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STATES OF JERSEY
Corporate Services Panel Quarterly Meeting with the Chief Minister
WEDNESDAY, 8th FEBRUARY 2012
Panel:
Deputy J.G. Reed of St. Ouen (Vice-Chairman) Deputy R.J. Rondel of St. Helier
Connétable D.J. Murphy of Grouville
Witnesses:
The Chief Minister Acting Chief Executive
Also Present: [09:59]
Deputy J.G. Reed of St. Ouen (Vice-Chairman):
First of all, I would like to welcome you officially, Chief Minister, and the Chief Executive to our public hearing and also the public and representatives of the media. I would just like to take time to do a little bit of housekeeping. First of all, can I draw everyone's attention to the code of behaviour for members of the public that is displayed on the wall and, in particular, to the following? All electronic devices, including mobile phones, should be switched to silent. The taking of visual images and audio recordings by the public will not be permitted and we would ask that the members of the public do not interfere in the proceedings. When the hearing is closed, please leave quietly and members or witnesses may make themselves available afterwards, but it will be down to their personal decision. For the sake of the witnesses, may I confirm that you have read and understand the witness statement that is in front of you? Great, that is that out of the way. Thank you very much. Just for the record, I would just like quickly to go round the table, so Chief Minister, I would like to ask you to state who you are and your responsibilities.
The Chief Minister:
Yes, I am Ian Gorst . I am Chief Minister.
Acting Chief Executive:
I am John Richardson, Acting Chief Executive.
Connétable D.J. Murphy of Grouville : Dan Murphy, Constable of Grouville .
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Deputy James Reed, the Vice Chair of the Scrutiny Panel.
Deputy R.J. Rondel of St. Helier :
Deputy Richard Rondel, St. Helier 3 and 4.
Mr. W. Millow (Scrutiny Officer): William Millow , Scrutiny Officer.
Ms. S McKee (Scrutiny Officer): Sammy McKee , Scrutiny Officer.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Thank you very much. Chief Minister, I would like to start by asking you what your 3 key priorities are for 2012.
The Chief Minister:
I think that if you, which I know you will have done, look at the Strategic Plan, what I try to do in getting to where we are today is I went through a personal piece of work of looking at all the things that I had said during the election, not only for Senator but for Chief Minister. I asked the other Ministers to do exactly the same and from that we have brought together what we believe are the priorities or that we want to see as the priorities for Government and the Legislature for the next 3 years, and they fit in very much with what I believe are my priorities because I see the Chief Minister as being, to a large extent, one of oversight and seeing that individual departments are delivering on their priorities. So my first priority is exactly as the Strategic Plan says
and that is getting people back to work. Probably I see the 3 social elements of those priorities which is getting people back to work, housing people, providing access to housing and moving forward the health reform. Again, it is ensuring that those 3 priorities are delivered. If I am thinking at departmental level, well, yes, I am chairing the Back to Work political steering group. I am sitting on the Health group. At department level, the priority for the next year is laying the foundations for modernisation of the public service, which again is another of the priorities in the Strategic Plan, and it comes up as very much my personal priorities in the personal political goals that I have set myself and said I wanted to deliver.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
They are, and one could argue that they are broad priorities which are hinted at everyone would support. I suppose the question is that they are focusing on 2012. How are you going to start tackling some of the priorities and issues and delivering change where change is required?
The Chief Minister:
There is always a slight ... in this period before the States have agreed the Strategic Plan, there is always a slight conflict between what Ministers should be getting on and starting to deliver, and waiting for the States Assembly as a whole to agree that they are the priorities that departments should be working to. Having said that, of course, we have already very much started the Back to Work piece of work. We have set up a political steering group. We have got underspend money ready to be allocated. We have increased the number of places on the Advance to Work and Advance to Work Plus. We are going out and speaking to employers to consider how we share their risks, what sort of incentives they might need, what are the difficulties that they are encountering. On the one hand, we have very much started that but I am also conscious that it needs States endorsement before it can really come into full swing. With the modernisation agenda which, I suppose, falls into a number of different categories, we have got the terms and conditions review and that is about modernising terms, as it says, for employees and trying to bring them together. As you know, we now have a disparate number of pay groups working across a lot of different pay scales and the idea is that we would bring them together and change not only the structure but also the culture in the States. Some of that work has started. I have to say it is not quite where I would have hoped it was at this stage but we are not going to look backward, we are looking forward. I hope that the States will agree that is the priority because we have been doing pieces of work and trying to start consultation with those groups of staff, with Ministers and I am not sure if we have shared that yet. I think we were arranging for Scrutiny to come in and have a look at that as well when we last spoke to Sarah.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
If I could just stop you there? I understand obviously your determination and desire to create and gain agreement for a Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan is for 13, 14 and 15 and beyond, not for 2012.
The Chief Minister: Yes, it is.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
We have already agreed the Business Plan for 2012, have we not?
The Chief Minister:
We have agreed the Business Plan for 2012 but we inevitably have this strange period where we have a Business Plan which says one thing, and yet at the start of any new Government and Legislature we have to, under the law, have a Strategic Plan which covers 12, 13 and 14, and you remember we had that argument about at what point do you just carry on with the old Strategic Plan which was, it says on the front I think, that it is a 5-year plan, but because we are all independents it can only be right that we all have a say in what we want to do over the next 3 years and not just pick up what was being done in the past.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
I accept all of that but the reality is that the C.S.R. (Comprehensive Spending Review) programme, for instance, was planned to go from 2011 to 2013, and obviously the States, including you and I, made various decisions and supported the delivery of certain savings. Are you suggesting that the new Council of Ministers are able to ignore the decisions made by the previous Council of Ministers and the States, and start with a clean piece of paper, or do you acknowledge that there is some responsibility for the new Council of Ministers to continue delivering on the agreed aims, direction of the States when they determine the 2012 Business Plan?
The Chief Minister:
Absolutely they do and they are because the Business Plan for 2012, as you rightly say, was agreed previously but we also, under the law, have an obligation to come forward with a new Strategic Plan, and under the law that Strategic Plan will cover the period of this Government. When I first answered your question, it is a difficult balancing act because on the one hand we have got to stick to the spending envelope which was agreed by the States, but on the other hand we have got to come forward with a new Strategic Plan and all States Members have got to decide and agree what their priorities are for the next 3 years.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Just following up regards the Strategic Plan, how do you think the development of the Strategic Plan has progressed to date, and are you happy with the progress?
The Chief Minister:
I am, yes, because that process that we went through in its current form it is quite different from other plans. That might, of course, change when we go to the States because, you are right, there could be amendments but we have really tried to set out what we think those priorities should be rather than trying to create a document which is all things to all people and that you could hang any policy that you wanted or programme that you wanted on a particular hook.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
I am interested to just explore very briefly the differences that you highlight because I have here the 2009-2014 Strategic Plan and I looked, and yes, I would agree that there are quite a considerable number of priorities that are included in the Strategic Plan but they cover all the areas that the new Council of Ministers have identified in the new Strategic Plan. Maybe you could just elaborate on how different do you think this new Strategic Plan will be to the aims and objectives as included in the old one?
The Chief Minister:
We have drilled it right down to 6 priorities and then it will be my aim to, once the States have agreed what those priorities should be, set in place the delivery of those priorities, which is by necessity going to be cross departmental so I want to see departments working together much more than they ever have done in the past, probably not dissimilar to, as you know, the way the Skills Executive work, and if there was an issue that needs to be addressed then you need to get all the people that were involved and have an interest sitting round the table and agreeing which way to go forward but more focused on delivering outcomes for those priorities rather than just a long list of lots of things that we wanted to do so that at the end of 3 years we can say: "These were our priorities. These are how we have delivered against them."
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
In highlighting it, and I fully understand why you would wish to focus on 6 priorities, but presumably you have determined that some of the other priorities that were contained in the 2009-2014 Strategic Plan are no longer at the top of the list. Does that mean to say that some of those areas will be forgotten about, left, set aside as you pursue this more focused agenda?
The Chief Minister:
Business will carry on and departments will carry on as usual. They will have their work to do but I suppose to some extent, yes, we are saying that why does Government not always achieve what it wants to achieve? Why is it often in a position of looking back and saying: "Well, why has it taken us so long to achieve that? Why have we not made any progress on this particular issue?" and if you look at how other sectors work, it is because they prioritised what they want to achieve and what they want to deliver, and say: "No, these are our top priorities. These are the areas where we are going to focus our effort and resource, and these are the areas that we are going to deliver on." In some respects I think you are right. I am asking, obviously via consultation with the community and States Members: "Do you agree that these are the 6 priorities that we should be focusing on?" because it might be that we have got it wrong, and that others think, no, there are other areas we should be focusing our attention because I want us in 3 years' time to be able to look back and say: "Yes, we have delivered against those priorities", so that we, as politicians, can be held to account for delivery or not.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Again, I fully understand your thinking, but presumably in determining those 6 key priorities, you are quite rightly saying that the States have got to make changes on account of this and they have obviously already made those choices, and it would be interesting for you to perhaps explain further what choices have been made. You speak in your forum to the Business Panel about making difficult choices. What are the difficult choices that you believe the Council of Ministers have made to date in identifying those 6 key priorities?
The Chief Minister:
I am not sure that there have been difficult choices to date. The difficult choices will come around by necessity of resource allocation to those priorities, which I know is something that you have spoken about already, and how we are going to allocate the envelope that we have got, the savings we have got to make which the States have said we have got to make with what will potentially be necessary movement or change of resources to deliver those priorities. Those will be the difficult decisions that we have to make going forward.
[10:15]
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
You must be reading my script because you lead quite nicely on to the issue of resources and I think ...
The Chief Minister:
And I could not even read from here if it was the right way up, let alone upside down.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
I agree. As you are well aware, not only I but others, including members of the public and commentators, have raised questions about why has a resources statement not been attached to the Strategic Plan and the Green Paper that is out for consultation?
But it appears some may suggest that the reason behind the Council of Ministers not doing that is in fact that they are well aware that they are going to require more resources than are currently being identified and recognised and described for the period, and that by gaining approval from the States for the Strategic Plan that they will then be able to use that to support additional requests for resources over and above that which have already been agreed and determined by the States. I am not suggesting that is the case but maybe you could respond to that sort of question.
The Chief Minister:
Where do I start with that? I have been very conscious that one of the things I want to do is move the conversation on from purely about money to addressing the social issues that our community faces and this idea of people feeling they have got a future here. That is not to say we do not have to address the monetary issues - we do - but we need to talk about what are the priorities that our community has, wants us to deliver, and then we need to go away and be creative about how we are going to deliver them. There will be, and I know it is going to be a challenge for me in the States the other week, a resources statement to the Strategic Plan when it is launched properly, and Treasury and Resources are working on that resources statement now. They have told me that there will be a stage when States Members will have that statement when they come to debate and approve, I hope, the actual Strategic Plan in, is it May? I think it is May. They are working on a high level resources statement that we might be able to have for the In Committee debate. We will have all the pieces of consultation I saw in my reading last night. There was the compilation of all the responses to date. So that is going to be published for the In Committee debate, and, as I say, I hope that we can have the high level resources implication, but we can rest assured that there will be a resources statement when we come to have to approve the plan itself.
The Connétable of Grouville :
Your last statement is almost idealistic.
The Chief Minister: Which one? [Laughter]
The Connétable of Grouville :
Basically you want to attack all your priorities, and the monetary side is slightly down your list of priorities at the moment. In other words, you want to achieve what you want to achieve, which is very good, but I think we dearly would like to know what the eventual outcome is going to be with money because are we going to be talking about a situation where we are going to be raiding the Rainy Day Fund for instance?
The Chief Minister:
Not in my opinion we are not; no.
The Connétable of Grouville :
So you are content that is not an alternative at the moment?
The Chief Minister:
I have always been very cautious about any use of the Rainy Day Fund and I think that has served our community well, and I see at this point no reason why that should not continue to be our approach. Do not interpret my ... it is not reticence to talk about money, some of it is around timing. Do not interpret my position as one that is not concerned about the money. I am. I cannot not be. I am an accountant, but what I do want to do is we somehow have created an idea that there are those politicians who are only interested in pounds, shillings and pence, and there are those that are only interested in addressing social issues and improving our community. That, to my mind, is a false divide and we need to start ensuring that those are brought together and we do not have that division.
The Connétable of Grouville :
Okay, so I will just follow that on by saying if you reach a situation, which is possible, where you have to choose between your priorities as you have laid out and the monetary side of it, you are going to be in a position of not sitting on a fence but sitting on top of a very nasty hole in some way. I am not really going to ask you what you would do in that situation because it would not really mean very much, but I am saying it in trying to be helpful, and that is at some stage you might have to decide between your priorities and the cash available.
The Chief Minister:
As I have said in answer to James, the difficult decisions will come around. We allocate the resources that we have got. I am not certain that we have had difficult decisions up to now but we will have going forward. This is where I want to move the conversation in the community on because getting people back to work, you can look at that as a cost. We are going to have to invest in training, invest in Advance to Work, invest in one-to-one mentoring, invest in apprenticeships, invest in incentives to help encourage employment. You can see that there is a cost but that is ignoring the cost over here of those individuals who are already receiving benefit from the States now and the future social cost, and social costs have monetary values attached to it but we never consider that, now and in the future. It is (a) the right thing to do, (b) it needs upfront costs but somewhere along the line there is a transfer of one cost from here rather than it being not a negative but a reactive cost. Why can it not become a proactive cost to get people into work? Both are costs. We are paying one now. Why not try and do some upfront transfer for it to be a positive cost?
The Connétable of Grouville :
I would say that there are people around this table even who would agree that in fact perhaps it is time to jump into the Rainy Day Fund in order to achieve these priorities as you have laid them out. I am not saying who they are but perhaps you might be looking at them. In order to achieve the social ends it may well be that we are going to be in that position, would you agree?
The Chief Minister:
We have always taken the view, I think, that the Rainy Day Fund should only be used if we were facing such structural changes to our economy that we needed to invest massively to deal with those. We are fortunate, and do not get me wrong, the economy is very difficult and we see some communities in Europe that are facing such structural changes, that up until now we have not had to face that. Yes, it is difficult but we are not at that point and we must continue, in my view, to keep those reserves for the point where that might happen. We hope it does not but it might, and we cannot be faced with a future position where we have ended up spending that reserve, then being faced with a structural change to our economy and not being able to address it. The other thing is, we have got to remember we have spent a lot of reserve in our economy up until this point. Off the top of my head, I cannot think, but I think it is around £140 million from the Stabilisation Fund. So we have been spending reserves, but that was a reserve that we put the money aside for that eventuality. It is here. We spent it. There is still some money left, a little, and one of the challenges for the next 3 years as well is how do we refresh that reserve. Not how we are spending it.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
I am pleased to hear that you are being honest and open with us about your views on how we needed to balance the need to fund necessary services, in particular social services, and the requirement of managing appropriately the resources available to the States, and I also applaud you certainly over the last 2 or 3 months raising the profile of some of the big issues that need to be dealt with. The only, I suppose, disconnect that I can see at the moment is that on the one hand as a Council of Ministers and as Chief Minister you are wanting to identify all the necessary resources that are required to deal with infrastructure and so forth, health and many other areas. I mean, you have just quoted improving skills, for instance, and yet when it comes to your biggest opportunity, which is the Green Paper that is coming up for consultation on the Strategic Plan, is absolutely silent in that particular area, and I just question whether or not you and the Council of Ministers have missed or not taken advantage perhaps of an opportunity to be upfront and open with the public and say: "We have got some serious issues that have not been addressed before, need to be addressed. They are going to be difficult. We need to have a discussion about shall we address them or not, and if so, then you have got to recognise that there is a cost to it." What would your answer be to that sort of comment?
The Chief Minister:
I would obviously think it was unfair because we did not quite frame the challenges in that particular light. Some of that inevitably is around the timescale that we have for delivery of the Green Paper. I do not know if John knows, but I am not aware even as the last Council of Ministers that we put a resource statement in the Green Paper. We did in the actual Strategic Plan. Well, we did in its form when it went to the States and we will do exactly the same this time. We cannot, by inevitability, go and, in effect, price up every priority. The other argument about that is would we want to do
that when other members of the community and States Members might decide that they want to do something different as well, and that is part of the slightly different approach that we have taken this time in having the In Committee debate so that we can take away those suggestions and perhaps changes in priorities, and factor that into a resource statement, but we have not, and I do not think as individual politicians, shied away from talking about the big issues that we face. If I look at my last department, I talked about the potential increases that will be required in the pension, although we see yesterday that obviously that is in a slightly better position than we thought, so some of those changes will not need to be made in the next 3 years that we thought might have been. I have talked about the need to raise contributions for long- term care. We have talked about the financial challenges facing health and developing a methodology to deal with those. To my mind, that is quite clear from the Green Paper, and do you yourself not know about the challenges facing education and that process you started of having a public debate about what the future of education needs to look like, and when we start going down that line we need to think about the resources that are required for that piece of work as well, and we have recently, thanks to our friends, seen quite a bit of publicity around some infrastructure issues which need to be addressed as well, but they were, first of all, flagged up in the last Strategic Plan and we need to be creative with how we can deal with them.
[10:30]
The Treasury and Resources Ministry is coming forward with a 25 year capital programme. That is absolutely right and proper so that we can, going forward, have a good knowledge of the challenges that we face, the costs that are going to be associated and as you rightly say, be up front with people about those challenges.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
I absolutely agree with you and I think that perhaps this is where a previous Council of Ministers, States, committees and the like have failed in that they have not recognised that there was a potential cost, and you cannot on the one hand identify a whole range of areas that need additional expenditure and yet then say: "I do not believe we can still save £65 million" because straightaway you have got 2 mixed messages because the public say: "Okay, we can have all this on the one hand, and
there is no cost", or there is a cost and the cost is that we are going to have to seek further taxation or contribution in some shape or form, to provide for and deal with these additional expenditure items. We have had some of those debates on term care and so forth, and there are bound to be others to have. I suppose the question to you is how do you manage the almost perception that this Government can save a large chunk of money and still deal with all the different pressures that you have identified?
The Chief Minister:
We, and probably it is common with other jurisdictions, have moved into an era where people rightly want to know where their taxation is going and through the democratic process have that control and say in what happens to their money. There are lots of pieces of work that we need to do or that arises from that. I am in no doubt whatsoever that the general public, rightly, are still of the view that we have not cut out and made all the efficiencies in the public service that we should be doing. We have had the C.S.R. but what I am committed to now over the next 3 years, and it will take more than 3 to 5 years, is delivering those efficiencies in a more, I want to say clinical but that is not the right word, yes ... anyway, the word has just gone, more intelligent way. So going and looking at the services and asking ourselves: "Yes, this is a service the community wants provided. Where is that service best provided? How is it provided more efficiently?" but taking time to do it intelligently and not just saying: "Right, we have got to save this amount."
The Deputy of St. Ouen : Structured.
The Chief Minister:
Structure, okay. That was not the word I was thinking of but it works well. I am convinced that work needs to be done and will be done, but I also come back to the other point that I made, that some of the priorities are not just about spending more, they are using the current spend but in a better way and being better targeted to move on and provide services that are going to make a difference rather than just a holding position which keeps everybody where they are. If I go back to that first point I made in answer to your question is I think that most people, if you can show that you are going to increase a tax or a contribution and this is going to be directly delivered to
provide this service like long-term care, like social security contributions or pensions, people are satisfied with that because they can make an informed choice, is that what you want? Do you want to have a good standard of pension when you retire? If you do, this is the amount you are going to have to pay in, and we can see the correlation all down the line, the money that we have paid through our working life is then used to pay for the pension. The money that we are going to pay in the long-term care scheme is going to provide for us, if we need it, care when we are older. If we go back to the election, the J.E.P's (Jersey Evening Post) survey, the top issue that the electorate wanted addressing or felt that money should be spent on was healthcare. We have done a lot of work around where we might want to take healthcare and that work will now inevitably go on to: "Well, okay, if it is going to cost more, how are we going to fund it, and what methodologies can we use to do that?" I think one of the ways that we are going to have that debate is around can we develop a mechanism which is going to be absolutely targeted and these are the health services that it is going to provide? So we might need to ask you for extra money in the future. It is for a service that you want, keeping us all healthy, and these are the extra services or the new way that we are going to deliver that service for that potential extra cost to electors."
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
If we come back to your 3 priorities, we have just been talking about health reform, housing and getting people into work. You have touched on getting people into work. You have got schemes like the Advance to Work as you have explained. How do you think, long term, we can tackle unemployment and get people into work because the unemployment rate is rising month by month so although these are having a beneficial effect, they are not creating jobs. How do you look to creating jobs?
The Chief Minister:
As I have said many times before, Government does not create jobs, although sometimes it does. It is entrepreneurs. It is industry that creates jobs and it is for Government to work with those job creators and, I have talked about this, sharing the risks. Employers are saying, and business tend and surveys say to us that employers are not optimistic about the employment opportunities going forward so the Government needs to understand: "Okay, what are the risks that we can share with you to ensure that you can create jobs and be more confident about the future?" If you look at the Advance to Work scheme, people on that scheme have been placed with employers where at the start of that placement there was no job per se. They are not advertising. They are saying they are not optimistic about the future. There is no job, but when they get the right person in a situation where they are not taking a risk, in effect they are just trying people out to see if they fit with the company and they are able to do jobs. The Government has taken the risk off them. They get that right person and then at the end, or sometimes it is not even at the end, a job is created. We need to do more and more of that.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
Absolutely, and I understand that, but what on the Government business side of it can you do to encourage business and new business to come to the Island to create jobs?
The Chief Minister:
New business coming to the Island is around the inward investment team that takes place with Economic Development, and they have had some success around that, and I know that they are absolutely committed to increasing that and ensuring that there is inward investment, new businesses coming here, because that is a good way and one of the best ways of creating new jobs. Social Security and Economic Development are, right now, having meetings with industry representatives, directly with retailers and other industries on the Island and asking them: "What is it going to take for you to employ people?" Some of that is around apprenticeships. Some of that is around training, helping people overcome their barriers and some of it is around direct subsidies. In a way, what we are saying is: "We want to work with you to help you to employ people and to grow your business." It is a completely new joined up approach.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
Thank you for that, and in terms of people coming over, immigration, how is that being controlled? There are jobs available but they are only available to anybody that comes over at the moment. If you are going to Social Security, there are vacancies but they are for anybody to come over and move into that job.
The Chief Minister:
As you know, the Regulation of Undertakings issues licences. There are locals and non locals on those licences. Currently the new law will allow ... and there tends to be percentages across each industry so they have tried historically to work to a: "This is the industry norm, percentage local/non locals", and looked at licenses in that light but the new law will mean that we can review those licences and ultimately take out non local licences from licences. But what I should say is, if you go up to social security and there are jobs posted on their system there that are ... basically it says 5 years, not required for this job.
Deputy R.J. Rondel: A non local.
The Chief Minister:
Social Security now pick that up and phone the employer and say: "Look, we have got 5 people here who could do that job. We want to send them down for an interview", and those 5 people will be people with 5 years. So we are trying to be proactive in dealing with that. Yes, we know that there is a licence there which, at this moment in time, we cannot, under the law, do anything about. It does not stop us as Government from saying: "Just a minute, but we have got these people that you can take so why do you not take one of those?"
The Connétable of Grouville :
I think that in my position as a Constable and an employer, we have found situations arising where we just cannot get local people to come and work in certain jobs. Would you consider that it would be advantageous to perhaps damp down the aspirations of school leavers and say: "Look, in the old days whenever you would have need to work, you got a job in a bank, no problem. These days it is completely different. You might have to go and dig roads or do something perhaps not within your ambit." I think there is a lack of understanding among the younger people coming out of schools at the moment.
The Chief Minister:
I know from my own life experiences that it is easier to get a job from a job. As an employer, I know that it is easier for me to employ someone who is already in a job because they have got the work ethos. I also know that if I aim to be, if I take my own professional background, a partner, where do I start? I do not start as a partner. I start perhaps printing off trial balances and ledgers for somebody else to look at and deal with, and my job is at that low level to start out there while I am getting experience, I am training. Yes, my aim is to be a partner but I know I have got to start right down here because I am the new boy in. We, to some extent, live in a society now where that is not fully understood. It is absolutely right that children coming out of our schools have aspirations to achieve and want to achieve. We should ensure that all members of our community have that aspiration to go after their dreams and achieve, but at the same time there has to be a knowledge that in order to achieve you have to start at the bottom, and when it comes to employment that is very much how it is. You prove yourself in a job and your employer then promotes you and moves you up so it is a two-pronged attack. But dealing with the employment and unemployment, it starts right at the start of education as well which is why the education debate is crucial as well to these good outcomes.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
Before we move on, sorry, could you just confirm when the new Housing Law Bill will come into effect?
The Chief Minister:
We are working to a timetable of around July 2012.
[10:45]
The Connétable of Grouville :
Reform of the public service is the next one we go on to. How are public services going to be modernised in order to deliver their co-ordination, improved efficiency and savings required?
The Chief Minister:
Well, it is a little too early to say exactly how they will be modernised but we are starting, as I said earlier, to go through, what I hope, is a more grassroots approach of what are the services that we want to be provided, what is the appropriate organisation to provide those services. Could it be better provided by the third sector or even the private sector? So there is a lot of work to do there on is Government the right size. Does Government need to be involved in all the services that we are currently providing? The one I talked about as perhaps the classic example of that is, does Government need to be providing car parking facilities? What Government should be rightly concerned about is that there is enough car parking facilities. That there is investment in the infrastructure of car parking facilities going forward but does it need to operate those, and that is a question we need to ask ourselves because in other jurisdictions we know that that does not happen. So it is that sort of fundamental question that we should be asking ourselves and it is from there that we will build on that modernisation of what we are doing.
The Connétable of Grouville :
Following on from that can I, perhaps, suggest that you are suggesting, or not suggesting, that you have in mind the privatisation of various services?
The Chief Minister:
I do not have in mind any particular solution to those questions. I am, and have been, a great supporter of third sector organisations because in my mind it is not simply about saving money, it is about who is best placed to provide a service to the community and who will provide it to the benefit of those recipients of the service, yes, efficiently, but equally as important, effectively.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
You speak in your Business Plan, that you kindly provided to us yesterday ...
The Chief Minister: Oh, did I?
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
... that you plan to deliver a public workforce which can meet the future requirements of the States. Then you go on to speak about, and make a statement about, a modernisation agenda and there is a particular work stream that really interests me and, perhaps, maybe you can explain to us in plain English what is meant by "a workforce development underpinned by reward and modernisation." You, maybe, or perhaps your chief executive might choose to ...
The Chief Minister:
I can do if you just ... can you point me to the page because it is only a draft document which I have not signed off yet.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
It is in the objective of your Business Plan. Sorry, I did not realise that I had to point you in the direction of the actual ...
The Chief Minister:
It just helps me to ... is it page 12? Anyway, so just read it again and I will ...
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
You speak about, in the section entitled "The reform of the public services" you talk about delivering a public workforce which can meet the future requirements of the States.
The Chief Minister:
Yes, that is straightforward, is it not?
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
You then go on to speak about a modernisation agenda and then underneath that particular area you identify 3 specific work streams, one of which is entitled "Workforce development underpinned by reward modernisation". I would like you to explain to us, in plain English if possible, what that means.
The Chief Minister:
Okay, well workforce development is around having a career path for employees. It is around having appropriate training for employees. It comes back to all these things about, are employees feeling valued, feeling that they have got a future in the organisation, feeling that they know where they fit in the organisation and when it comes then to pay and reward, it is about are they rewarded for that good work. If they perform fantastically well, are we rewarding them for it or are we just simply rewarding them on an incremental basis because they have been with us for a set number of years? So it is a piece of work that is looking at those particular issues and saying: "We know elsewhere, not only in the private sector but also in some other public sector organisations around the world, public sector employees are rewarded for fantastic performance." It is exploring those issues and whether we should be introducing that same sort of reward system. So not just simply for sitting in a job and doing a job for 20 years but for doing it really well.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Correct me if I am wrong, are you suggesting that this is all about paying our staff more for doing the job that they are expected to do?
The Chief Minister: No.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
But the way you have just described it, it is exactly that.
The Chief Minister: No, it is not.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Can you help me here to understand what your aims are? Are you suggesting that we have some staff that are overpaid and that the current pay structure does not recognise and encourage individuals to meet their full potential and go that extra mile, and that is why you want to introduce a reward system which is different to the one we have or ... can you just elaborate?
Let us just go back and say that as part of the C.S.R. process, reviews were undertaken which made observations about the current terms and conditions and the way that we rewarded our employees. This is a piece of work that will build on that, look at how we are rewarding employees, look at some of the pay structures, look at some of the rates of pay around overtime, around mileages, all those things, and asking ourselves whether they should be modernised and whether the way that we currently do things is encouraging this excellent performance or not. You will, obviously, be aware of what those reviews were and what they said and how they said that we needed to undertake these pieces of work to understand that. You know that in the U.K. (United Kingdom), in the education system, they have these payment methodologies for head teachers. Head teachers that are doing incredibly well or performing and turning a school around can expect to receive, perhaps, a greater amount of salary than those that are not.
The Connétable of Grouville :
I am just going to say that almost sounds like a bonus culture starting. You had a terms and conditions review. I mean is that what you are saying now, that is the sort of outcome of the terms and conditions review? People should obviously be paid bonuses or extra ...
The Chief Minister:
As I say, we just need to move back, it is not an outcome; it is something that we are looking at because that is what the review from the C.S.R. suggested that we needed to look at.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
Could you just elaborate a bit on your example of the schools and education because when you say "performance related", how is that measured on that performance? What my concern is that a lot of schools have introduced a lot of other subjects which are easy to achieve, E.C.S.E.s (Early Childhood Special Education) and things like that, and they upped their performance by introducing these which are not necessarily performing better.
Well, I do not, obviously, want to go into an area where I am not an expert or get sidetracked on education but having said that if a school is performing there are many criteria that are not performing in the U.K. There are many criteria by which that will be judged, not simply exam results. Although there is an issue about standards of exam results as in one particular examination board might be perceived to be easier to achieve a specific result because of the way it structures its exams rather than another one in the U.K. now, or the Education Secretary said: "We are going to take those out of the calculation of performance of exam results", that is one issue. But that is, certainly, only a very small part of the turning around of a failing school in the U.K. and the criteria that they use. I am not even suggesting that that is what we would use in Jersey; I simply used it as an example of where it is used in other jurisdictions.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
I think that ... coming back to the point you first made, you are saying that you want to reward staff for doing a good job of work. It is not clear, currently, how you are going to do that but more importantly, I mean are you, from the comments you have just made, suggesting that that reward system and that recognition is not in place within our current pay structure?
The Chief Minister:
Well, I do not think it is but I am not saying: "I want to introduce that." What I am saying is we had the C.S.R. report, it talked about issues that we needed to address around terms and conditions and the way that we reward. I would not want to use the word "good" I would want to use "excellent performance" because it is around that because we have got to move our public service away from where it is now. If you talk to a lot of public servants I think that, to some extent, they feel that we, as Government, have not supported them. They feel demoralised, some of that is how we, as Government, have spoken about our staff. Some of it is how they have been reported in the media and we have got to transform that. We were speaking yesterday about ... we know that in the private sector companies that are performing well during these economically difficult times are organisations which are valued based. How do we create a values based public service? That is what I am interested in, totally transforming, being ... do not get me wrong, a lot of people are committed to public
service and to serving and that is why they joined the public service, but we need to make sure that that attitude is prevalent right across the service. I was fortunate to present some awards for the modern manager programme not that long ago. There were 20 or 30 people who had been on the modern manager programme and they were absolutely committed and inspired by what they could deliver and the change that they could bring to their particular section and to their department. That is what we are talking about, so that is investment in training. That is investment in those people feeling that they have got a career path and a future and that they can make a difference for the community in which they live. That is what we are talking about.
The Connétable of Grouville :
Yes, it almost sounds as what you are saying is that you want to individualise the reward situation rather than having a straight set price for a job?
The Chief Minister:
No, we want to build a unity across departments where everybody is working together to the same end and where they know that they are going to be rewarded for the excellent performance that they are giving on behalf of the public. When we talk about reward pay, because of the negative necessary publicity that we have had around the bonus culture, it is easy for us just to think that is what we are talking about. We are not talking about that at all. But in most private companies there is an element of: "How well have we done as a group of employees this year? Have we met and exceeded our targets?"
[11:00]
So it is not the controversial thing that it might first appear. It is just this encouragement for people to perform excellently. It might not work when we do this piece of work. We will have to see what the outcome of it is.
Acting Chief Executive:
Can I just add to that, that at the moment in the grading structure we have, which I hope everyone recognises is very old and it does need changing and modernising. Each grade, whether it is a manual worker, civil servant, or some of the other sectors,
has increments of, say, 3 or 4 increments. So when you start on a job you start at a grade, say it is a grade 8 job, it is 8.0. At the end of that year, the first year of service, you automatically go to 8.1. At the end of the second year you automatically go to 8.2 and 8.3. Well, the band is set for that grade as grade 8, which is a range in salary terms between the bottom and the top. I think what the Chief Minister is saying, and certainly what we are looking at as part of the modernisation programme and change within the organisation, is that you do not automatically go from zero to one to 2 to 3 but you do it on exceptional performance.
The Connétable of Grouville :
Sorry, I misheard that because I thought you said they automatically go from one to 2 to 3.
Acting Chief Executive: At the moment ...
The Chief Minister: No, they do, currently.
Acting Chief Executive:
At the moment in the current system they do.
The Connétable of Grouville :
Oh right. Yes, I am not saying that ...
The Chief Minister:
Currently employees go automatically through this system.
The Connétable of Grouville :
I do not disagree with your new ideas at all, believe me, I absolutely applaud them. But the perception out there is that if you get a job within the civil service or an allied type of job that you sit there, and providing you do not do anything silly, you just gradually bump up the scale until you retire.
The Chief Minister:
That is what we are saying, that should be reviewed, is that right or should it be you can get next the level if you have performed excellently with your team. It is not a big transformation but it is an important one.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Just to draw this subject to a close, just a couple of short questions. First of all would you confirm that you are the Minister that is accountable for delivering the terms and conditions review that you just discussed?
The Chief Minister:
Am I the Minister accountable? Yes, that is right because I am chairman of the States Employment Board, that is right, is it not? John is the accounting officer accountable.
The Deputy of St. Ouen : Just one final point on that ...
The Chief Minister:
I am going to live to regret that, am I not? I knew that.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
With regards to the C.S.R, £40 million has been attributed to savings within this particular area in the terms and conditions and payment of staff and that is supposed to be delivered partly this year and partly next. How confident are you that the ability to undertake the work that you have outlined and discussed with us today will be able to deliver that form of saving over that period of time?
The Chief Minister:
I have to be honest with you and say that it is going to be difficult but it does not mean to say that we are not committed to delivering it. Of course one of the difficulties is that it is around negotiation with pay groups and therefore when I start talking publicly, which I will not, it then puts extra difficulty on it. So the right place for delivering those changes is around consultation and negotiation with those pay groups which John and the H.R. (Human Resources) team are doing now but equally it is right for me to say that it is not an easy task.
The Deputy of St. Ouen : Thank you. Richard.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
The Strategic Plan Green Paper states: "That Government needs better co-ordination of policy." How are you going to achieve this joined up approach?
The Chief Minister:
I am committed to the Chief Minister's Department becoming, in effect, or one of its remits, becoming a project management area. We have moved somebody across to do this so that they will be in charge of overseeing this project management element and co-ordinating and making sure that departments are delivering on the projects that they have said they were. Where there are issues between departments which, inevitably, there can be with projects ensuring that they are resolved at the appropriate levels. So, sometimes that will be at staff level, sometimes it will need political involvement if there is policy issue that they do not agree on to find agreement on. So we are already starting and putting in place the mechanism to allow that to happen.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
So is this a new post that has been created or ...
The Chief Minister:
No, it is not a new post; it is just somebody that has moved across.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
With regards this joined up approach, I think that probably both you and I would agree that there have been attempts to organise and have a number of different Ministers, or individuals from different departments, involved in delivering a particular policy or programme. One of the big questions is who is held, ultimately, to account because the danger is that, obviously, if there are 2 or 3 Ministers involved, you end up with a part and parcel approach. If you are aiming to, and I applaud you for trying to create this joined up approach, I think it has been lacking for some time, then how do you plan to ensure that the joined up approach happened but you still maintain that accountability that you require in order to ensure delivery of the programmes?
The Chief Minister:
Yes, you hit the nail on the head with the difficulty of this approach, ensuring that there is political accountability for what is happening underneath. Of course, ultimately there is accounting officer accountability for areas that are touched by those departments and there will be a person chairing those groups. That chairman should be accountable but what ... the other way, and this is what is happening with the "back to work" delivery area, is a lot of those areas have now fallen through and the Social Security accounting officer is accountable for those functions, so they are falling under that remit so that you can still see a very direct link of accountability to that Minister even though I am chairing the overall political group.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
So is it your aim, as you further develop this ...
The Chief Minister:
We then need to explore whether than can happen in other areas as well. It might be that that was just a particularly easy area for it to happen but we have to think about how, because you are right, that bit has to be got right.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
That would certainly increase the sort of trust and confidence which you speak about in trying to develop with Government and the public and the States Members and even Scrutiny Panel.
The Chief Minister:
Yes, and we cannot have the situation where you have got 3 Ministers on a group and each one is blaming the other, it cannot be.
The Connétable of Grouville :
Strategic Plan priority, sustainable long-term planning, which I think we have already touched on. Why is the development of the long-term planning cited as a top priority?
The Chief Minister:
Well, quite simply because we have got to make sure that we are planning for the future. The problem with planning for issues which we know are going to occur in 10, 15, 20 years' time in a 3-year political cycle is that they get left, they get put on the backburner and therefore it has to be a priority that we keep moving those issues forward and that we start to plan for them. If there is a criticism of Government, potentially, it is around how we have dealt with our property portfolio for many, many years. We need to ensure that in the future we have a plan of how we are going to deal with it, and that is why the idea of the 25-year capital programme is critically important. So these are issues that it will be too easy for us just to say: "Well, we do not need to think about them because they are not happening during this electoral cycle or during the time that I imagine I am going [it is only politician speaking] to be in politics" and they get left behind and that is not right.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
I mean you highlight a particular issue which is relative to the form of government that we have in that it is a relatively short electoral cycle. Earlier, at the beginning of our discussions, you were speaking about the Strategic Plan and the priorities of the new Council of Minister and how they could be somewhat different to the previous Council of Ministers and your term is going to be, or this new Council of Ministers' term will be for a period of 3 plus years. So, the question I ask you is that if you are serious, and I believe it is good that you look and seek to develop long-term planning which has been lacking. How do you aim to reconcile and create a system, a process or procedures that allow long-term planning with some certainty that the next Council of Ministers will not just tear up that piece of paper and start with something else?
The Chief Minister:
You can never ensure that the next Council of Ministers will not be of a different political persuasion and want to do something else but one of the ways you help to protect or ensure that long term plans are delivered is by getting buy-in right across the community and going through proper consultation processes like we did with long-term care and light spin started with the education piece of work. Because you get people brought in, see the need for change, and therefore that change, while not saying what the outcome is going to be, there is an ability to the momentum that that change has started to deliver. Having said that, there will be some things here in this long-term planning thing that I hope you will be holding me to account to so we are saying: "We will introduce an energy policy." We are not saying that we will deliver the energy or the things in that policy but there will be a policy to which the States and the community is going to work to. We will be working closely with Guernsey, that is a long-term issue but, hopefully, in 3 years' time there will be things that we can point to and say: "Now, we are working with Guernsey on that issue and we were not at the start" and it will develop that momentum to keep working forward.
The Connétable of Grouville :
Okay, following the significant weakening of our financial position over the recent years a 3 part plan was agreed with the aim of returning to balanced budgets by 2013. In your view is this being progressed?
The Deputy of St. Ouen : To do with the C.S.R.
The Chief Minister:
Well, C.S.R., we are still working to make the savings. Obviously, the tax was increased, although not quite as much as was initially envisaged. What was the third one?
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Well, the other thing is about, obviously, income and we are talking about balanced budgets.
The Chief Minister:
Yes, the economic growth that was part of the process for the deficit that arose out of Zero/Ten. Obviously, at that point there was economic growth, we are now in a period where there is not, or very little, and those projections around economic growth from the F.P.P. (Fiscal Policy Plan) have been downgraded again at their last report.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Do you think there is work still done in the sort of what I call the balancing tax and spend area?
The Chief Minister:
Well, there will be work to be done around the ... like we said earlier, around the future funding for health and those sorts of issues. But I hope, and I have said before, that I hope, really, that now we have got the Code Group on Zero/Ten saying that Zero/Ten is not harmful I hope that that will be, more or less, our settled tax policy and we will be able to move forward.
The Connétable of Grouville :
I would like to join, really, 2 questions in one here because we are running very short of time.
[11:15]
The Strategic Plan Green Paper states that the ... and the Fiscal Policy Panel warned that recent international economic developments may see the economy growing less than forecast, okay? Now, if I move on the second part of it, which is on international relations, that in November the Council of Ministers noted that a common external affairs policy would be agreed during the first half of 2012. Please explain what work will be undertaken to achieve this? If I can throw in a third bit, just to really confuse people. So, Philip, your Assistant Minister, is in Brussels today dealing with the European Union, which will affect both of these questions, the previous questions. Can you tell us what his priorities are, or what priorities he has been given, to deal with these economic factors coming out of the E.U. (European Union)?
The Chief Minister:
The first one, yes, you are right the F.P.P. did downgrade the economic growth projections for Jersey and that is perhaps not surprising when we think that that same downgrading of growth projections is right across the E.U. We have, at the Council of Ministers, discussed the policy with regard to signing tiers and we have ratified, in effect, the agreement by the previous Council of Ministers to continue down that track and therefore that will be ... we will continue to have that policy of signing tiers with obviously the G20, the O.E. C.D . (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and the E.U. Member States. We are a good long way there but there are others that we still need to do and the policy of signing D.T.A.s (Double Taxation Agreements) where we can. Obviously, because we are, in effect, a zero tax jurisdiction when it comes to corporation tax, other jurisdictions are not necessarily so keen to sign D.T.A.s with us but we continue to work on that.
The Connétable of Grouville :
Can I just interrupt you there, Chief Minister, in that we signed a D.T.A. with France, they sent over 2 Ministers yesterday to ask questions about it.
The Chief Minister:
Yes, that was not the D.T.A., that was the T.I.E.A. (Tax Information Exchange Agreement). They wanted to come and talk to us about the operation of that T.I.E.A. and to better understand how we regulated trusts as well. That, really, fits into the third bit of your question. Obviously, Philip is over today and, I think, tomorrow in Brussels meeting officials and ambassadors to the E.U. As I have said, we will need to do more and more of that because we had a very good meeting with the president of the Senate Finance Commission on - I forget what day it is now, it seems like - Monday and his officials to understand, yes, how that T.I.E.A. is operating. To agree that these are the processes that we go through, these are the processes that they go through and how we work together to make sure that it works and is operational to a satisfactory level on both sides and for them to come and understand, yes, we are, to all intents, in effect, an independent small country and we have all the arms of government that you would expect in a large country. They were very complimentary about Jersey but at the same time they said that he is, that individual is just one Senator who is president of the Senate Finance Commission and said that we should be doing more with the senate as a whole, the Assemblée Nationale, and with the French Cabinet because, in a large jurisdiction if you are just talking to ... there are lots and lots of people to speak to. We, in Jersey, we know you speak to one person and everybody knows, in effect, within the next day because the email goes around, you have a conversation in the corridor and you say: "Well, such-and-such said this" and this is the case here. Whereas when you are in a jurisdiction like France where there are lots of arms of government, you need to be getting out in front of these people, inviting them over to visit and explaining to them how we operate, what the safeguards are in place, how we have been observed by the international bodies, the ratings that we have been given and the well-regulated, transparent jurisdiction that we are. So we need to do more and more of that and that is what Philip is doing.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
We also have representatives in places such as the Middle East and an office is set up there, I believe. Could you expand a bit on that and what your development proposals are?
The Chief Minister:
The offices elsewhere are mainly Jersey Finance offices and they are really around promotion of the financial services industry. So there is, in a way, the work of promoting the financial services industry and what is going on in Jersey but there is also the job of work of interacting with Government around how we comply with international conventions as well. So, when J.F.L. (Jersey Finance Limited) might do a trip to the Middle East or we will be expecting to go to China later this year, there are 2 pieces of work that need to be done. One is Minister to Minister and Government to Government and the other one is more promotional among industry and professionals in that community as well and they both need to be done.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
Do you know which other countries, economic development countries, you are targeting in the future to try and encourage business to come to the Island?
The Chief Minister:
We are going to continue the work in the Middle East and in India. We are going to continue the work in China and Hong Kong and there are questions that we need to start asking about the work that we are doing in the Latin American ... South American countries, I am getting confused between them where Latin and South are. We need to understand what are the opportunities there, what are the processes that we need to go through.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
So you will be exploring countries such as Brazil and places like that?
The Chief Minister:
Yes. I mean, but to come back to Dan's sort of comment at the end: "Do I think we are going to have" ... you said: "Do you think we are going to have problems?"
The Connétable of Grouville :
No, are you happy that we are not going to have too many problems?
The Chief Minister:
I am not happy, I am of the opinion that we will have more and more pressure from the international community because of the economic difficulties that other jurisdictions are facing but we have got a record that we can be proud of or we have got good news stories. We have been judged, as I say, to be compliant and to be open by international bodies and we will continue the good neighbour policy that we have had under the last 2 Council of Ministers and the committee system before that.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
Right, in terms of information services, what work is currently being done to improve the delivery of information services within the public sector?
The Chief Minister:
I might hand that over to John, because ...
Acting Chief Executive:
Currently the States have a very large information system, or systems, as you can imagine, covering everything from the Central Fund, financial management through to education systems, health systems. It is a huge system and in the past it has been operated very much as a service delivered to meet the individual needs, so we have ended up with a lot of the data and data management being handled at individual departmental level. Modern I.S. (Information Systems) is saying that from a data centre perspective it needs to be brought together. We run, the States run, 2 main data centres at the moment, which is unusual for an organisation. I think at last count we had about 40 or 50 different servers in a range of buildings around the States. There is a good reason for that, which I will touch on in a moment. Modernising is about consolidating that down into 2 main data centres for the States. One of them is currently due for replacement because it is at the end of its economic lifecycle so we are currently working on that one being replaced but not by ourselves, that will be put with a third party provider. The other one, which is at Cyril Le Marquand House is quite new so obviously we will run that through its economic cycle and then at the end that one will probably go the same way. One of the reasons we have operated with, what I would loosely call a fairly fragmented system, is because in the past we have always had to pay for all of the various communication lines that connect all of the buildings in the States. So it has been more economical in the old way of working to put the data centre, or server, in that building so you are not paying for all this data to be going around the Island. We have just agreed, or just signed a new contract for the States so that we have one contract for managing the transmission of all data around the whole Island so we will no longer pay for individual lines.
Deputy R.J. Rondel: Who is that with then?
Acting Chief Executive:
That is with J.T. (Jersey Telecom) and that contract is in place for 3 years and that allows us, then, (1) to make a C.S.R. saving which was required from I.S. but (2) it opens up now the opportunity of that consolidated approach, we no longer have to pay for this transmission of data all around the Island, it is all part of that one package. So that is the first sector we are looking at.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
Have you identified what sort of savings can be made out of that?
Acting Chief Executive:
Yes that is ... target is £100,000 a year ...
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
A £100,000 a year savings.
Acting Chief Executive:
... that has been taken and made in the new arrangement we have got in place as part of the C.S.R. savings. Then the next area we are looking at is to look at how best we provide all of the laptops and the P.C.s (personal computers) on people's desks. In the past we have always bought them and run them. There are other ways of procuring them so we are looking ... at the moment that is another stream we are working on. Then the third which is, as the Chief Minister has spoken about, as we look to modernise the public service, or reform of public service, it is making sure that we provide the right modern infrastructure from an I.S. perspective that meets that demand. So that is as we start looking at individual areas, we will be reviewing the provision of I.S., is it the right system, right platform, is it provided in the right way and as part of that programme, look at every opportunity possible to streamline and replace, upgrade and modernise.
Deputy R.J. Rondel:
That is going to start happening ...
Acting Chief Executive:
Well, it started happening 18 months ago and we are now working through this so the data centre is the next big one. The one we just signed in January was the network management, so data centres are now running, or that project is running and provision of P.C.s, laptops, et cetera, is the next one. Then as each service area is reviewed and we start looking at public sector reform, we will make sure we provide the appropriate modern technology to meet that demand.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Can you explain the role and makeup of the Information Governance Board?
Acting Chief Executive:
Yes, the management of data is crucial in terms of data security, for part of it is data security, making sure the appropriate controls are in place from external influence, like you would have on your own P.C. at home, firewall security system, so that is one side of governance. Making sure that internally we monitor and check that there is no inappropriate access to different elements of the database, so it is a closed system, make sure no one is trying to and no one has the opportunity to access bits of information that may not be appropriate. The third is I.S. projects in any organisation are notoriously difficult to deliver. Not necessarily in the States but wherever you look they are always technically very challenging to make sure that you meet the ... you understand the user need, then you translate that into a technical delivery. Many, many big projects are renowned for having been started and never quite delivered what they were originally intended for. The governance is about making sure that whenever we start off on delivering a new project, I.S. related project, that we spend a lot of time and we make sure we absolutely understand the service need. It is a service need, not necessarily around the way that service is being delivered today but it is about making sure that the system you provide meets the need of the service for what it is intended for future.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Which individuals are on this Governance Board?
Acting Chief Executive:
The Governance Board is headed up by the Director of Information Systems, Information Services, and he has got a team of different managers and people brought into it. I have not got the exact names, sorry, with me.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
Is it a cross department, a joined-up approach, or is it just your department and people from the I.S. team that form this board?
Acting Chief Executive: It is a combination of the 2.
[11:30]
It is obviously the I.S. professionals who know about data security and data management systems but you then need the input from respective departments when you are looking at an area that is appropriate to them. So if we are looking at data security within the health system you bring in Health people, you would not necessarily bring in T.T.S. (Transport and Technical Services) people into that.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
So there would be no independent non States Members or individuals that form part of this board then? It would be made up of States employees, generally, manager and officers.
Acting Chief Executive:
Yes, it is an internal framework.
The Deputy of St. Ouen :
On behalf of the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel I would certainly like to thank you, Chief Minister, and Chief Executive, for attending our public hearing. It has been extremely useful for us to understand and get a better feel of some of your thoughts and ideas as you lead the camp for Ministers, indeed the States, through the next 3 years. So thank you very much. I also take the opportunity to thank the members of the public for attending and other States Members. I declare the meeting closed.
The Chief Minister:
Thank you very much, chairman.
[11:31]