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States Greffe
Deputy Kirsten Morel
Minister for Economic Development, Tourism, Sport and Culture
BY EMAIL 28th June 2023 Dear Minister,
Arms Length Organisations’ Key Performance Indicators
The Panel has recently discussed the setting and publication of Arms Length Organisations’ (ALO) Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) further, and would value additional clarification and information in this regard.
In your letter of 20th September 2023 you informed the Panel of the establishment of an Arm’s Length Oversight Board (ALOB). Please could you:
- Identify the membership of the ALOB?
- Provide a copy of the ALOB’s terms of reference?
- Outline how they ensure that ALO’s are held to account to meet the objectives within the CoM Common Strategic Policy?
- Highlight what the twice-yearly grant appraisals involve?
- Are these a blanket approach or specific to each ALO?
- How are they monitored to ensure they link into the CoM’s Common
Strategic Policy?
Having noted that targets and KPIs are agreed annually between ALOs, departmental officers and yourself, as indicated in your letter of 17th March 2023, the Panel would ask how far in advance are these KPIs discussed and set?
In your letter of 17th March 2023 you also informed the Panel that KPIs are part of annual business plans and are reported as part of the ALO’s Annual Reports and Accounts. Upon searching, the Panel has discovered these documents are not readily published. Examples of this include: Jersey Arts Centre, Jersey Consumer Council, Jersey Opera House Limited, Jersey Products Promotion Limited and others.
Please can the business plans and annual reports therefore be provided for all ALOs within your remit for the 2022/23 cycle?
Noting the irregular publishing of KPIs, will you be considering if all ALOS should be requested to upload their business plans and annual reports to their website (including KPIs), and should there be a dedicated page on gov.je for these to be hosted in a central location?
The Panel would expect that ALO KPIs would be centrally reviewed and monitored by the ALOB, with the KPIs correlated with progress and be readily available for inspection. As such, could a spreadsheet with the set KPI and the progress in meeting these be provided for ALOs within your remit please. If no such information or tracker exists, please could you provide explanation for why this is the case and clarification on whether you will direct that such information be gathered and maintained?
During our quarterly hearing of 1st June 2023 you indicated that Digital Jersey, Visit Jersey, Jersey Heritage, ArtHouse Jersey, Jersey Sport and others are cost centres to the Government of Jersey. You stated that, although not official government policy, certain ALOs could be identified as having the opportunity to generate their own income. Having mentioned the Digital Jersey Academy during the hearing, could you please clarify which ALOs can be regarded as pure cost centres, and which could be expected to be partly or wholly self-funding and why?
Also, please provide any statistical or other data analysis performed by or on behalf of the Department that indicates any target elements of KPIs set for any ALOs will improve the Island’s economic performance in line with the Common Strategic Policy. Please also inform the Panel the extent to which you and your officers (or the ALOB) are reviewing KPIs for any specific ALOs to improve the Island’s economic performance in line with the Common Strategic Policy and of the methodology, modelling and data analysis that you and they are performing or using in this respect.
We would be grateful if you could respond to this no later than Wednesday 5th July 2023 in line with the 5 working days approved for responses between Scrutiny Panels and Ministers.
If you have any questions regarding this or our work in general, please do not hesitate to contact me. Please note that unless otherwise stated, all letters will be uploaded to the Scrutiny website as a matter of course.
Yours sincerely,
Deputy Moz Scott
Chair
Economic and International Affairs Scrutiny Panel