[Dave Mckenna]

Hi Ed,

I think an inspector's perspective would be interesting - particurly around social / childrens' services issues. (There must be many opinions of good and bad scrutiny practice in inspection reports?) My guess is that this perspective would lead more to the idea that scrutiny has a responsibility to 'safeguard the service' rather than simply act as a performance 'consultant'. It links back to the 'fun and laughter' thread and the idea that, as corporate parents, scrutiny members have a clear reponsibility to ensure the quality of services. Perhaps this idea could be extended to other areas of policy? (Economic competence, environmental stewardship?) I think the benefit of this would also be more 'role satisfaction' for members know that their public responsibility is clearer.

I think the idea of 'safeguarding the service' (perhaps another phrase is better?) is clearer and more powerful than 'critical freind' as a basis for the scrutiny performance role.

Maybe worth thinking about?

Although no doubt you have already - I haven't read the nth previous threads....

[Josh Mynott]

There's something about the words "improvins services through performance management" that compel me to comment.

I've posted several comments before on perfomance management threads, so I won't go through all that again. I will only say that members looking at "traffic light" reports and pointing out that some are red and that something should be done, and others are green and should carry on is of extremely limited use. Doing this gives the appearance of scrutiny without the need for any actual scrutiny. Inspectors seem to quite like it.

I'm much more interested in seeing where members have challenged the indicators themselves and the thinking behind them (when I say "thinking", I'm using a broad definition), and also where members have really been allowed to explore and use the raw data to establish for themselves what's going on.

"Safeguarding the service" sounds a little too reactionary. (Mind you, "critical friend" always puts me in mind of Gok Wan, Gillian McKeith, those cleaning women and others in that vein who humiliate people on national TV in the pretence of making their life better and with the pay off of a nice frock / enema / clean kitchen at the end.)

I think the idea scrutiny being custodians of something is a good one, but not of the service. Scrutiny shoudl be custodians of the wellbeing of the people of the area. In other words, the question, whenever presented with a green indicator on a perfomance report can always be the same: "And that's good for the public because...?"

If there's no answer, or a circular answer that refers back to the indicator, then scrutiny can point out that the indicator is useless and ask for some more important information next time!

[Matthew Garrard]

Ed, completely agree with Josh, if this is to be of any use then it really should challenge the "inspector approved" traffic lighting and provide the examples of good practice that move authorities away from this to meaningful scrutiny (and provides something they can rely on when the inspector calls.)

[Ed Hammond]

Josh, Matt - this work will do exactly that. It will unpack and challenge the accepted status quo around "performance management" and suggest some interesting and practical methods that go way beyond churning through RAG reports. This will emphatically *not* be a document which spends three paragraphs explaining the difference between positive and negative polarity.

It will be a document about cultural change and improvement, with a dash of John Seddon thrown in for good measure.

That said, I have yet to get any member volunteers. Could I ask any member lurkers to put their names forward, or officers to suggest members to do this? The responsibilities will be minimal, as I have outlined above.

[Ed Hammond]

The Audit Commission recently produced a paper called "Nothing but the truth?". This was on the subject of data quality. We provided a response which can be found here:

http://www.cfps.org.uk/what-we-do/public...al/?id=115

The framing of the discussion paper inevitably makes our response sound slightly dusty but what should hopefully come across is the general approach that we are taking in producing this report in the New Year on the wider issues to do with performance management and improvement.