Life in a public sector agency as a Saltire Intern – what does it involve? Who makes the coffee runs? Also what government secrets can I share with you?

The first two questions are fairly easier to answer, but unfortunately the last question puts me in an awkward position – basically nothing.

Life in the public sector for a Saltire Intern involves conducting an 8 week research project buffered by the occasional piece of speech writing for the Minister for Technology or writing a Ministerial Brief on certain large American technology companies.

My project involves looking at decision making hierarchies in multinational technology companies.

What does this mean? Great question blog reader, I have basically been trying to figure out what office in what part of the world makes decisions for the Asia-Pacific region and also trying to identify these people by selective searching on LinkedIn – or as I like to call it major professional creeping.

Apart from looking at decision making hierarchies I have also written a couple of Ministerial Briefs – unfortunately due to confidentially clauses and the nature of government I cannot divulge what I wrote. However, to whet your appetite on Wednesday this week the Minister for Technology opened the new Victorian Headquarters of Juniper Networks. I was lucky enough to spend the last 4 weeks planning this office opening and liaising with Juniper over early Friday morning conference calls.

As well as writing a brief for Minister’s office on this event, I also had a go at writing his speech for the event and I also wrote the press release for the event too. The press release is available on the Premier’s official government website:

http://premier.vic.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/1768-global-technology-giant-opens-new-melbourne-headquarters-.html

After the Minister had given his speech and opened the new office, I had a little chat with the Minister. However, before I introduced myself the Minister had already heard who I was – it seemed that my reputation proceeded me this time around.

Midway through my conversation with the Minister, he caught me off guard by asking a specific question about his speech. The Minister asked me what I personally thought of his body language during his speech, and if I had any suggestions as to how to improve it…

This leads me to the most important lesson I have learnt in Australia – diplomacy and tact are some of the most important traits needed to succeed in the world of politics. Also it helps to tell the Minister that his public speaking is perfect and quickly change the subject to a less touchy controversial subject - perhaps to football and the intense rivalry between Rangers and Celtic…

And of course one of the key jobs of being an intern is the rite of passage that is always conducting the office coffee runs, after all we all have to do a coffee run at some point in our lives – don’t we?