Author: Dave

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ScrutinyMeetup #11: Deep impact: Demonstrating the effectiveness of scrutiny

14.00- 16.00, 4th November 2020

In this meetup we will be examining that thorny problem of how to show that scrutiny is making a difference (it is of course). It’s been suggested by more than one participant and we know it’s a tricky one.

Loosely weaving in a tenuous disaster movies theme, we will be using a new Liberating Structure called Triz (well, new for us, anyway). This will allow us to ‘create a clear space for innovation’ and ‘invite creative destruction’. Good eh?

We will also have the ever popular nine minute networking of course. We invite you to spend nine minutes in the company of three 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 junk folder – we will send out a separate email to say we have sent the first!

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

Meetup notes: Virtual inquiries and reviews in a time of Covid


This meetup had a Star Trek theme because, you know, Star Trek. We did three, loosely connected, activities to help participants work through the issues (instructions here) and here are the points they shared in the chat.

Hope it’s useful.

What’s something your organisation has done virtually that has impressed you?

  • We held a virtual conference for 100 people including members of the public
  • Just moving to online meetings is a massive achievement
  • Working remotely!
  • Mayor making ensuring Mayor has his gowns, chains and virtual background of the chamber and signed declaration book on line
  • Picture of Bracknell’s Council Chamber as background for all Councillors to use at live events
  • It’s been great to see how we have moved to online meetings and had meaningful engagement from residents!
  • Embracing virtual meetings so quickly, and the accessibility it brings – aside from tech constraints!
  • Much better attendance (less apologies/subs) at committee meetings
  • How well the organisation coped with the move to remote meetings in such a short space of time.
  • Got our virtual meetings up and running from April, Scrutiny meetings started in May.
  • Ask me anything Yammer sessions with our Director of Public Health for all staff to ask any questions about COVID
  • Councils that have managed the ‘virtual transition’ with no dedicated IT support or with huge numbers of members!
  • Virtual meetings in general
  • Borough Conference
  • Quite simply, our most recent Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee because it was highly political, and would have been challenging in “normality\3 but we got through it…

What has helped to support the successful elements of inquiries / reviews?

  • Remote meetings mean can bring wider selection of people into inquiry
  • Short and snappy meetings with a clear scope for each one.
  • We heard about the importance of external witnesses, both professional and those with lived experience – this was really helpful to put the review in context
  • Good relationships
  • Reviews are better than sound…
  • Hearing from lots of different sources at the start of the investigation to find out what’s happening so the view of council staff, schools, teachers, parents, carers etc. – identified where the issues were and what to focus on.
  • Members undertaking practical/hands on work is beneficial
  • Engaging people where they are
  • Useful to find out what others do
  • Site visits and good engagement with both Members & stakeholders
  • Expert witnesses
  • Using Scrutiny to bring a creative approach to problem solving
  • A real issue, officer buy-in, an external event that coincided with a report and recommendations, a passionate and knowledgeable chair
  • Wide ranging engagement

15% Solutions: What do we have the freedom and resources to do now?

  • Bring stakeholders together – public, experts, officers and members. Often, they are not aware of each other or the services / activities in the area.
  • More/better preparation
  • Utilise the (active) Youth Council where youth engagement is required
  • See what other Councils have done on the topic and see what recommendations they’ve come up with – use this knowledge to check out whether these things are issues locally or whether it’s different things. But at least you’re seeking assurance that those things are in place.
  • More youth engagement making most of their easy use of social media
  • Getting more engagement from others outside of the Councils.
  • Conduct survey/ consultations
  • Time to better evaluate evidence
  • Adding feasibility considerations into reports
  • Co-opt an expert onto group (but might not want to do it for free)
  • Ask chairman to allocate tasks to members of the group to keep up engagement.
  • Put on the website somewhere that members of the public can input scrutiny ideas forward – check other council websites for examples of this.

Activity instructions for Meetup #10 – Nine minute networking, appreciative interviews, 15% solutions


Here are the instructions for Meetup #10 – all adapted from Liberating Structures.

Nine Minute Networking (20 mins)

Two rounds of nine minutes in threes (or fours)

Talking points:

  • What’s something you’ve done virtually this year that you are pleased about?
  • What’s something your organisation has done virtually that has impressed you?

 

Appreciative Interviews (40 mins)

  1. Everyone invited to think of any scrutiny inquiry or review that you were involved in, that went reasonably well (real or virtual)
  2. In groups of 3 (or 4) allocate three roles: 
    • Interviewer – asks appreciative questions to learn about what helped
    • Interviewee – answers the questions, focussing on the practical
    • Note taker / time keeper – jots down the most interesting ideas and points about ‘what helped’ – keeps the group on time
  3. Each interview takes 7 mins
    • Interviewer asks questions, interviewee answers (5 mins)
    • Note taker feeds back the main points of ’what helped’ without response from the other group members (2 minutes) 
    • Rotate the roles around the group
  4. After three rounds the group uses the remaining time to discuss what stood out.
  5. Return to the main room and put the best answers in the chat

Interview script

  1. Tell me about an inquiry that went reasonably well
  2. What helped to make it go well? 
  3. What did you do?
  4. What else helped?
  5. What else?
  6. What else?

 

15% Solutions: What do we have the freedom and resources to do now? (20 mins)

  1. Alone, generate a list of 15% solutions (3 mins)
  2. In small groups briefly share your list, up to 3 mins per person, one at a time
  3. Staying in your group ask each other clarifying questions and build on suggestions using “yes…and” (10 mins or whatever is left)
  4. Return to the main room and share your favourite suggestions in the chat

 

Book now for Meetup # 10: It’s an inquiry Jim but not as we know it.


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ScrutinyMeetup #10: It’s an inquiry Jim, but not as we know it.

14.00- 16.00, Thursday 8th October 2020

There’s lots of experience of great scrutiny inquiries but how do they work in a time of Covid? We’ll be giving you the chance to mull over exactly that question with fellow scrutineers at this fabulous meetup.

It will go something like this (probably):

Introduction

Some very brief basics and hellos.

Part One: Nine Minute Networking

A popular aspect of the meetups – 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.

Part Two: How to make our inquiries work virtually

Well, we haven’t exactly worked this one out yet but it will be interactive and hopefully helpful.

Conclusion

We just like to chill for the last 15 minutes – a chance to ask anything or just chat.

 

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 – we will send out a separate email to say we have sent the first!

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

You can find more details and the notes from previous meet ups here: https://www.publicgov.co.uk/sc…

By the way, there are 72 spaces this time.

Hope to se you there!

Dave Mckenna @DrDaveMckenna

Matt Clack @M_ttclack

 

 

What makes a constructive relationship between cabinet and scrutiny?

Our sponsors for this meetup

 

ScrutinyMeetup #9 – Executive Protocol

In this meetup (yes, nine already!) we pondered how to make the executive / scrutiny relationshipship more constructive.

In the video you can see a fishbowl discussion of this issue from the perspective of four different councils.

Thank you to our wonderful volunteer fishes:

  • Cllr Bryony Rudkin – Ipswich Borough Council
  • Natasha Taylor – Melton Borough Council
  • Cllr Tom Coole – Gloucester City Council
  • Tracy Tiff – Northampton Borough Council

After the fishbowl, participants reflected on what they had heard and came up with the suggestions below Hope you find them helpful.

 

What practical things can be done to make the cabinet / scrutiny relationship more constructive?

  • Conversations between Cabinet and Scrutiny
  • Clear commitment from Cabinet that there is ‘parity of esteem’ from scrutiny
  • Develop better communication opportunities between Chair/Cabinet Member
  • More and earlier planning stages for the work planning, focusing on council priorities. Also, reverse engineering the work programme from the annual report you’d like to be able to produce.
  • Open and constructive dialogue with the executive outside of formal committee meetings, For example, sharing and discussing future work programmes, likely areas of inquiry, etc….
  • Encourage the executive to appoint an opposition chair
  • Consider other LA’s ways of working and how we can improve our own processes.
  • Conversations between portfolio members and scrutiny members are crucial to creating a good working relationship 
  • Early communication between the two outside of formal meetings.
  • Setting out the agreed channels of communication so each side knows how the other side will be keeping them informed
  • Conversations outside of the formal meetings
  • Discuss with members adopting an Executive/Scrutiny protocol
  • Foster a climate of openness
  • Good, regular, informal communications
  • Cabinet input in the draft work plan (particularly of non-exec/ new items) while maintaining independence from scrutiny and early input in T&F recs for comments
  • Create a formal protocol, promote outcomes of scrutiny more widely across council
  • Getting early stage input from cabinet and using outcomes focus rather than only recommendations focused.
  • Scrutiny chairs meeting leader regularly

ScrutinyMeetup #9: Executive Protocol


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ScrutinyMeetup #9: Executive Protocol

14.00- 16.00, 16th September 2020

Yes, we like that this meetup sounds like a Tom Clancy novel but strangely there isn’t an actual thriller with this title (I checked Amazon so I know). Anyhow, we will be looking at how to build a better relationship between scrutiny and the executive whether cabinet members or otherwise. When we discussed the conditions needed for effective scrutiny this came up as the condition most were concerned about and with the most potential to be improved. It’s also been suggested as a meetup theme in responses to our recent review so, there you go.

Scrutinymeetups will now be two hours long and this one will work like this:

Introduction

Some very brief basics and hellos. Also, this time we will give you some feedback from the recent meetup review. And we might ask you about possible future topics.

Part One: Nine Minute Networking

A popular aspect of the meetups – we invite you to spend nine minutes in the company of three random scrutineers in two rounds. We suggest a couple of conversation topics but it’s up to you really.

Part Two: Executive Protocols Fishbowl

We know that fishbowls have worked well in the past so we think it would be cool to run one for this topic.

We ask four or five ‘fishes’ to informally discuss their experiences of executive protocols, formal and informal, and then give everyone a chance to discuss what they heard and come up with questions that the fishes try to answer in a second round.

Just so you know will be sharing a video of the fishbowl.

**If you have recently been in involved with developing a scrutiny-executive protocol, or have been working with one for a while, or just have a relationship that works well with our a formal protocol, and would like to volunteer for the fishbowl – please let us know when you book your place!**  

Conclusion

We just like to chill for the last 15 minutes – a chance to ask anything or just chat.

 

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 – we will send out a separate email to say we have sent the first!

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

You can find more details and the notes from previous meet ups here: https://www.publicgov.co.uk/sc…

By the way, there are 72 spaces this time.

Hope to se you there!

Dave Mckenna @DrDaveMckenna

Matt Clack @M_ttclack

 

 

What’s the best present for a scrutineer?


Ever wondered what gift to get for the scrutineer in your life? Yes? Well this is the post for you.

At the birthday special scrutiny meetup we asked: “What is the best present for a scrutineer on scrutiny’s birthday?”

Scrutineers are all different and all special and this is reflected in the replies ranging from ‘well received recommendations’ to ‘SIM enabled iPad’ to ‘wine’ or ‘a winning lottery ticket’.

Check out the list below for your gift inspiration.

Scrutiny gift ideas

  • Visit a Select Committee and have the opportunity to meet with the committee and researchers afterwards for an informal chat and then a drink on the members balcony
  • Huge bag of transparency
  • Reports delivered on time without any chasing
  • Extra scrutiny powers to bring in partners/ access to info please!
  • Well informed Members with good questioning skills
  • Good broadband connection
  • A budget, a fellow scrutiny officer, engaged members, a supportive executive…
  • Chairs who are passionate about their topics
  • Leader & CEX to ask scrutiny to lead a review into our  Covid  response, lessons learnt, what we did well, ready for the next…
  • Parity of esteem with the Executive,
  • Well received recommendations.
  • More power for scrutiny please!  Plus wine (red/white/rose – not fussy!)
  • Cabinet Member altering a report completely because of the work of an overview and scrutiny committee
  • A Cabinet member wanting to be a scrutiny chair!
  • A Winning Lottery Ticket
  • An enthusiastic pro-active Executive; or wine.
  • More power for scrutiny
  • An invitation to undertake a review with lots of resources and fully implemented
  • SIM enabled iPad (internet probs!!)
  • Fully engaged Scrutiny Members
  • A days leave with pay
  • A day with no emails or calls!
  • More creative ways of engaging with residents
  • A group of dedicated, capable, highly intelligent Councillors with an abundance of time to carry out investigations.
  • Consensual Committee working – non partisan scrutiny
  • A Parliament Select Committee grade- smart, sleek, on the ball and knowledgeable Chair; a solid, robust and challenging work programme
  • LGA giving scrutiny parity of esteem and proper recognition at events and panels.
  • Big fat redundancy package for those who have been supporting scrutiny since inception!

Photo and cake credit: Meetup participant

Building a supportive culture for scrutiny: Scrutiny meetup notes #7


In this meet up we worked on the tricky issue of the organisational culture that supports scrutiny (or not).

First we used a Venn diagram to find out how the ‘three pillars of scrutiny” (Culture, Process, Structure) were working for everyone. As you can see above, the most common position is to have process and structure working well but organisational culture (conditions) not so much.

Polls

We then ran some zoom polls (a first for the meetups) to explore the ‘six conditions for effective scrutiny’ taken from research by Dave.

Here are the results of the three questions we asked of the group:

  1. Which condition are you most pleased about?
  • Cross party working – 5
  • Councillor engagement – 5
  • Relationship with the executive – 1
  • Role in council governance – 4
  • Senior officer buy-in – 6
  • Direct scrutiny support – 6

2. Which condition are you most concerned about?

  • Cross party working – 3
  • Councillor engagement – 3
  • Relationship with the executive – 8
  • Role in council governance – 5
  • Senior officer buy-in – 7
  • Direct scrutiny support – 1

3. Which condition has the most potential to be improved?

  • Cross party working – 2
  • Councillor engagement- 5
  • Relationship with the executive – 8
  • Role in council governance – 3
  • Senior officer buy-in – 7
  • Direct scrutiny support – 2

As you can see, a real spread for each of the three questions showing, for this group at least, there really is no one size fits all (although plenty of scope for working on the relationship with the executive perhaps).

Walk Around

We then used a liberating structure in development called Walk Around to get people to talk in groups about their choices for questions 1 and 2. Here are some of the ideas from the discussions that participants shared in the chat:

Thinking about your organisation- Which condition are you most pleased about? What, practically, does scrutiny do to help make this possible?

Cross-party working

  • Proportionate representation on committee and task groups. 
  • Minority parties are usually keen to take part without being political.
  • Hearing the opposition spokespeople in a less combative situation

Councillor Engagement

  • Councillor engagement demonstrates enthusiasm!  it needs channelling and direction some times but of itself is a sign of a healthy democracy
  • Giving Councillors on a review a specific lead role
  • All non exec councillors are on a scrutiny committee and work groups
  • An officer from Stevenage had a great suggestion about giving individual members aspects of topics to research

Relationship with the executive

  • Writing papers on relevant issues
  • Consensus building on topic specific task groups.  
  • Regular informal meetings between cabinet member and chairman with open invite to scrutiny for the cabinet member

Governance role

  • Input and review of constitution supplemented by comprehensive set of procedure notes.
  • Structure set out in the Constitution

Senior officer buy-in

  • Addressing officer anxieties, outlining positive advantages of engaging, benefits to relations with members
  • Informal discussions between scrutiny officers and senior officers about the process and creating a degree of familiarity to help build the relationship.
  • Have a set of informal conversations (i.e. fortnightly or monthly catch ups via teams) with officers . Informal relations are key

Direct support

  • It works really well being an officer that purely supports scrutiny only as it means that you can be independent from the functioning of the Council in order to provide more independent challenge. It also means you don’t end up stepping on others toes and can push for things that you might not otherwise be able to.

Thinking about your organisation- Which condition are you most concerned about? What is the specific challenge and what would you like to see happening instead?

Cross party working 

  • Trying to break up group members sitting together, pick & mix sit next to someone from another party to try to get scrutiny to be non party.
  • Use task and finish groups to get people away from political groups!
  • Specific challenge is a lack of cross party working and there is a structural change occurring with Scrutiny and so for Scrutiny to work there needs to be a better focus. So I hope to see a work programme that allows for this.
  • Not sitting in political groups during scrutiny meetings.

Governance role

  • Challenge of maintaining scrutiny during lockdown.  learning from this experience to have in place an arrangement that allows senior scrutiny members to keep abreast of issues to formulate a work programme for post spike
  • concerns – role of governance. challenge of balance with scrutiny and Covid,
  • Challenge is how to handle Covid. We need to have the debate rather than ignore the issue.
  • A proper covid scrutiny role for our overview/management committee
  • How to scrutinise without adding pressure? How does scrutiny evolve to keep members informed and on the issues that matter whilst also not making a difficult situation more difficult?
  • Maintaining O&S during covid and zoom meetings but now it is up and running evidence gathering meeting tonight and another next week

Executive Scrutiny relationship 

  • Better engagement. Seeing scrutiny as support.
  • Discuss with other officers what decision are coming up during the year so you can help facilitate some pre-decision scrutiny before it even goes on the forward plan.
  • Trust and engagement

Senior Officer buy-in

  • Better communication and understanding of scrutiny’s role
  • I do feel better that others feel the same as me about senior officer buy-in – I am not alone!!

Virtual meetings, health scrutiny, recovery planning and work planning. Scrutiny zoom notes #5


Here are the notes from scrutiny officers zoom meet-up on 10th June. We used an Open Space format and here are the top tips shared by participants from their various conversations. Thanks everyone!

Virtual meetings

  • appeared to be more interest in our virtual meeting than our normal meeting. Good opportunity to enhance knowledge of what scrutiny is about.
  • IT equipment used by members should be corporate so it can be fully supported. Not 40 members with all different equipment.
  • Different systems produce the same outcome!!
  • ensure everybody involved has plenty of opportunity to familiarise themselves with the technology and meeting etiquette
  • ensure sufficient number of support staff available to aid the efficient running and broadcasting of a meeting
  • Quick learning as we go along …
  • Creating a private WhatsApp group with the Chair during virtual meetings
  • It is interesting that not all authorities have live meetings but put them online afterwards.
  • Learning from experience and adapting approach to virtual meetings as may need to be different to face to face meetings due to video meeting fatigue etc.
  • Members more mindful of live meetings.
  • More public watching virtual meetings than would have attended at the Town Hall.
  • need to ensure additional democratic services support for meetings to deal with technical support.
  • Officer Support during meetings
  • Resource intensive – require other officers to help webcast the meetings.
  • the importance of practice
  • Understand the application you are going to use for your meetings and become an expert before any meetings take place.
  • Practice practice practice.
  • Get team support when holding meetings.
  • Useful to watch online again to capture text for the minutes.
  • Virtual meetings – Different tech being used across UK – Not always the same approaches.
  • Virtual meetings – some Councils needing extra resources to run the meetings virtually. Puts a strain on others.
  • Virtual meetings are very resource intensive
  • Whether the minutes for online meetings should be shorter/different from those for physical meetings at the Town Hall.
  • Never ask for Feedback via email/questionnaire get it from people before they leave the room
  • Retaining the use of virtual meetings for use in the future
  •  Acknowledge extra resources for virtual meetings
  • Trying to get hold of the paid version of Zoom
  •  Virtual meetings preparation is key before formal meetings
  • Continuing to use video meetings for evidence gathering and member briefings

Health scrutiny

  • doing health scrutiny at the right level – local, sub-regional etc. how to decide which level?
  • it’s time to start engaging with NHS partners again
  • remember JHOSCs
  • general concern about NHS transparency
  • Is the focus too much on hospitals and not enough on care in care homes or the community?
  • June 15th deadline for letting NHS England which changes are going to be permeant
  • link into normal health scrutiny workplan in addition to Covid19.
  • Possible need for informal meetings with partners before launching into a formal public meeting.
  • Possible pan-London scrutiny
  • Getting health scrutiny up and running again
  • can individual health scrutiny committees actually look at covid response or does it need to be wider (sub regional)?
  • health scrutiny – challenge on whether the pandemic means they will organise themselves differently in future – and not stop footprints!!

Recovery planning

  • pre-empt politics and guide focus towards service outcomes
  • involve all in the recovery planning phase and the scrutiny of it
  • Getting CEX and senior officer buy-in, Leader and other group leaders support.
  • Scrutiny briefings with the Chair and key officers
  • Scrutiny to look at Recovery Plan
  • Scrutiny to look at recovery plan (as well!)
  • scrutiny to start with recovery plan and drill down from there
  • To drill down on the recovery plan

Work planning

  • ‘Paper criteria’ for work planning
  • all Councils working at different speeds in work planning
  • All future topics will be within the context of Covid
  •  Live virtual meetings (so far) have stifled debate

Innovation

  • Innovation as ‘bravery to fail’ and creating small changes/innovations that making failing more palatable!
  • draw on techniques like agile programme management and design thinking- don’t believe that the parameters of governance will restrict your ambition to innovate!