April Policy and Performance round-up

Welcome to another edition of the Policy and Performance CoP roundup.

As always, you can find the full round-up in the community wiki - but I’m posting the highlights of the Policy and Performance Community of Practice here.

 

 

Using the CoP to support your business

 

The Policy and Performance Community of Practice (CoP) is still growing and now has over 1200 members from a range of local authorities and other public policy backgrounds.  This year we want to focus much more closely on developing the Community a vital source of intelligence on practice and innovation for the sector.

 

 

The Policy Challenge – get in it to win it

 

To develop the CoP as the “go to” place for your policy and performance needs (and to have a bit of fun), we’re introducing the Policy Challenge.

 

Last week saw elections for many local authorities in England and, so we know many members of this CoP will be spending quite a bit of time briefing new councilors over the next month or so.   Upload your councillor briefing papers to win a set of fabulous prizes.

 

 

Events

 

Following the success of our first online conference (CSR07: Achieving More with Less – read the evaluation report here) on the CoP platform, we’ll be hosting our second conference on Customer Insight beginning on 10 June.   Register for the conference in the Customer Insight conference CoP  or find out more about the event here:  http://tinyurl.com/3gjuko

 

 

Forum posts

 

Can you help? Supporting local government improvement – this month’s requests for information:

 

·         Mapping Public Funding Streams

·         Housing training in London

·         Benchmarks, checklists and self-assessments for organisational development

·         Models of organisational performance

·         Equalities impact assessments

 

Consultation requests: Can you help the IDeA shape the new resources management benchmark?  

 

See these and more here

 

Blog posts of note

 

Noel Hatch, from Kent, says we need to “free up our knowledge” and wonders “How do we synthesise the discussions and nuggets of knowledge that are posted and shared on our communities of practice and how could these be fed up the decision making food chain?” 

 

We haven’t made this explicit in the past, but that’s exactly what we do.  Contributions from community members have a direct impact on the development of IDeA strategy and support and we’re always looking for specific examples to support the LGA in their lobbying role on behalf of local government.  The more we share within this community, good practice, innovations, concerns and queries – the more credible we’ll be.   As a community we need to have a discussion about how best to do this - the conversation starts here.

                                                            

 

·         James Winterbottom, from Wigan, writes about transformation and routes to improvement.

 

·         Ingrid Koehler writes about social media and citizen engagement here and here and how communities of practice can use these techniques to deliver innovation.

 

·         Andrew Ross tells us the 5 things we need to know this month (about sustainable development).

 

·         Vicki Goddard highlights Local Government Ombudsman Jerry White’s challenging lecture on the constitutional position of local government.

 

·         Hamish Dibley highlights the people challenges – both from the outside (empowering communities) and the inside (the recruitment timebomb?).

 

See all blog entries here:

  

New documents

 

Slides and presentations from the Policy and Performance Reference Group on Customer Insight have been uploaded to the community of practice.