PM Partner update

Latest additions from the PM Partner project

A new document on assessing your partnership from Wycombe has been uploaded. I made some slight changes to the leadership and decision making topics (which will be introduced tomorrow) based on emailed suggestions and comments have also been added to the leadership and barriers and breakthroughs page. I've also added some links to new resources from the Criminal Justice page and the Users and citizens page.
I've also added a new page called Help Please - I see this as more of a bulletin board a place to request help. There's already one request I've posted to someone who emailed me directly, feel free to answer his query or post your own.


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Partnership quick hits

Topics: Lots of good stuff about partnerships

The Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs Rural Services Review 2006 highlights loads of good practice stories about delivering better services in rural areas. Many of these highlight the role of partnerships.

Chester City Council and Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council work together in a back office IT partnership (strategy, procurement and services) that save their residents loads of money.

The Confederation of British Industry says that local people must be more involved and engaged if public services are to improve. For example:

• In Woking, a sample of 350 residents are polled every three months on how satisfied they are with street cleaning services. Ten per cent of the contractor's fee is at risk based on the results, and the contract can be terminated if satisfaction dips too low;
• In Breckland, members of the public are given disposable cameras to identify 'grot-spots' in need of clean-up by the street cleaning firm, and in Welwyn & Hatfield the contractor has given PDAs (hand-held computers) to selected 'community champions' so they can send emails flagging up problems for action;
• In Slough, the involvement of the public through a consultation board or 'citizen's jury' has contributed to the town becoming one of the cleanest in the South East.
  
  

There are more examples in their report: Empowering Neighbourhoods: Delivering better local services for local people (link opens a pdf document). The Breckland example sounds a lot like the award winning Love Lewisham site, I blogged about on Friday.

The Home Office has published Tackling Robbery: Practical Lessons from the Streetcrime initiative which has a very straightfoward performance management approach and some common sense lessons for partnerships. (At least it says it does - I haven't read it). There's also a link to an interesting looking publication called Become a problem solving crime analyst - in 55 small steps

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Blogging for democracy

Topics: blogging, communities of practice, online communities

It looks like the government has taken notice of the trend for blogging and online community spaces. At least Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Education and Skills has in a recent speech called Democracy and education; democracy in education.

So politicians need to recognise that, whilst people are not joining traditional institutions, activism is enjoying a renaissance. We should feed that trend and not try to deny it: with more emphasis on what local parties can do with community campaigning, and less on the centralised dictats of the past.

We also have to reach out to people in a more emotional way – as Mario Cuomo, the great American Democrat, said, the trouble with political parties is that they “campaign in poetry but govern in prose”. It’s not impossible for big organisations to touch people’s hearts.

We must also seize the full potential of modern technologies. Some of you might be amongst the 90 million people with sites on MySpace. Virtual communities are increasingly places people we go to make friends, have fun, do business or share knowledge. Something like 100,000 blog sites are created every day; and political blog sites now receive more hits than official party websites.

That's what PM Partner is about - sharing knowledge across the public, private and voluntary sector on how to make partnerships run more smoothly and deliver better outcomes locally.

(Thanks to Stuart Bruce for the tip)

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Friday funday

The lighter side of local government: art or vandalism?

Well, guerilla artist Banksy makes it back to Friday Funday. I posted about him before and his recent work in Bristol stencilled onto a wall opposite Bristol Town Hall and on a building owned by the council. Instead of instantly removing the graffitti, Bristol decided to ask residents what they thought about keeping it.

A Bristol City Council spokeswoman said: "Nearly 500 people logged into the site during the discussion period, and of those choosing to respond, 97% supported the work. "Common themes highlighted the fact that Banksy is a Bristolian, and that the city should be celebrating and embracing his internationally renowned
work."

Most people seemed in favor of keeping it - including the current tenants of the building - a sexual health clinic. But not everyone's so keen on the idea.

Cllr Spud Murphy said: "It's absolutely stupid. They will have them all over the city now. They have given a licence for everybody in Bristol to do it. These graffiti artists all think they are better than each other and try to out-do each other." He said the council spends thousands of pounds cleaning up graffiti and Banksy should be fined as an example to others.

Cllr Murphy said: "They know who did it - normally they say if they can find out who did it they would be prosecuted. Well, in this case, they know it was this Banksy so he should be fined. "It's ludicrous. The council have gone mad."

Perhaps Councillor Murphy might care to see the results of Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's proposed anti-graffitti policy before going down the fine route. Mayor Goodman wants to put taggers in the stocks.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman says he wants to put those who deface property in stocks where the public can "dab" paint on their faces as they sit with their heads and arms locked in place. The city attorney's office is researching whether this would pass constitutional muster, Goodman said last week.

The verbose mayor swears he's serious. "This would be a great deterrent," he said. "I want to see if it falls under cruel or unusual punishment. If not, great. Let's put it into effect."

And if that seems harsh, you should have seen his early blue skies policy thinking.

When asked to compare this to his other medieval proposal of lopping off taggers' thumbs, the mayor dismissed his earlier comment.

"We were not going to cut thumbs off," he said. "That was to begin discussions on the issue."

Yes, no doubt that did stimulate a policy debate.

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Still on the topic of graffitti - but on a more serious note, I just spotted this website today - Love Lewisham. Residents can post pictures of what's broken in Lewisham (e.g. graffitti, abandoned cars, broken street furniture) as a way of reporting it to the council to get it fixed. I think this is a fantastic idea. I would upload pictures to a similar website for my local council. It would also seem like this is a great way to help council services prioritise which jobs need to be done first - because public servants can see what's in the worst nick.

But the website isn't just about showing pictures of what's broken, but what's been done to fix them. Many of the pictures have additional details, including what action was taken and before and after shots

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And just for fun, here's some graffitti I spotted near the IDeA offices recently. It's not as fancy as a Banksy, but it makes me smile, so I don't think I'll be reporting it.




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PM Partner roundup

The PM Partner daily update

More discussion on the on the partner perspective page about the user perspective. I've added a page on User and Citizen engagement (another week's topic) and added links for a couple of resources. On the performance management page there was a really interesting contribution from Keith Morris (IPF) which followed from yesterday's contribution by Stephen Kane (Chichester) on the difference between Results Accountability (for the whole partnership) and Performance Accountability (for individual partnerships). He also links a really interesting resource www.raguide.org used in North America for community partnerships. I've cross linked this to the accountability page (a topic for another week).

See the current week's topics
See the full programme

Also thanks to Stuart who commented on yesterday's update telling me that one of my links was no good. Today I've checked all the links before posting!

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Public health: Nanny knows best?

Topics: public health, Tony Blair's speech and related links

Prime Minister Tony Blair made quite a speech on public health by promoting healthier choices yesterday. Some of it was about the philosophy of government - i.e. how much role for the State, what can government do most effectively - and that's a debate for another time.

But here were some quite interesting bits that caught my eye (emphasis below is all mine).

In the future, health care cannot be just about treating the sick but must be about helping us to live healthily; this requires more from all of us, individuals, companies and Government and for Government it has to encourage, it has to inform, but, if necessary, in a tougher way than ever before, it has to be prepared to act.
....

Our public health problems are not, strictly speaking, public health
questions at all. They are questions of individual lifestyle - obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse, diabetes, sexually transmitted
disease. These are not epidemics in the epidemiological sense. They are the result of millions of individual decisions, at millions of points in time. For example, 20 per cent of all children in the UK eat no fruit or vegetables in a week. 65 per cent of adults and half of all children do not take the recommended amount of exercise.
...

The truth is we all pay a collective price for the failure to take shared responsibility. That doesn't mean you stop treating people in the NHS who smoke or force people to do what they don't choose to do but it does mean that Government should play an active role in the way the enabling state should work: empowering people to choose responsibly.
...

In 10 years time, and if possible long before, I want the health debate in Britain not to be confined to the excellent NHS that treats people when they are sick; but to the broader national health service that is about prevention as much as cure, about personal responsibility as much as collective responsibility, about the quality of living as much as life expectancy.

_____________________

And in related stories...

• Tony Blair calls for the end of the Nanny state, as people are less likely to respond to Government campaigns and more likely to respond to "social marketing" of healthy messages from the private and voluntary sector.
• Blair told there's a bigger role for the private sector in public health provision in a series of "expert papers" on public health and healthier choices.
• A paper from the DfES on the role of education in children's long term health.
• There's more than one benefit in going to the gym for the over 50s (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

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Partnership news - quick hits

Topics: quick links to partnership news in Staffordshire, Hammersmith & Fulham, Oldham, Bradford, Lewisham, Waltham Forest, Kirklees and Barking & Dagenham

It's a day at the races for Staffordshire Plus partnership.

More than 150 senior decision makers from across local government descended on Uttoxeter Racecourse recently. However, their aim was not to fleece the bookmakers but to get the starting price on the nation’s largest public service improvement partnership. Boasting 13 organisations, Staffordshire Plus has secured £850,000 in Government funding to bolster the ability of its partners to deliver first-rate services.

Hammersmith and Fulham agencies join forces to beat crime and local businesses pay (willingly)

A partnership has been hailed for working to cut crime in Hammersmith & Fulham. The Hammersmith & Fulham Partnership Against Crime (HAFPAC) is an independent charity set up to help the police and council prevent crime in the borough. The idea is simple, local business club together to fund initiatives that support crime reduction in the borough.

Private sector backs investment/regneration schemes in four deprived areas of Oldham, Bradfrod, Lewisham and Waltham Forest.

Phil Woolas [Local Government Minister] said: "The project demonstrates the Government's belief that the private sector plays a key role in regenerating our areas that have historically suffered from a lack of investment. Government cannot solve all the problems on its own but by working with the private sector and local government we can now work with communities to achieve real and lasting improvements.

Kirklees Community Safety Partnership goes high-tech in anti-crime vigillance.

Perpetrators of anti-social behaviour face being caught with new technology that aims to make the Kirklees district a safer place to live and work. Launched by Kirklees Safer Communities Partnership, The Partnership Surveillance Service has the latest audio and visual covert and overt equipment to enable the Kirklees Anti-Social Behaviour Unit to collect evidence that can be used in court proceedings against perpetrators

Barking & Dagenham focuses on ever-closer working relationships with its partners

Called Barking Dagenham Compact, the agreement aims to increase understanding,improve working relationships and extend co-operation between the Council, the PCT and the voluntary and community sector. It also sets out to improve the voluntary and community sector's capacity to provide relevant services to all communities and achieve high quality outputs, support initiatives to achieve Best Value in the provision of services by the Council and the PCT and enhance the effectiveness of the organisations meeting the needs of all the communities in the Borough.

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PM Partner update

Daily roundup of contributions to the PM Partner project

26 July update: Several new comments on the performance management page and on the partner perspective page, which has created an interesting dialogue. I continue to get new registrations - bringing us close to 400 participants. A few people are trying their hand at the concept by playing in the sandpit.

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FAME

Topics: information sharing, partnership frameworks

There's an interesting interview with Andrew De'Ath, the Programme Manager for the North East Connects FAME project (Framework for Multi-Agency Environments).

FAME is a partnership between Newcastle City Council, North East Centre of Excellence, North East Connects, the University of Newcastle, and supported by the DCLG. FAME is developing a framework and a toolkit of online products which will help local authorities and agencies to effectively address complex issues of multi-agency partnership formation. Trust, security, data sharing and governance across a wide range of environments is needed, including children’s services, health care and work with vulnerable adults.

I had a quick look at the FAME website. They are doing some interesting stuff - including an online, interactive Readiness Assessment Tool or RAT. It takes a minute or two to work out how to use it (e.g. is 4 the "best" or is 1 "the best"?) and the tool is very IT focused, but if you're looking for something that can help you assess who well the information systems link across partner agencies or your data and information governance - this looks like quite a good tool.

The website also features a few case studies and you can register with the site - presumably to get updates as the project progresses.

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Get stuck in

This morning I emailed a whole bunch of people who had expressed interest in the PM Partner project inviting them to get stuck in.

******************

I'm writing to you because you expressed interest in the IDeA's project on performance management in partnership, called PM Partner. The PM Partner project goes live today and I hope you'll take the opportunity to participate. I'm really excited about this project - this collaborative approach is a new way of sharing knowledge. A feature on the project will be published on IDeA Knowledge today.

How it works:
If you've taken part in one of the online conferences, then it works quite a lot like that. We'll facilitate contributions from across the public, private and voluntary sector bringing together learning on better performance management in partnerships. Each week we'll introduce a couple of new topics to focus on - and we'll facilitate each of these topics for two weeks. Don't worry if you miss a topic - because they'll be left on the site for the duration of the 10 week project - so there's still a chance to contribute. But by focusing on topics we can ensure that more people will be able to look at and reflect on your contribution or burning question. You'll always be able to find the current topic(s) from the home page and our suggested list of future topics.

But this isn't just a discussion forum. It's a collaborative website. You can add material, upload your own tools, or create links to your own organisation's website (or someone else's). If you're new to the process, check out our Getting Started page. That has a few simple tips for the site and links to further information including some simple ground rules for using the site. For more details on the project check out this page.

Each week either Adrian Barker or I will email you with the new topic and a bit of introduction, and as the project progresses, we'll highlight the contributions that have been made or point you to questions colleagues have posed that perhaps you can answer. You can also keep up with the project through this blog: www.ideapolicy.blogspot.com

What's on this week?
This week we're starting with an overview of performance management in partnership, assessing your partnership's performance management, and Partnership Killers: a list of key barriers to effective partnerships - as the project progresses we want to build up a resource about how to address them. Check them out and please share with us your own experiences or partnership assessment tools (or let us know about one you've used).

How to contribute:
You can visit the PM Partner site and comment on any page without registering - in that sense it works just like a discussion forum. But to get full credit for contributions or to add your own material - you need to be registered on the PM Partner site. But it's easy. Simply visit the registration page and select your own user name and password. The registration process also allows you to receive updates from the site - it's automatically set to "Never", but I would suggest that you change that to reflect how involved you want to be (you can change it later). I have mine set to every 2 hours, but you might want daily or at least weekly. You won't get any emails if nothing has changed on the site.

Pass it on:
This project will work best if we have the widest possible involvement from across local government, health, criminal justice and the private and voluntary sectors. This way we can get to grips with the cross-sector concerns, language and technical issues on performance management in partnerships. So please forward this email on to any of your partner colleagues who might be interested.

We're looking forward to working with you.

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Friday funday

The lighter side of local government.

It's been so hot and humid lately in London, I practically feel like I'm back in the South. So this weeks Friday Funday pieces come from my home state of Tennessee and hot and sticky Mississippi.

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Although many in Britain don't really know where it is, a lot of people think it's in the Deep South. Nope. And it's not in the Mid West either. It's in a place that we Tennesseans call the MidSouth. But wherever you think it is, it's foresquare in the middle of the Bible Belt.

Take our attitude to alcohol. You can't drink it 'til you're 21 and after that you should keep it quiet. And state legislators are serious about keeping booze out of the hands of youngsters - they've passed a law that requires anyone, and I mean anyone to show ID. Head full of gray hair, walking with a cane and saying things like "Why I remember when you could by a six pack for a dollar and a quarter," won't cut it. You've got to show ID.

I think it's a silly law, but not only that it takes some of the fun out of visiting home. When I have been carded (asked for ID), I'm flattered - it means I look under 30, the usual visual guideline. I usually respond with "Aren't you sweet?" Now I know they say that to all the girls.

********

Insurance is a gamble. But down in Biloxi, they played the game and came up lucky. Well, not lucky exactly...

If you remember, Hurrican Katrina famously wiped out much of New Orleans, but it actually hit the Gulf coast of Mississippi and Alabama even harder. The town of Biloxi receives much of its local revenue through levies on gambling and casino income to the tune of around $20 million dollars a year. When Katrina tore up the casinos (literally) it also tore through a big portion of the city council's revenue budget.

Fortunately, Biloxi's mayor had just bought a "business interuption policy" in June, covering $10 million in casino revenues for the bargain price of $92,000 - that they cashed in, in August.

(Story tips thanks to Governing's blog: the 13th Floor)

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Two per cent solution

My colleague, Gareth Wall, over at the Centre for Public Scrutiny has just sent me an interesting article on online communities. The article seems to say that when building an online community - lots of people will view what's being built, but only 1 in 10 will "interact" with it and only one in 100 will actually "build content". The "one per-centers".

Bradley Horowitz of Yahoo points out that much the same applies at Yahoo:
in Yahoo Groups, the discussion lists, "1% of the user population might start a
group; 10% of the user population might participate actively, and actually
author content, whether starting a thread or responding to a thread-in-progress;
100% of the user population benefits from the activities of the above groups,"
he noted on his blog in February.

The article's author takes this as discouraging, but I don't. (And I bet Gareth doesn't find it discouraging either.) When we've run online conferences in the past, we' have higher than 10% interaction rates - much closer to 20%. And as a result we got three excellent online conference reports that have informed the work of the PMMI project and helped us build improvement tools - particularly around culture and councillor involvement in PM. Because we translated that learning into a variety of media - we were able to share it with more than just 100% of originally "user population" - but a population that was far wider and more diverse.Plus rather than "building content" per se, we want you to largely share what you've already got.


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Healthier communities

Topics: public health, performance management

I met with Sue Crutchley today who has just joined the IDeA working with the Healthier Communities team. Part of her remit will be to look at performance management issues and I'll be working alongside her on a part time basis.

This is a really exciting opportunity for me - as I'm keen to get more involved with health policy for a variety of reasons.

Because the community of practice approach has worked so successfully for us in the PMMI project (www.idea.gov.uk/performance) and looks so promising for PM in Partnerships (http://pmpartner.editme.com) - we're exploring the same approach for healthier communities. For exampple, helping local groups share their learning on using health data to set priorities and deliver improved outcomes.

Because the IDeA has traditonally had an audience with mainly local government - it will be important to reach out to our partner colleagues in PCTs, health intelligence networks, and health data observatories.

I'm looking forward to the challenge. Although, I have to admit that working on issues of healthier choices only highlights my less than stellar ones - and makes me feel a tad guilty. John Reid famously gave up the fags when he became Health Secretary - maybe I could, too.

PM Partner

As you'll have seen from an entry last week, we had an event to launch the PM Partner project and discuss the way ahead. Presentations and feedback from the day are available on the agenda page the PM Partner site.

I'd also like to highlight some shared practice uploaded by one of the participants today. Nic Hutchins from the Peak District National Park, has shared some of their case studies from their partnership capacity building programme. I posted on it when I attended their learning event in May.

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Too darn hot!

It's hot out there. The NHS has some tips on dealing with the heat. I hope you're managing to stay cool.

The LGA has provided advice for councils to help older people, who are particularly vulnerable in the heat. The TUC (Trades Union Congress)is looking after those of still in working age has called for a "dress down summer" to keep people cool. But be careful how you apply the rules:

The TUC advises that the best way to keep cool at work is to sport more casual attire in the office: in the case of men, coming in without jacket or tie, perhaps, or even wearing shorts. From the Guardian:

Bosses who give summer dress the green light will not only save on energy bills but also, by providing a cool and comfortable working environment, improve productivity, the TUC says.

The employment law consultancy Croner has advised employers to apply dress codes equally to men and women or risk facing claims of sex discrimination from disgruntled male workers.

Women "get away" with more casual, cooling clothing in the workplace than do men, according to 55% of the people polled by YouGov for Croner. Such sartorial discrimination appears to be more widespread in summer, allowing women to flout dress codes completely in some cases.

Of course, there is one way that a man can stay cool and dapper in hot weather - it's an old Southern tradition: the seersucker suit



And there are women's seersucker suits, too.

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Measuring Health Impact

The final speaker of the Policy Network conference was Erica Ison. She's an independent Health Impact Assessment specialist.

Many councils and other agencies already undertake assessments of environmental impact (required by law) or sustainability or social impact during the options evaluation stage of major projects. Health impact assessments (HIA) are not required but may become more of a feature as local government - along with partners - takes a leading role in ensuring healthier communities overall and reducing health inequalities within communities.

Erica mostly talked about some of the main theory around HIA - and a bit about the methodology. A robust HIA can't be done in a day, but you can conduct one using only already available data and even if you don't conduct a full HIA - you can take an HIA approach for your options appraisal - at least taking account of effects of health on the community.

The Mayor of London has already made the political commitment to conduct HIA for his London programmes and these are undertaken by the London Health Commission - an independent agency.

There is a web resource for HIA - who's done them, techniques and approaches. I don't have the URL now, but I'll look for it when I get a chance. Apparently you can search on "HIA gateway" - and the resource is hosted on the NICE website.

Personally, I think there are some interesting issues around HIA and on the concept of reducing health inequalities generally. For example, if the health of the population as a whole increased, but improved for some groups more than others (in a way that increased the disparity of outcomes), but everyone was at least somewhat better off, would that be wrong? What if that were the least worst solution?

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I attended a workshop run by Amelia Cookson from the Local Government Information Unit (LGIU).

A number of interesting issues were raised - and the LGA/IDeA new performance framework was also cited in a positive way. One of the policy ideas that caught my eye was a written constitution or compact to settle the argument about separation of powers between central and local. As an American, this seems quite natural to me - though it's not as if a written arrangement settles the matter for good. State and federal government, and state and local still have their wrangles and disputes. There are still boundary issues and squabbles over money, but state and local government are far more autonomous.

The idea of a written British constitution may not be popular - but the LGIU aren't the only ones to raise it. David Cameron, Conservative party leader, has pushed out the notion of a British Bill of Rights. It might be worth noting that the US Bill of Rights that has served us pretty well (withstanding even the destructive instincts of some executive administrations) was lifted almost word for word from the English Bill of Rights from 1692 (err...don't quote me on the date).

Another thing Amelia mentioned was using performance management as a political tool to achieve the democratic mandate. I think she felt PM was little used by politicians and certainly not used particularly often or well by backbench politicians.

Through the PMMI project we tried to provide a tool for councillors through A Councillor's Guide to PM. It was written by a councillor (Malcolm Grimston, LB Wandsworth). You can find it at www.idea.gov.uk/performance

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Finally, I'm writing this on the train which has folks standing in the aisles and vestibules. It is PACKED with central government economists who have also been on a conference in Nottingham. Just imagine - if this train were to crash... It might well be the end of dismal government forecasts for some time to come.

If there's no economist to make a forecast - does that mean nothing will happen?
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Friday funday

The lighter side of local government

Do you live in London or the South East? Not sure where to take the family this weekend to enjoy the good weather? Sure, you could go to the seaside or one of London's many fine parks, but let me suggest something that promises to be both fun and educational.

Open day at the Lambeth Cemetery - this Sunday the 16th of July from 10:30 am.

Not only will there be an exhibition of green coffins for the environmentally conscious, but there will be demonstrations of grave preparation and stone masonry.

Did I mention the rides (yes - rides!) and the parade of hearses through the ages? Or the organ music (both popular and classical). Or what might possibly be the world's fastest hearse (200 mph!)?

Kudos to Lambeth Council for bringing a new twist to engagement with users (or should that be non-users?).

I'm dying to go, but sadly, I've already made plans for the day.




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Fancy a flutter?

I've been at the Policy Network Annual conference today - which has been quite good - I'll try to summarise the broad range of fantastic learning I picked up today.

Mark Gaynor, a Group Director from the London Borough of Havering (his portfolio was much bigger than I could remember, but included regeneration and adult education. He suggested we all need to be a bit more risk seeking in our local government leadership role - to take a bit of a gamble in setting out our vision. Good thing they have that attitude as Havering has one of the short listed locations for the Super Casino within its boundaries -in Rainham, if I remember correctly, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Tom McGuire, is Executive Director of Community 7 - a community based housing association in Liverpool. He works in an area that - until now- has been largely left behind in the urban transformation in the area. He has a fantastic - photo filled presentation - delivered in a broad Liverpool accent - and begins with a set of classic Scouse jokes - including "Did you hear that Bernie Eccleston is moving Silverstone to Liverpool? - We have the labour skills to remove the wheels from a car in under three seconds*". Jokes aside, their work on neighbourhood renewal was inspirational - and demonstrated the complexity of working in partnership and the rewards of looking for best practice from afar and engaging with the community at hand.

We also had a presentation from the Disability Rights Commission on the new Disability Equality Duty. I have to admit I don't know much about this area, but it looks very complicated! The DRC has a website with tips and good practice examples at www.dotheduty.org.uk (I think - I'll check the link when I'm back in the office).

And the day finished with Rob Roberts from Peterborough City Council - who gave a presentation on their performance management approach - without using the words performance management. Before working in local government, he was with Yell - the folks who bring us the yellow pages and www.yell.co.uk - and he's brought some of his customer service experience to the council. They are now doing follow up phone calls with users of council services to evaluate what their experience was like - which is bring rewards in enhanced delivery.

There were also workshops. I delivered a workshop based on the outputs of our PMMI project (www.idea.gov.uk/performance) this morning. Participants seemed very engaged and there was a lively discussion. It's certainly very rewarding to know that people are interested in our work.

Regular readers will know I've not been well recently - and I actually felt I might faint at one point during my introductory spiel - but you know the PM show must go on - and I don't think anyone noticed. It did mean that I skipped the afternoon workshop to have a lie-down, which was a shame - as they all looked good.

Launched

We had our launch event today, which - if I do say so myself, went really well. This is down to three great speakers, Richard Spoerry who talked about the Kent partnership and LAA experience (they were one of the early LAA pilots), Tom Conniffe from LB of Hammersmith and Fulham, and Mark Wardman from the Audit Commission. And even more it was down to the enthusiasm and engagement of the participants.

The event looked at the broader issues of partnership and performance management and also how we'll make the project work to ensure that we have both robust information and robust discussion.

To find out more about the project visit http://pmpartner.editme.com/projectlaunch

I'm off to the Policy Network annual conference right now (I'm on the train -remote blogging), but hope to get the PM Partner site updated with all the great contributions from today as soon as possible. Perhaps I will be able to get access to the Internet while there.

PM Partner launch

Tomorrow we have our launch event for the PM Partner: more effective partnerships project. Next week the launch will be virtual - but that's where the real work begins.

Regular readers will know I was off sick last week (and I'm still struggling a little), but I'm really excited about the event. It should be good. We have some great speakers and activities - and of course, I'll be blogging about it all later - including how you can get involved in this project.

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Neighbourhood health

Topics: public health, locality governance

At last week's Local Government Association conference there were calls to "replace the NHS with the LHS" - Local Health Service.

Chairman of the LGA Social Care Board, Cllr David Rogers, said:-

"This is a serious debate designed to spark new ideas about how or if the National Health Service needs to be brought closer to the people they serve. People say that health and social care are two sides of the same coin, the question posed is whether health and social care should become one side of the same coin?"

An LGA commissioned report - Improving Services, Improving Governance – calls for the boundaries between the NHS and local government to be torn down and powers devolved to community level to improve services.

Professor Gerald Wistow, visiting professor of social policy at the London School of Economics and author of the report:

"Decision making and spending by local government and the NHS must be brought closer together. The support that now exists for preventative, community-based solutions is not enough on its own. There has to be change to the way services
are controlled as well as a policy context."

I reckon this to a good move, particularly for matters of public health. But with local discretion comes tough decisions about where to allocate money. This doesn't just mean tough decisions by white-coated professionals and health bureaucrats, but working with local people to make some of the decisions so that everyone can own the trade-offs this will necessarily entail.


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Slashing targets

Topics: performance measurement news round-up

Blogging has been light this week because I've been off sick. I'm still sick and still off work - but there are a couple of things I thought were worth noting.

Ruth Kelly's speech to the LGA Conference:

And last, but certainly not least, I want to see a set of government departments that realise that their job is to set clear frameworks for delivery and reporting, not to interfere and micro-manage.

To summarise, I want us to move

• from the ‘top down state’ to the ‘trusting state’,
• from ‘earned autonomy’ to ‘presumed autonomy’,
• from a process driven system to a people driven one.

I know this is ambitious, but I don’t think it is a pipe dream. I guess you have heard some of this vision before and are asking –'is it for real this time?' I’m clear that it is. Because our vision for local government is rooted in realism - the best councils are already showing that it works. And because central government is prepared to work with you in new ways.

A new publication mapping the Local Government Performance Reporting Landscape

This report gathers evidence from in-depth case studies with four high-performing councils to map the performance controls imposed by Government on local authorities. It also identifies the perceptions of those councils about the value of existing performance controls in terms of high, medium and low value.

And for you data lovers, State of the region report Vital Signs from the Government Office Northwest.


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No funday

I'm in the habit of having a Friday Funday post - showing the lighter side of local government. But not today. Today is a day of remembrance.

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Monday funday?

I spent Friday in the garden, so missed this story which would have been perfect for a Friday Funday post on the lighter side of local government.

Patriotic football fans could be fined up to £2,500 for flying the St George's Cross.

Flags flown out of windows or at an angle are technically illegal without formal planning permission from the local authority under an arcane law from 1992.

Of course, this is probably less of a problem now than it was on Friday. %@€# !!!

I'm still breaking the law, but I reckon I should be safe until the World Cup is over.

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Kelly promises fewer targets

A reduction in central government targets is promised.

"Now is the time to start trusting local government and to start trusting local people to make decisions for themselves so they are able to set local priorities that deliver according to local need. We need fewer targets and fewer driven by the centre."

She said a local government white paper in the autumn would propose a reduction in targets, and a lightening of the inspection regime for good performing councils.

Read more in The Guardian.

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Performance and police

Topics: police, partnership, performance, criminal justice

The Association of Police Authorities in conjunction with the Home Office have produced performance management guidance for police authorities . It includes a section on working with partners on performance with case studies.

The guidance as a whole is about 120 pages long, but that includes some quite useful appendices, for example on performance reporting or a self-assessment. There's a summary version of the guidance, too.

This has been added to the PM Partner website in the Criminal Justice perspective.

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