I have been working for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) for over 22 years, in various locations including Milton Keynes, London and overseas. This has provided me with a wide range of skills and knowledge. However, as with many other businesses, the FCO is downsizing, resulting in a lack of opportunity for me to be posted overseas. I have therefore decided to seek a career outside the office to enable me to utilise my skills and hopefully improve my knowledge base.

I have over 8 years of experience in budget management and monitoring as well as data extraction and reporting. In my current position, I have analysed data on the mainframe system and created a new budget monitoring excel spreadsheet that allows me to monitor, control and report on the various budgets in a format that management understands.

In my previous position, I used my SQL skills to interrogate the IT system and managed to extract and verify a whole new suite of management information. I then worked alongside a technical specialist to develop a new reporting that saved a half-day a month of work in over 150 FCO posts overseas. All this was achieved whilst I was based overseas myself. I am always exploring how best to extract data and provide management information. Over the last 3 years I have created many new management information reports and spreadsheets and enhanced existing ones using my design flair. - I once worked as part of a desktop publishing team for the Metropolitan Police re-designing their forms, posters etc. I have also created various user guides and assisted in updating Best Practice.

I am proficient in Microsoft products and have trained myself to maximise the potential of the IT systems that I work with. I am comfortable working with IT and IT specialists I have worked in IT systems design and development and so am capable of matching IT system requirements to customer needs. I have also been on the user end as the first IT systems manager of a new Library document management system that was developed in partnership with a BT subsidiary. I was the liaison between the users and developers. As I was the first systems manager I had to develop best practice/user guides, support contracts etc from scratch as well as manage the Request for Change process.

I have overseen various changes to our live IT systems, from initiation, through analysis, development, implementation and follow up. I enjoy the challenge of working in a fast moving environment and am used to working to tight deadlines.

I am often suggesting new ways of working, for example I devised, designed and implemented a new form, database and system for receiving and logging all customer requests as well as suggesting a new design for the many briefs we receive. I was in Sri Lanka when the Tsunami hit and was part of the response team, creating a form to log call details and a spreadsheet to capture the data. I also created an Access database to record and search for stolen passports.
I have also created various guidance documents, from IT specific to general best practise, as well as strategy documents.

Although I live in Milton Keynes, I am keen to promote the idea of remote working, as I have successfully worked both from home in the UK and from overseas in two of my recent FCO positions. I am used to working with minimal supervision, using my initiative to complete work and achieve deadlines, although I still work as part of a customer-focussed team. There are many benefits to remote working, including savings costs e.g.: overheads of office space, furniture, IT etc. As has been proven in my last two positions, I have a high productivity rate, probably because I am not constantly distracted by what is happening in the office around me, and being elsewhere gives me a different perspective on things. The slight variance in time-zones means that I can start work a couple of hours earlier than others and therefore have things ready for when they start work.

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