I was at a Policy and Performance event earlier this month, where one of the issues raised in my sub-group was the difficulty councils had in communicating with their citizens. This couldn't be better demonstrated by this snippet from a recent Public Sector Forums Newslletter.
This comes courtesy of the West Midlands Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership (RIEP), in a report of a recent workshop designed to see how it could best use £1.3m of funding being set aside to improve leadership and management skills in councils.
"Participants
acknowledged that 'understanding the sectoral context' was a
pre-requisite and that the full range of both personal and
organisational capacities were required to underpin any focus and
emphasis attached to a leadership intervention. ...[T]here are two
themes that represent priorities for Local Authorities at the present
time:
[1] Enabling and supporting community leadership
through improved partnership and locality working to ensure the
delivery of improved community outcomes.
Working for
and with communities in order to understand and meet community needs,
through effective community consultation; understanding, prioritizing,
influencing and delivering improved quality of life indicators, and
recognizing and working with the interdependencies required in place
shaping. Encouraging trust by engaging with and enabling service
priorities to be shaped by all sections of the community. Leading
beyond the authority through effective partnership working; influencing
others and building trust; understanding and mainstreaming integrated
public services; levering in additional resources through partnerships,
and performance managing partnerships which deliver improved community
outcomes."
Or, effectively, in other words: "We need to make sure we involve the right people."
Apparently, this has been submitted to the Plain English Campaign Golden Bull(shit) Awards. I think it stands a very good chance of winning!
Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Posted by: jason kenny | 16 January 2009 at 11:06 AM
Thanks Jason. I don't tend to update this blog very much though. My main blog is at http://steve-dale.net if you want to take a brief look.
Steve
Posted by: Dissident | 18 January 2009 at 04:21 PM