Author: Dave

14 July 2021

Meetup notes: Supporting scrutiny councillors to succeed

Notes for meetup #18: Advice, training and development: Supporting scrutiny councillors to succeed

Wednesday 14th July ?? 10.00-12.00

To celebrate Bastille Day, we had a French theme – well Dave had some madeleines and Matt did the chatfall countdown en français.

To help participants to generate all of those good ideas we had nine minute networking, spiral journal and a conversation cafe.

In a final chatfall we extracted the final, favourite takeaways and here is the final list. Hope it’s useful ?.

What helps scrutiny councillors to succeed?

Zoom premeetings
Good pre-meeting preparation
Site visits – get out in the community and meet real people – missed that during pandemic
Effective use of pre-meetings
Curiosity, interest in subject matter, willingness to push scrutiny to its limits in adding value
Great to discuss this – important discussion around relationships, questioning, support, inspiration – asking the ‘Et alors?’ question (so what?))! impact.
Importance of well-planned and well-timed pre-meetings.
Opportunity and ability to ask relevant follow-up questions
Prepare members in advance of the meeting – pre-meeting to filter and theme questions and to pin the areas that may need to change, what we need to know more about and think about recommendations could be formed at the meeting.
Preparation in advance of the meeting to plan themes, questions and possible recommendations
Thinking about site visits to support interest in a subject
Importance of preparation and understanding the brief
Ensuring member engagement and addressing the issues that hold them back – training for example
Do less, but do it better – be more focussed rather than trying to solve everything.
Members to listen to responses at the meeting – for supplementary questions to dig deeper into the issue.
Listening to officers reponses and forming questions based on new information rather than sticking to pre-prepared questions
Curiosité
Supporting the development of relationships between executive, scrutiny, officers and others
Listening well and responding with useful supplementaries
Pre-meetings held in advance to sort out issues beforehand
Thinking of innovative ways of getting members engaged
master class videos with info in advance of scrutiny sessions
Reports should have all the data, quantative… members need to bring qualitative info and context – at the meeting dig deeper
Training around questioning for members that is focused and to the point. How to follow up the responses to those questions.
Need to think about how best to help members understand the impact of their scrutiny
Working on relationships – and hearing from the edges
Focus on issues
Good quality recommendations as a result of useful questions and answers

18 June 2021

Sign up for meetup #18: Advice, training and development: Supporting scrutiny councillors to succeed

Wednesday 14th July ?? 10.00-12.00

Yes, It’s that time of year, new councillors are being offered induction training, more experienced councillors are being offered refreshers, and development sessions are breaking out all over. So we thought now would be a good time to think about how it’s going and what really helps councillors to be more effective in their scrutiny roles.

We will (probably) be using Triz (also known as the anti problem technique) to help generate some fresh thinking. We’ve used it before and it was a lot of fun. Oh, we will (probably) use google jamboards so you might want to check out the best way to access that beforehand. Here is a test board if you want to see if it works.

We will be doing the usual nine minute networking as well of course.

Hope to see you there ??

Dave and Matt

17 June 2021

Meetup notes and video: The secrets of parliamentary scrutiny

Meetup notes: The secrets of parliamentary scrutiny

In this meetup we heard a wonderful fishbowl conversation between three parliamentary clerks:

Fay Bowen – Welsh Senedd – Clerk to the Public Accounts Committee and meetup veteran
Matthew Congreve – House of Commons – Second Clerk to the Defence Committee
Francisca Gale – Tynwald – Parliament of the Isle of Man – Deputy Head of the Chamber and Information Service, Clerk to Environment and Infrastructure Policy Review Committee

They talked about how they help to make their committees ‘sing’, discussed some of their challenges and shared some tips along the way. Then they answered questions from participants and even went into extra time to answer all the questions they missed.

Don’t worry if you missed it because we’ve put the whole thing on Youtube and it’s well worth a watch!

To give you a flavour, here are some of the questions asked by participants and some of their takeaways at the end.

Questions for the fishes

Can you give an example of a time you involved stakeholders in the development of TORs and how it went?
How long (in hours/days) does it take to produce a brief for Members?
Be interested in getting a copy of the commons pack spreadsheet talked about in relation to recommendations.
How do you ensure that the enquiry stays on task without stopping useful areas of enquiry?
On the ‘silent policy change’ and measuring impact – how you balance demonstrating success/impact to others without embarrassing policymakers by highlighting their “uturns” and thus disincentivising policy changes?
When a recommendation is only part of the evidence to inform a decision – how can scrutiny claim it as an outcome and how do you monitor it
how do you address lack of engagement?
If your members also had another full time job, how would you engage them with your review?
How do you encourage Members to ask effective, challenging, follow up questions?
How do you support Members to not take the arguments of Cabinet Members/officers at face value/provide an appropriate level of critical challenge?
For Fay- the ‘wash up’ sessions -would you invite the whole Committee or would it be a conversation with the Chair?
Supplementary questions, how do you organise these?
What does a successful meeting look like?
How do you make recommendations SMART?

Takeaways

Wash up after briefing
My top takeaway is the importance of setting the right remit/terms, and that stakeholders can be involved in informing this at an earlier stage.
Could we have notes?
Rethinking how to brief the Chair/Vice-Chair and other Committee Members
How much of the scrutiny direction is governed by you
clear aims, objectives and communication between departments, committees, panels
I could brief Members a bit better.
Getting a clear sense of current levels of interest and knowledge at the start of the review
Getting the balance right between making sure members have the resources to be well informed but making sure they take responsibility for this.
Going to try the video briefing!!
Wash up meetings with all task group members not just officers/chair
The same issues are experienced at all levels of public scrutiny
Video briefing on the background to a topic in advance of the meeting – so that the meeting is not taken up with scene setting and members can get stuck in to the issues
Definitely interested in the video briefing.

Thanks again to our fishes – you did a brilliant job ??

20 May 2021

Sign up for meetup #17: The secrets of parliamentary scrutiny

ScrutinyMeetup #17: The secrets of parliamentary scrutiny

10.00-12.00, Wednesday 16th June

This topic came top of the poll when we asked participants at the March meetup.

If, like us, you are keen to find out what those officers supporting parliamentary scrutiny do to help their committees sing, then this is the meetup for you. We have a fishbowl planned including a clerk from the Commons, Welsh Parliament, Jersey and the Isle of Man. What’s not to be excited about?

So, come and be a fly on the wall for a conversation between:

Fay Bowen – Welsh Senedd – Clerk to the Public Accounts Committee and meetup veteran
Matthew Congreve – House of Commons – Second Clerk to the Defence Committee
Katie Griffiths – States of Jersey Assembly – Scrutiny Officer for Corporate Services
Francisca Gale – Tynwald – Parliament of the Isle of Man – Deputy Head of the Chamber and Information Service, Clerk to Environment and Infrastructure Policy Review Committee

Oh, and we will have the usual nine minute networking of course.

Some practical points

Just so you know, we will close bookings the day before and then send out joining details by the night before to everyone signed up. Watch your junk folder!

By the way, there are 72 spaces this time.

Hope to see you there!

19 May 2021

Meetup notes: Digital engagement with scrutiny

At this meetup we used two activities to help us think about this issue; appreciative interviews and conversation cafe.

Her are all the lovely ideas we collected in the chat. Hope there is something useful here for you ?

What’s something that helps to support digital engagement with scrutiny?

being allowed to hold scrutiny meetings virtually (but livestreamed)
making information easy to access
Clear understanding of a meeting’s purpose
cooperation of all parties, members, officers and members of the public
members who are willing to embrace technology
IT literate councillors
Comms team engagement
Need buy-in from Comms to support digital engagement with the public.
The organisational culture needs to be open to use of digital
Iterative sessions leading to the actual meeting. Timed slot when people know how long they have and point of their input clarity of what input will inform
Public-I has worked really well and supports virtual and hybrid meetings.
Proper IT Support
Having courage to cast aside the fears and doubts about whether new approaches are too complicated or time consuming
knowing what and how to do it
Scrutiny needs more support from Senior Leadership and the corporate communications function/team to enable it to effectively engage digitally with the public
Sufficient resourcing for staffing of scrutiny meetings
Explore new ways to run mtgs, having guests there for their bit and then can monitor the rest of it
Its easier to invovle people
Member support for the technology
Good member training / development
member engagement and good IT support
IT support at meetings – including ability to go onto computers remotely to troubleshoot problems.
Coms and ICT support… and knowledge of what is available in the way of digital engagement
having cooperation from board, management and panels all on level playing field
Member being able to use technology
Good planning and preparation including using a procedure at the start of digital meetings.
Enough resources to do it properly
understand the technology available and where it can best be used
A decent level of faith in the community that public points of digital communication won’t be immediately or overly abused – you might get some, but not as much as you think (don’t be a cynic)
Thorough briefing of all Officers involved
People can take part from the comfort of their own homes
explore digital development along with experts IT
Relevant scrutiny topic choices by members
Preparation before it’s needed
digitally engaged and literate members
IT support for members
Pre-meetings before actual meetings
The right technology and well trained members to maximise the use of the tools available
Iterative sessions with residents who want to engage leading up to a bigger mtg
engagement from IT, Councillors and the Council team as a whole. You need to have everyone on board.

What’s a practical takeaway, however small, from today’s discussions that you might take back to your scrutiny work?

public involvement is essential
Introducing Webinars to our scrutiny work
Trying to see how we can use social media effectively.
webinars to tie into meetings so meetings are qualitative and focused
Think about how we can improve online meetings so they don’t just reflect meetings previously held in the Chamber e.g. use of breakout rooms.
Continue task groups remotely (and during the day) to aid engagement by members and (often time poor) witnesses.
a (seemingly national) consensus among scrutiny members that we cannot afford to lose what we’ve gained in terms of guests being able to dial in remotely, use up less of their time…. engagement is easier and more attractive than ever, can’t lose it
It is often easier to promote digital engagement with informal events than formal meetings
Rather than just move a traditional round table physical meeting onto a virtual setting try changing the way task and finish meetings take place by using some of the digital tools that are available in a virtual meeting as we have been today (e.g. white boards and chat falls)
Digital forms good but how do you promote them, circulate them. Examine Public i for hybrid mtgs.
use all methods available
Ensuring we build on the advantages of the last 18 months.
Clarifying how and when we use digital approaches and when in person is better.
Needs discussing with councillors
Webinars useful for information sharing to filter what information goes to each meeting – helps prepare all
Keep up the paperless office after people return to Offices.
Other options for sharing information outside of scrutiny meetings.
listen to everyone and communicate effectively
Use the technology to the full, not just to replicate formal meetings online.
more impetus to push for corporate comms to support scrutiny
keep plugging away at the benefits of digital and use of informal online meetings for gathering evidence
Use of digital meetings more generally, not just for official scrutiny meetings… just a terrible resource to utilise less than we are.
Build on what we have digitally as well as person to person meetings.
High profile officers to continue to give evidence digitally at meetings post 21 June.
Seeing how scrutiny work can better fit around the work commitments of Members
looking at public i hybrid
Asking senior mgrs. who are invited to a scrutiny mtg to monitor the rest of the virtual mtg rather than disappear after their item. This works for daytime but not as much for evening mtgs
Ask chief officers to monitor the meeting after they have presented in case they need to respond to something in another item – better use of their time
Having pre-meetings at least a week in advance of scrutiny meeting
Meetings more focussed aiding better focussed outcomes and forward direction of actions
looking at developing a digital comms strategy for scrutiny
make sure your computer systems up to date and web pages are easy to access and understand by all
Need to keep pushing hybrid agenda…cannot lose what was gained with digital meetings in the last 18 months.
for all participants to remember they are being recorded.
Twitter isn’t a scary place for something as normally non- controversial as scrutiny…
working with Comms and Local Democracy Reporter to promote meeting videos and the role of the local councillor in raising issues
Talk to comms about promoting scrutiny work.
Iterative sessions with contributors on contentious items in advance of the full meeting. Helps take heat out, allows more to feel they’re being listened to. Makes them focus, choose a spokesperson.
Good internet and tech – ‘invest’ in digital media and know how to use it
using recordings of meetings to help members reflect on their performance as part of their training and development
Having pre-meetings remotely a few days before the meeting to allow members to think about possible lines of enquiry and questions
egs of other councils that are making the practicalities of hybrid meetings work
Need proper technical support

18 May 2021

Activity instructions: Meetup #16

Here are the instructions for this meetup:

Nine minute networking (20 mins)

Two rounds of nine minutes in threes (or fours)

Talking points

Thinking about your scrutiny work

What’s your one best hope for digital engagement?
What’s your biggest fear about digital engagement?

Appreciative Interviews (20 mins)

What’s something you’ve done digitally, however small, that has worked reasonably well? (scrutiny related or something else)

Small groups of 3 (or 4)

Agree who will be the time keeper

Each person has 5 mins in group of 3 (4 mins in a group of 4)
- Briefly describe something that went well and what helped
- Other group members prompt them with questions: Tell me more about that, what else helped?
Swap round until everyone has had a turn
Use any time time left to reflect on the activity

Conversation Cafe (25 mins)

Groups of about 5

Agree who will be the time keeper

Four rounds:

Take turns, without interruption, to describe one thing heard in the appreciative interviews that was helpful (one go each – up to one min each)
Take turns, without interruption, to reflect on what you heard in the first round (one go each – up to one min each)
Open conversation: ‘What helps to support digital engagement?’ (about 10 mins, whatever time is available)
Take turns to quickly share takeaways – keep going round until time runs out (the last 5 mins).

4 May 2021

Sign up for Scrutiny meetup #16: Digital engagement with scrutiny

ScrutinyMeetup #16: Digital engagement with scrutiny

10.00-12.00, Wednesday 19th May

Whether it’s blogs, videos, social media or websites, we know that going digital can be tricky, particularly in a sensitive political environment. That’s why, when the fine scrutiny folk from Hackney Council got in touch to say they were thinking about this topic, we thought it would be be just dandy for a meetup theme.

We are planning to run an activity called appreciative interviews to help participants find out what’s working well for everyone.

And there will be nine minute networking of course.

Some practical points

Just so you know, we will close bookings the day before and then send out joining details by the night before to everyone signed up. Watch your junk folder!

By the way, there are 72 spaces this time.

Hope to see you there!

30 April 2021

In Practice: How can we improve digital engagement with scrutiny?

The fine folk at Hackney have been in touch about digital engagement. Tim Upton, Overview and Scrutiny Officer writes:

Here at Hackney we are pondering how to improve digital engagement with scrutiny. We would love to hear how others are approaching this or if they they are pondering along the same lines. Here are some thoughts as a starter for ten.

Digital engagement with scrutiny

Since the pandemic, public meetings including Scrutiny have become virtual. Despite teething issues with the format, the ease of virtual access has allowed more of the public & a wider array of external guests to participate without having to travel to a physical space, or even commit to an entire meeting. It’s as simple as opening a webpage, something that’s so much more commonplace and attractive to busy people in a modern world.

With conversations now taking place about returning to ‘business as usual’, it’s a crucial time for Scrutiny to examine the situation and try to maintain, harness, and push the momentum that digital meetings have allowed for, and to try and raise the profile of the scrutiny function at this crossroads in how local authorities conduct business.

The opportunity to demystify the purpose of the work and attract new interest is now great and within reach. How to make engagement easy and highly visible should be a major conversation happening between scrutiny departments in the UK.

Digital skills will clearly be of paramount importance for digital Scrutiny to function properly. Including:

Setting up & maintaining a blog
Do’s and don’ts of what to write and include
Synergising with Members’ Social Media
A dedicated Twitter handle for the Scrutiny function – pros & cons
Using & Creating Short Videos
Digital Annual Reports
How to connect with existing ‘networked neighbourhoods’ in your area
How to distinguish Scrutiny’s profile from that of the Council
How to handle angry posts, pile ons and avoiding confrontation

25 March 2021

Meetup notes: Work planning for the win

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At this meetup we worked on the issues of work planning. We used a liberating structure called What, So What, What Next to work through a conversation in three stages.

Here are the takeaways that we captured from participants in the chat at the end of each stage.

Hope you find them useful!

Something interesting that you heard that others do

canvas residents, reviewing consultations
It’s all about communication!
We discussed whether committees used the first meeting of their year to finalise the work plan or whether this was established beforehand leaving the first meeting to actually scrutinise – there was a mixture of responses
Topic suggestions invited from the public via website and social media
a scrutiny café to discuss work plans
Social Media Campaigns
Communication with Chairperson/Vice Chairperson/Members/Directors and Heads of Service. openness and transparency of agendas etc
Public ideas for topics
Looking in local media for matters of local interest to be included in work plans
moving away from annual work planning
Having a google docs type document to share a draft work plan with members and officers for their input
corporate plan
Looking at the action tracker to see what’s outstanding
Interested to see other council using social media to get ideas from public
Speaking with cabinet members

What insights did you gain from sharing different work planning activities?

Members need to think more critically about whether their ideas for scrutiny items are good enough to make most of resources and time
Trying to enable more interaction/discussion at meetings – not just presentations!
listen to all members across the administration and opposition
Variety of sources for longlist of items for work programme
Work programme is a living document and constantly changing
increased communication with the public, with residents to inform the FWP.
Plan to use different mechanisms for scrutiny in your work programme
importance of good chairmanship in making meetings focussed
meeting with cabinet members
How Task and Finish Group work has continued for some.
That officers can talk for too long….
Flexible work programmes to accommodate urgent items as and when needed
Need to get Comms support for engaging with public to get suggestions
Comms involvement helps shape scrutiny and the public interest.
A shift in perspective about drawing insights from councillors
Setting up meetings with cabinet members and chairs/vice chairs starts the year in a productive way.

Something to do differently as a result of today’s conversation?

Virtual planning event with breakout rooms etc
speak to comms on what has been high traffic issue on social media recently
Use social media to canvass for suggestions for the public and calls for evidence during a specific review
looking at local media as well as complaints and consultation feedback as a source for timely and relevant topics
Virtual work programme planning with Committee g. use breakout rooms
utilise comms / public consultations to gauge better idea of public concerns
Liaise with cabinet members and officers more about topics for scrutiny
ability to make use of new technology to gather evidence from stakeholders
Informal drop-in sessions for people to find out more about scrutiny / suggest topics
Look at how we do our social media around scrutiny.
Planning the way we carry out the scrutiny – not just the topic
start pre-meets with all Members of the Committee for any questions and to inform the line of questioning to encourage pre reading of the agenda and pack.
Engage more extensively with Officers to suggest ideas for scrutiny
Scrutiny café research!
Engaging others and councillors more. Looking at items as a journey
Themed meetings
Seeking to widen the circle of Members who contribute their input to the work planning
Possibly a Scrutiny ran social media account separate from Comms?
Speak to comms about local issues they have picked up
Nurture three-way relations (portfolio holders, Chairs, Exec Directors) from the start

25 February 2021

Sign up now for scrutinymeetup #15: Work planning for the win ?

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ScrutinyMeetup #15: Work planning for the win ?

2.00-4.00, Thursday 25th March

This topic came top of the poll when we asked participants at the February meetup. And who doesn’t love a good scrutiny work plan?

We’ll (probably) be running this meetup as a Triz – also known as the ‘anti-problem technique’, it follows the idea that sometimes identifying ways to solve the opposite issue to the current one makes it easier to find a new solution. We’ll explain it all on the day when we promise it will make sense. Well, it worked before when we did it, and we had a lot of fun, so we are confident! Oh, and we will be using Google Jamboard again so do check that out if you haven’t seen it before. (If Jamboard doesn’t work for you, it’s still possible to join in so don’t worry)

And there will be nine minute networking of course. We invite you to spend nine minutes in the company of two random scrutineers in two rounds. We suggest a couple of conversation topics but it’s up to you really.

Some practical points

Just so you know, we will close bookings the day before and then send out joining details by the night before to everyone signed up. Watch your spam folder!

In the mean time, as we will be using Zoom, you might want to sign up / install the app if you can (if you haven’t already) although you can still access through a browser. Details about Zoom here: https://zoom.us

By the way, there are 72 spaces this time.

Hope to se you there!

Dave Mckenna @DrDaveMckenna

Matt Clack @M_ttclack