As part of an update to my website, I am revamping all my featured images (New featured images – Astronomy). Having already tackled a small one (astronomy) and a large one (website and computers), I am turning my attention to a different challenge — governance. I actually have multiple categories that fall into a “governance” theme, although in many ways, “government” might be a better term for some.

I have an actual category specifically called governance, and I tend to write about a variety of things related to running a government. Elections, public administration, audits. I have more of a technical bent to my topics, and if I was completely candid, it seems like public administration would be the more likely heading. Except from time to time I go above that and intersect with policy and politics. The running of a government at a level above. Not often, but occasionally, and usually related to how the two realms — politics and public administration — intersect. At one point, I wanted a new “image” to represent all that, and given the ethereal nature of the concepts, I made up a combined image representing different parts of a governance package — politics, legislation, judicial, and the people. It’s not a huge category for me, only 30 posts out of about 1400 deal with governance issues, but it may grow once I retire.

I also used to work at CIDA dealing with international development issues. I don’t write about it very often, only 27 posts in total, and 17 of those are about one specific book where I wrote about each chapter as I went. I do like to follow what’s happening in broad trends, though, since I spent 10 years of my career dealing with the files, yet even when I do write, I tend to have a “public administration” slant to my writing, rather than development in general. I didn’t have a great idea for my international development “image”, but managed to find one that was about food security, including both growing your own food and production of meals afterwards. It’s a bit cheesy, but it’ll do.

A third area I write about regularly is the “civil service” itself. And to be honest, I haven’t had a good image to reflect that area. It’s not a lot of posts, still only about 27, but I’ve tended to bop between one of two images. First, I’ve used the general governance image shown above, but that doesn’t really reflect what we do. I have also often used the bottom right-hand corner of that governance, the one of “people” to reflect the civil service (the fourth pillar of the governance stream). Which is fine. Except that I have also used that one a LOT for something else — my posts about HR in the government. In particular, when I’m writing items for my HR guide, I’ve tended to use that image as the theme. However, to be honest, I don’t really like it for my HR guide. I need a new one for that, so I can use it here now. And, as noted, there’s symmetry with the larger combined governance image.

Which leaves me with two very specific areas to deal with. One is a “one-off” conference that I helped organize way back in 2002. The reports and docs are on my site (13 pages), and I use the logo we had for the conference. You can find it at PS Transitions FP.

The other is my HR guide. I have struggled with this guide for a long time, in varying forms. Mostly I have used my large tree frog image to reflect my branding for it.

But a few years ago, before I ran into some publishing snags with the Conflict of Interest people, I went ahead and had the full cover page designed for the guide.

Okay, okay, it’s a little large for a featured image for a post. 🙂 So, I’ve played with cropping a bit, and I have this.

I ain’t gonna lie…I really like that one. Okay, good. Governance images are set!