Literacy Group, Knowledge & Information Management Group, and with the Chair of the IFLA Government Libraries Section in 2019.