What's new North of the border?

The Scottish Improvement Service launched its website earlier in April, and it looks really good. The Improvement Service is a little like the Improvement and Development Agency for Scotland, but it's a joint venture between the Scottish Executive, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE).

With a pedigree like that, they ought to know a thing or two about partnerships...and they do. There are some excellent resources on partnership governance in their Partnerships & Joint Ventures section. It includes a lengthy, but at first glance, fairly comprehensive guide that they commissioned (?) called Partnership Working Tools Review. It outlines 23 tools (many in checklist form) that you can use within partnerships. They cover, among 19 other things:

• consensus building
• effective meetings
• shaping partnership direction
• choosing partnership projects
• exploring added value.

These resources will be permanently linked from our PM Partner collaborative website on the resources page.