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Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel Public Hearing Witness: Chief Executive
WEDNESDAY, 25th JULY 2018
Panel:
Senator K.L. Moore (Chairman)
Deputy S.M. Ahier of St. Helier: (Vice-Chairman) Connétable R. Vibert of St. Peter:
Deputy J.H. Perchard of St. Saviour
Witnesses:
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey Assistant Chief Minister
Lead in Finance Transformation for the States Director of Communications
Index:
- Introduction p2
- One Government programme p3
- Senior appointments p10
- Office strategy p24
- IT strategy p27
- Communications strategy p28
- Future Jersey p36
Senator K.L. Moore (Chairman):
Welcome everybody. Good afternoon and thank you very much for joining us for this public hearing with the Executive and the Director of Communications and the Assistant Chief Minister. We are grateful for you to agreeing to make this a public hearing, as we were due to have a private reading in place, so we are grateful to you for agreeing to change that because of the same time last week conflicting with previous engagements, so thank you. I think the members of the public are aware of the requests upon their behaviour and the rules of engagement this afternoon and to our guests, I draw your attention to the notice that I am sure you are aware of about privilege. Also, a final point of housekeeping is that although we have cameras in place, they are not yet in use. They will be, I think, from next week in time for the summer recess.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Oh, that was good timing.
[Laughter]
Senator K.L. Moore :
There will not be video, just ...
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: You can have a re-run when we are back.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Shall we start with the introductions, just for the record? I am Senator Kristina Moore , the Chairman of the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel.
Deputy S.M. Ahier of St. Helier (Vice-Chairman):
I am Deputy Steve Ahier , Vice Chairman, Corporate Services Panel.
Deputy J.H. Perchard of St. Saviour :
Deputy Jess Perchard, Member of the Corporate Services Panel.
Connétable R. Vibert of St. Peter :
Richard Vibert , Constable, Member of the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel.
Lead in Finance Transformation:
Camilla Black, Lead in Finance Transformation for the States.
Assistant Chief Minister:
Richard Buchanan, Constable for St. Ouen and Assistant Chief Minister.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Charlie Parker, I am Chief Executive and Head of the Civil and Public Services here in Jersey.
Director of Communications:
Stephen Hardwick, I am the Director of Communications.
Good. Thank you very much. The main point of interest of course in the one government programme, so you have recently, Chief Executive, published a 6 month report?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Yes.
Senator K.L. Moore :
We want to be able to hear from you at what stage you see the one government programme in its full roll out.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I think the report, in effect, sets the scene and also describes where we are to date with some of the changes that we are effecting in public services at the moment. The vision is to create a single organisation that delivers quality services on behalf of residents, stakeholders and business interests in Jersey to reduce the amount of duplication, silo working as I reference to it, and to modernise the infrastructure around our people, our processes, our finance, how we communicate and how we operate and as part of that, we are on a 3 to 5 year journey of change and I say 3 to 5 because some bits we will achieve quicker than others but there we always be - and I have been clear from the outset - probably a 5 year programme to be able to implement the totality of our ambitions. This is very much about the organisation and it fits with our attempts to try and get us quickly focused to be able to deliver the ambitions of the political administration of the day in a more coherent way so as part of that, you will be aware Chair, of the previous discussions, in particular to secure changes in legislation to allow me also to become the accountable officer for the public services which then gives some accountability for implementing and delivering the programme of change and as part of that, that has seen a review of the way in which I now have not just strategic oversight but literally accountability for how we do it. Within the confines of that, what I have been trying to do right from the beginning is to establish, in conjunction with the changes, a performance and management framework that dovetails with our financial positions to create a more single organisation and manifest that in the strategic plans that we produce and create a more coherent set of policy frameworks in which public servants can operate. Where are we? I think the report you all have will have given you pretty much an update around communications of that, the leading of it, the engagement internally and externally with stakeholders and staff, the way in which we started to implement the reviews that were conducted through the period of due diligence that the transition team did and the move to the introduction of the new organisational framework which we launched in March of this year. We have been out to consultation and refined in light of that to reflect the one government target operational model that has been published and we are now into the recruitment of key personnel at Tier 1 and Tier 2, which will give us the leadership capability to take forward and drive the subsequent restructuring of each of the departments to be able to effect the longer term changes based on the model of principles that the target operating model laid out so that is a reduced number of managers and fewer tiers between the top of the organisation frontline and customers. It is about basing it on a whole series of key principles of how the organisation should work internally and externally and as part of that, to create a more efficient, leaner business so I thought that might just be worth summarising and as part of that I can go into some detail about recruitment, about where we are with some of the programmes and projects and I have some colleagues here who can talk about the specifics of areas which may be of interest to the Scrutiny Panel.
Senator K.L. Moore :
That is very helpful and we look forward to delving into some of those areas. You mention there the changes that have been implemented as a result of consultation that took place. Could you give us some examples of areas where there has been a change of direction?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
The biggest example, I think, is around the Health and Community Services function where we recognised early doors when we were doing some of the due diligence work that there needed to be further dialogue and conversations with the health professionals. The nature of how we originally went out to consult on the organisational structure was quite similar to what we already had but we always knew that we needed to talk more to some of the clinicians, to some of those colleagues that were involved in the hospital services about adult social care provision, bearing in mind that we lifted out Children's Services in the original model to create more connection with families, young people, education and so as a consequence we recalibrated that quite significantly to create a mechanism for bringing some of the hospital and the community services together as part of a prevention strategy which is more about independent living, about driving out people in a healthcare model that could be seen and worked with before they come into the hospital setting,
which I think is much more costly, which then in turn requires us to think about how the relationship with the G.P. (General Practitioner) will be structured and to create an opportunity for the clinical profession to be at the top table of the management team because that was really quite important, there was a gap. That responsibility for how you deal with professional discipline in that area, I think, has been simply lacking. We revamped quite considerably the modernisation function, which I think had stalled, and the way in which it was operating was probably not creating a whole system response to what is a very big area for change. Some other areas were tinkered around with, some of that is ... we reviewed and looked at the location of some activity so, for example, some aspects of the way in which Growth, Housing and Environment was structured, particularly in relation to the A.L.O. work and how you link that back to economic activity. We felt there was a need to respond to the suggestion about creating a better interface and integration there. We also looked at the way in which certain functions, most notably around Health and Safety, could be reallocated to a different enforcement function, while retaining the wellbeing element and the importance of how we consider healthy living as separate but integrated, alongside employee assistance work and what we do with health promotion etc. The other big area we made some changes around was Finance.
Senator K.L. Moore : Right.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
This was not so much around the model, although we have tinkered with that, it is also about the way in which we recognise that we are going to have to do a 2-stage change in Finance. We are going to have to grow part of our capability before we can reduce it because we do not have the systems and processes to do some of the transaction work and take out costs and headcount for work that really is quite routine and repetitive and we should improve the calibre and professional capability for handling our investments, our accounting and our debt management functions, which we have responded to the consultation and done and that is part of a specific early change programme that we are engaged with now. Finally, we have looked and discussed some other areas in terms of Justice and Home Affairs where there is an ongoing discussion needed with the Council of Ministers about where and how probation will work in the light of the fact that there would have to be some statutory legislation to change that and there is an ongoing debate where stakeholders came back to us and we paused for further consultation and reflection on the nature of what ultimately was being implemented in the consultation so that will come at a later phase alongside a couple of other areas where we have said we are going to work out the detail behind the health model to be able to go out for specific consultation.
[15:30]
Senator K.L. Moore :
That is very interesting, thank you. My next question is, you mentioned that your project was driven by political will and of course there has been a change in Government and I was interested to ask whether there have been changes as a consequence of that change in Government.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
From an organisational perspective, the Council of Ministers have not sought to change the proposals. Clearly there has been some clarity around some aspects of activity where we have gone out and we consulted and we closed so just getting a better granular understanding of some aspects has taken place but in the main there has been political support for the proposals and the modernisation programme is seen as being an integral part of the programme of activity which the Council of Ministers are considering but it might be that the Assistant Minister might wish to just comment on that.
Assistant Chief Minister:
I totally agree with what Charlie is saying and I think it is worth highlighting part of the report, if I can just read this for you? "The Chief Executive is normally [this is the old Chief Executive] accountable for the public services with no authority over department Chief Officers" and as a result of then the corporate sole Government's arrangements, departments were fiefdoms in law with a silo mentality which meant there was no shared ambition, no shared accountability, no collective responsibility and little cross cutting activity. This was not only a barrier to effective planning and decision making as a public service but it led to waste, duplication, inconsistency and competition between departments. Now I think we would all agree we do not want to go back to those days and I have to say, the Council of Ministers is 100 per cent behind what Charlie is saying. We have to reform our civil service and I believe that we are on the right path to do that.
Senator K.L. Moore :
That is good to hear because I think our current Chief Minister has in the past spoken against Tier 1 and the ethos of the organisation change and been quite a harsh critic of it.
Assistant Chief Minister:
That was before my time in the States and I have to say, those comments have never been repeated to me while I have been in his presence ...
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I think it would be fair to say that the previous Assembly, in looking at the requirement for the Chief Executive to take over-arching responsibility as the principal accounting officer, accepted that unanimously and I think in that sense, notwithstanding the other changes to corporation sole arrangements for ministers where I suspect the concerns of the current Chief Minister were primarily focused, that unanimity, I think, has been reflected in the Council of Ministers' discussions regarding public service reform, which is they want the machinery of government to be more efficient, effective and value for money.
Assistant Chief Minister:
I think it is fair to say and I think we all know, since I have been in the island, that has been the best part of 50 years, the longer it has gone on, the more we know that our civil service structure has not been efficient and has not delivered the services we want to and there has been no link between one department and the other. I think if you ask any member of the general public, they would agree with that so this change has been long overdue and I have to say, it has the complete backing and support of the Council of Ministers.
The Connétable of St. Peter :
For the Chief Executive Officer, what savings will be generated from the one government structure, over and above the savings already set out in the M.T.F.P. (Medium Term Financial Plan)?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I think I have been clear right from the beginning that there was a long term restructuring programme, which I have reiterated, I think, in my earlier contribution that would be developed over the next 12 months to fit into the next M.T.F.P. period and the reason for that is that the appointment of the various Director Generals is critical to getting the restructuring of each of the departments underway to be able to deliver on a bigger set of savings to that we have in the first phase of the Tier 1, Tier 2 structures to date. In that context we have talked about around £1 million in costs because when you look at restructuring costs, redundancy, if it is appropriate, anything around pay protection, you have to net that off against the overall saving so that was always an initial target that would come when we moved from 60 to 40 or so in that cadre. The next set of issues is that we have to fit our programme of reform within the context of the Council of Minister's strategic priorities and as part of that, it is: "What are you going to spend your money on and from where are you going to finance the programme for the next 4 years?" That process, which I think has been said to you in your last meeting, is due to be the first phase. That will come out in October but it is part of a transition to get a proper Government plan which links priorities, finance and people together for the first time because that is not something that has happened, and I think this was agreed in principle with the previous Council of Ministers and forms part of our thinking at the moment and those broader efficiencies that will come out from the sorts of things that were put in my report, some of which will be cashable, some of which will not, we expect to be clearer in the Autumn, Connétable . Now, you are going to say: "That is all very well but have you got an idea of what that number might be?",
because I can just feel the supplemental question.
The Connétable of St. Peter : Yes.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
It is deliberate as it would be wholly inappropriate to set a target when we have got to go through proper consultation. We have States employment law and obligations as an employer to staff which all have to be met and that is a process which takes some times and therefore we will, and I am sure in the not too distant future, be able to come back with some more specific figures but at that stage I am not in a position where I can give you a number. What I can say is it is not in the millions, it will be in the tens of millions.
The Connétable of St. Peter :
Okay, so that answers the next question I was going to ask which was: "Have you made any projections?" and you must have done because you have told us it is going to be in the tens of millions.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Well yes, when I talk about projections, because it is worth me just making this point, we are not in the ... you can look at change programmes and make some general assumptions around your unit costs and your activity and your headcount and so therefore whenever you have done these things before, and it will not be just in the public sector, the private sector do this all the time, you can make some assumptions around some guiding principles. What I do not have is a specific number but I am confident in the fact that we had 12 departments with a level of duplication. Each of them had their own finance function, there was an H.R. (Human Resources) function, goodness knows what they did with I.T. (Information Technology) but I am sure we will come on to that, The amount of applications which were bought that you could have done once, and we did more than once, and all the wasted core costs that come from that duplication have been quite considerable and I think, going back to my earlier point, some of the broader efficiencies that will drive a more leaner, cost effective and value for money public service will come about through the fact that we are creating one argument with one set of objectives and with one operating model, even if we are going to have various subsets of that, so you can make some planning assumptions but the detail will come through in each of the particular pieces of work that the Director Generals will lead for their departments.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
If I can just add, I think you can see the scope. We effectively have 12 mini states and each of them with a substantial number of functions which are duplicated and the object of the exercise is to drive those into one function.
The Connétable of St. Peter :
There was a reduction of 26 posts at the top level. Have any employees left the States as a result of the reductions?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Yes, some have, some will do and that is a combination of retirements ... there will be, I suspect, as we go through this further, potential voluntary redundancies. Some people have left anyway, particularly in some parts, we can come on to that, and some people are going down in the organisation and are going through a process at the moment so I cannot tell you whether they will ultimately come out. The other bit is we have not filled some vacancies in some of those areas as well.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Sorry, how many vacancies have not been filled?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
We have a vacancy freeze right across the organisation because, of course, if you are in a place whereby you may have to be redeploying people, you need to be able to keep a body of work for people to be considered against so we are not, at this moment in time, filling anything unless it is by exception, hence why we have a need for interim support and fixed term contracts but we have a vacancy body or board, whichever you might wish to call it, which is looking at a case by case example so if we need a doctor, we are not going to not fill for a doctor.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Yes, but your focus is predominantly at the moment on Tier 1 and Tier 2 so how many people?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
No, we are freezing right across the piece at the moment so we are holding any vacancies that are coming up. There is about an 11 per cent vacancy factor across the States, right across the public service.
Senator K.L. Moore : Within Tier 1 and Tier 2?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
No, that is across everything. Within Tier 1 and Tier 2, at the moment we have probably a dozen vacancies which we are looking at filling through the process and we are not filling those on any other basis in the interim, we are not filling them at all at the moment.
Assistant Chief Minister:
Can I just say something there? It is common practice in the private industry to do this because you do not want to put a person into a vacancy whom you subsequently have to displace because that role does not form part of the organisation going forward and it would then incur an awful lot of costs.
Senator K.L. Moore :
We have that, thank you. I am afraid, Connétable , we are under some time pressure to get through this so we will have to move on.
We are moving on to senior appointments. What recruitment processes were undertaken to recruit the new senior civil servants who have joined from outside the States?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
All the senior posts went through 2 processes. The first was as part of the employment legislation that we work to where you have to do an evaluation about the role of a job and whether any individual has a right to that role and that could come in one of 2 forms. One is what we call that they can be ring fenced, so they can be interviewed because a percentage of their current job is included in the new role and therefore they can claim some rights to that position and if it is beyond 80 per cent, they have what is called a slot', i.e. if it is predominantly the same job then they have an automatic right and they go through. For those people in Tier 1, the Director Generals, and some of the Tier 2, which I will come on to in a minute, we first went through an assessment of all of the jobs versus all of those people who were part of the public service and their eligibility criteria. They then went through a process which involved the following; they would have had a technical assessment about their capabilities, they would have had a series of online assessments around some of their leadership capability, their aptitude and their ability to do things under pressure, etc. Then there was a role play exercise and we also went and had a written exercise, followed then by a full panel interview that was chaired by the Jersey Appointments Commission lead commissioner, Dame Janet Paraskeva and included within that, either commissioners' technical advisers and/or Jersey representatives. For those people who were not eligible we followed very much the same thing but we also put in place 2 other elements. One was we went through a full media process so they were asked to do a radio and a television role play as part of it and they went through a further assessment about their leadership capabilities for leading change. Now, all of the in-house colleagues who were part of the original arrangements also went through that but in a slightly different way so there was a pretty comprehensive selection process which every candidate was put through and that independent panel at the end was the decision maker on behalf of the States employment arrangements for the actual appointment.
[15:45]
Within that there are also 2 other subsets so for those people who were at Tier 2 slotted, i.e. they had a claim against a job because more than 80 per cent of their current work was reflected in the new job, those people have not had to go through an interview process but they have had to go through a whole series of activities about the culture to assess their capability for leading change and they will have a performance framework which they have to work through which is consistent with the revisions that we have introduced because there was no real appraisal and performance framework for senior managers in the States. That is the comprehensive nature of what we are doing and we are doing that with Tier 1 and Tier 2 and ultimately we will go into Tier 3 but at Tier 3 the final panel is not chaired by the Jersey Appointments Commission because they just deal with Tier 1 and Tier 2.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
Thank you, and how many employment licenses have been obtained for the new roles?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I am not sure I could give you an answer for that, I will have to come back. I would have thought it would be ...
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
There were estimations in 2017 that were done. There were 38 applications for essential employees and they all succeeded. There was a 100 per cent strike rate.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
That was in 2017 and that would have included doctors and others. It was not just about the new organisation so I am quite happy to go back and differentiate between the 2. What I can tell you is that there have been 25 licenses issued over this year for a mixture of interims and permanent and I will give you some examples. We have not got a range of specialists around G.D.P.R. (General Data Protection Regulation) and cyber security for I.T. so we did not have that on Island. We did not have that capability and we have some legal obligations and we were not going to meet our legal obligations so very quickly when I arrived it became apparent that we were 2 years behind what we should have done. As a result of that we have had to bring in some specialists to be able to deal with that. The second area is around the H.R. programme so with a big change area that we have had to do, we were not equipped to be able to deal with all the support so I just described for you some of the recruitment process. In addition to that, we have been providing all staff who are affected with interview technique training, C.V. (Curriculum Vitae) developments and support, coaching and development for them to be able to apply for jobs and this is about trying to see if we could give those people on Island the opportunities to succeed in the recruitment of these jobs given the right environment. Clearly, for a lot of people, they had never been through an interview over the last 10, 15, in some cases, 20 years and that is a real disadvantage so we have done that. In addition to that, for those people where we are going through some very significant changes, like Finance, we have had to provide some further integrated H.R. support. None of that was here when I came. The final area is around I.T. support, not just in terms of things like G.D.P.R. and all of that and we have had to bring some people ... sorry, not the final, the third area. The fourth area is some specialist support around Children's Services and Health so as a consequence of me taking some oversight on Children's Services earlier in the year, it became clear we did not have some of the operational management capability to make the changes so we brought 3 people in on that and on the Health side, again, for some of the interims, we brought some people in. All of those people have a license and those 25 licenses are not all permanent.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
So the 25 licenses between January and July of this year, how many ...
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: No, this is since last November to now.
Deputy S.M. Ahier : To now?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Yes.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
So how many do you envisage going forward for the next 6 months?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
All of those licenses operate until the back end of this calendar year and will be reviewed in December.
Deputy S.M. Ahier : That is all.
Senator K.L. Moore : Thank you.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
I would just like to ask some questions about the Director General appointment process.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Yes.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
It is quite usual for local Jersey people seeking public sector roles to look on gov.je under public sector jobs for upcoming opportunities. Why were Director General appointments not advertised on this particular page?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I did not know that they had not been, to be honest.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
I personally have not seen any being advertised. Are you aware if they have or have not been advertised?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I genuinely do not know the answer to that but I was advised they were on the website. We have done 2 things that I know. We took out a major spread in the local press here for all Director General posts and the senior posts and have continued to do that. We specifically went out for an ad campaign and we did that through social media as well on Island, as well as going to the trade press for specialists where needed. The programme was about being as transparent and open for Islanders as possible and we have been clear we are targeting Islanders. We have also worked with employment agencies here where we have used our partner, Penna, to make contact and have conversations to see whether we might be able to get any referrals but of course the challenge there is some of those want a finder's fee and obviously that is not appropriate, to spend public money in that way.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
Great segue. I was about to ask you about Penna. Why was it you decided that you would use a London based recruitment agency for the advertisement of these Director General positions. I understand that they have been, as you said, collaborating with local ones but why the initial decision not to use a local company who has lots of experience at recruiting at the executive level?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: We went out for an advert, they did not bid.
Deputy J.H. Perchard: Nobody?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Some did but they did not bid successfully. In pricing, some of them did not have the capability to do it, because it is such a big job.
Deputy J.H. Perchard: Sure.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Some of them were very, very specialist in their recruitment so with the greatest respect, we are not the finance services sector. We will have some jobs that will be equivalent to that but we are a public service and you need to understand and go into some of the specialisms. They bid, some, but they were not necessarily approved in their bid. We had a range of bidders. Penna was the one that went through the process, I was not involved in that.
Deputy J.H. Perchard: Sure.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
They won on quality and price and in addition to that they have established a position on Island, which has been quite important and one of the big briefs was to go out and seek and source applications from on Island and we do that but there is a big issue here. If there were people here, we would have already been having them or if there were good enough people here, we would have hopefully attracted them and unfortunately, not all of the services that we currently provide have been led and supported in the right way at the strategic leadership level and unfortunately we have a whole range of failing services. Children's is the most notable but it is not confined to that. We have massive problems in the Health service, we have got significant issues around some of our financial internal services like I.T. and we can get some of those people from on Island but a large
proportion of that needs us to develop a long term strategy for talent and developing tomorrow's leaders and that is going to take quite a few years and we have not been doing it for the last decade or more. That it is not a criticism, it is just a fact and this is going to take quite a long time. We do not have a proper apprenticeship programme here although we have bits of it in certain departments. D.F.I. (Department for Infrastructure), as was, were the best exponents of that but we had nothing in a large number of other areas. We do not have a proper graduate programme, we do not target public services like we do for financial services on Island, we have not created the right type of long term development for stars who are in the organisation at the moment and we do not invest enough in people to give them career pathways so as part of that, we are setting up, as part of the transformation and modernisation, a whole investment programme but that will take some years to come so my ambition is in 5 years' time we will start to see the fruits of that. Some people are here, would have been invested, might be coming through and I can already spot some real talent that with the right kind of support will, I think, become the Director Generals of tomorrow but unfortunately we were just not in that place.
Deputy J.H. Perchard: Sure.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
If we had been, we would not have been in the need and place for modernising the services because we would have been doing it.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
Yes. I really, really am thrilled to hear that from you and I am really excited when you think about some of the opportunities from that.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
There is a second bit around that which is around diversity.
Deputy J.H. Perchard: Yes.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
We have not got enough women leaders, we do not represent the full community that is here living in Jersey and we need to do more, I think, to encourage people to come through in that sense and we did a lot this time. We had quite a large number of quite senior women candidates for some of the D.G. (Director General) jobs but they dropped out at the end because of the move to the Island.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
Why was relocation a particularly pertinent issue for the female candidates?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Their partners were working sometimes and ...
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
That will happen with the male candidates also.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Not always, I hasten to say. That is not to say it should be that way, but not always. Some of it was about domestics so ...
Deputy J.H. Perchard: What do you mean?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
By that I mean whether that was about schooling or whether that was about wider family commitments. We had one candidate who literally the day before the final interview, when talking to their disabled parents, found that their parents just could not deal with the fact that they were going to be on Island and we want people to be on Island, we do not want people commuting.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
What I hear here is certainly a problem caused by this particular process but something worth acknowledging is that, as is commonly accepted, women are still fighting a wider societal issue with issues around education of their children. You mentioned schooling and caring roles as you mentioned the disabled parents and wider family issues. These issues, time and again, are holding women back from progressing in the workplace and these are all things where I think a lot of men will say: "Well I am involved in the schooling of my children and the care of my parents and my family, wider issues and concerns". Both men and women should do that in an equal way and it is such a sad thing that we still live in a world where this is not the case and that has been reflected in the outcomes of recruitment at the highest level in our public sector. Do you have any plans to take action to help tackle this endemic problem that we all need to be fighting against?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
We do need to look at how we target and support the development, particularly of female leaders in the organisation, and what we then do about some of the wider mechanisms for encouraging and allowing people to have more flexibility for the work/life issues that you describe. Interestingly, in this particular set of interviews, it was often the male who was the carer and/or had a job which meant that you could not meet the requirements of the family in its entirety. It was not specifically about the female being denied the opportunity, because they made all the shortlists. It was more about the circumstances behind their ability to come here and give their full undivided attention to the task in hand from a career perspective so if you have a kid who has one year to go in school, you are going to commute if you do not want to take that kid out of school and disturb their education plans or if you have elderly parents, there may be personal circumstances which dictate you have to see them on a regular basis. We all have those sorts of pressures, all of which contribute to their inability to come on Island and settle here. If you have got somebody who is in a specialist job that is potentially not as available here or, for them, they do not have that career aspect, there may be other restrictions that come about so it is a more complicated landscape in this instance than just the female applicants but do we need to do more? Yes. Are we looking at that? Yes, so what do about role models, what do we do about supporting it through some of the changes in our policies and procedures? We are having a full review of that at the moment.
Deputy J.H. Perchard: Yes.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
What do we do, going back to my earlier point, about indigenous members of our community and representing those people as an opportunity? Now, that goes back to schools. At the moment if you go to schools, everyone says: "I want to work in the finance services sector". Very few people say: "I want to go and be a public servant". I could probably say that all the scrutiny you get for that might be a particular but there is an interesting aspect where this is not seen as a job or a career or choice and we need to make it that and we need to create, through what I said earlier, apprenticeships and stuff, opportunities for people to get on the ladder and start to develop.
Senator K.L. Moore :
I concur with Deputy Perchard in her comments about your approach to leadership and those roles but as a consequence of the H.R. Lounge report that was recently published, we asked the Chief Minister last week to explain how he was tackling issues of organisational culture and he said that it was really a matter for you so we would very much like to hear from you about how you are tackling, at all levels within the organisation, these cultural issues that seem very embedded and are absolutely critical to tackle.
[16:00]
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I should add, and the Assistant Chief Minister may want to come in, we have had some very clear and open conversations about bullying and the culture of bullying in the States, and to be fair, the previous Council of Ministers was also very concerned about this so it is longstanding issue which we need to deal with and there is very clear drive to implement the full recommendations from the H.R. Lounge report and we are on with that and fact, State Employment Board had an update to it this week and there is going to be a progress report coming out later on in the Autumn which will show where we are but the bullying issue is part, as you say, of a broader cultural issue. Organisational change is not going to come just by moving the deck chairs around and creating new boxes in terms of jobs or a Director General rather than a Chief Officer, it is a more fundamental shift in the way in which the culture and the behaviours of the organisation work so we, right from the beginning, underpinned the need to invest in our single biggest asset, which is our staff, and I think they have not been invested in to the satisfaction of what a good employer would do. We committed to going out to secure a partner for helping us manage to cultural behaviour piece to improve our leadership capability and to deal with some of the challenges that you have referenced and that process is nearing completion. We are in commercial negotiations now with the preferred partner. We expect to announce that in the Autumn. I am very happy to come back at a later date and talk you through that because I think it is really important that Scrutiny understands some of this because it will start to deal with some of the points that you made, Deputy , around the embedded nature of how people can access careers and opportunities and deal with that.
Deputy J.H. Perchard: Yes.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
It will talk about how you manage change, it will talk about values, it talks about how people behave so this is not about a diktat, this is about getting a collective Team Jersey approach to the way in which we have to deal with some systemic problems and as part of that, there will be a holding to account so with the bullying reference, much of which I fully understand and recognise from having to deal with these problems before, there is also the very subtle but important distinction between bullying and people not enjoying being held to account about performance and their ability to do the job and if they are held to account and they do not like it, often that is referred to as bullying when in fact it is about how you manage people and I think we have a long way to go to get that consistent and right in the way we do that across the public services but it is a gap and people do not like being held to account, in my experience, and when they do they cry foul and we need to come back and challenge that because that is not bullying, that is about doing your job. On the other hand, we have some flashpoints in that and the report is quite clear on the culture where we have some people being told to do stuff and also being advised: "Well we do not want that going through, we are not going to do that" or putting a lot of pressure on individuals. That is wholly inappropriate and we are culturally an organisation that has to change so this process that we are talking about is, again, a 3 to 5 year programme which will involve the whole organisation so in the past we have done the top 50 or 100 managers. Well whoopee-do, that is not going to help anyway. We are talking about 7,000 employees that we need to be reaching out to and working with and talking to and any strong organisation that achieves that will be able to turn itself around and deliver, I believe, a more sustainable public service.
Senator K.L. Moore :
So the preferred partner that you are looking to partner with will be looking at every employee across the organisation rather than managing the leading and developing them?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Yes. There will be some leaders' programmes and there will be a whole load of frontline services programmes, because they are different, but it is everybody who will be touched by this.
Senator K.L. Moore :
You talk also about a Team Jersey approach?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Yes.
Senator K.L. Moore :
How are you developing that character and defining the Team Jersey approach?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Within the confines of the partner, we will be looking at and reviewing our values, which will be co- designed with staff. We will be looking at: "What are the guiding principles that flash out, your target operating models core framework"? and we will be looking at: "What are the challenging areas that we need to address first"? so bullying will be one and having what I call courageous conversations about performance capability is another. It is about developing and coaching styles of management, it is about dealing with the ability to delegate and how you drive down through the organisation decision making so that you are not in this pyramid, which we are at the moment, and it will be about taking responsibility. Unfortunately, we have a culture here where people pass responsibility up so an email with 30 names in it means: "I have done my job, over to you". That is not about accountability and responsibility, that is about absenting yourself but letting someone know in case there is an audit trail that is found 10, 20 months later. We cannot have that and so those sorts of issues will form part of the programme but it will be more than that and we are very happy to come back at the appropriate time with a more detailed presentation around it.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Would you want to pick up, Connétable ?
The Connétable of St. Peter :
Well much of the next question has been answered. There was a question about comparing the average cost of the Director General's role with the former Chief Officer's role but I would assume the answer is they would be on a higher salary because it is a higher level of executive.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
There is a range and they are not all on the same point in the range.
The Connétable of St. Peter : Yes.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
There are small D.G.'s in terms of service area so that will be reflected. Previously we had one of the Chief Officers paid more money than any of the D.G.'s so interestingly our range is lower than that which was previously in place.
The Connétable of St. Peter :
Lower, because that was the benchmark.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
We have done some proper benchmarking around that but you are right, some of these jobs are big jobs and therefore, where we arrive on that range may mean that we have some D.G.'s that are more expensive as Chief Officers, per se, but that is not about the range.
The Connétable of St. Peter :
We have fewer Tier 1 and Tier 2's anyway so that is where we ...
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Correct, and is that is partly where the million figure comes from.
The Connétable of St. Peter : Yes, fine.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
Why are the salaries for the Director General vacancies not advertised in the job description for the Penna website?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
You do not do that in modern recruitment, you go for competitive salaries.
Deputy J.H. Perchard: Even in the public sector?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Yes, it has been the case since ... I can go back 15 years and I have not ever not seen this sort of activity. It is common parlance and my idea very clearly is that we are a public sector but we are a business and we should be therefore driving a whole series of important considerations about recruitment based on getting the right people, the right competency and the right standards and if you do not and you do not meet them then you are held to account for it.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
Does that mean that the salaries are negotiable in any way?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Well it is negotiable when you are in a range.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
So there is a banding or a range?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Yes, there is a range, that is what I just said, but what I am then doing is people then arrive at a spot salary and that is it, you arrive and you move on. Now, we may as an organisation at some point want to review our recruitment, retention and how we remunerate people, but that is not on the cards at the moment.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
In relation to the Group Director and Director posts which have been created?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Yes.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
Why were these needed and how many such posts have been created?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I can come back and give you the specifics but on the structure chart it tells you exactly what they are and of course they are less. We had 72 Directors before and we are going to have something in the region of about 30 D.G.'s and Directors, all told, across the whole organisation so there is a reduction.
Deputy S.M. Ahier : So quite a few.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
A significant reduction. The reason why Group Directors and Directors are differentiated is some of them are very big jobs covering quite significant levels of staffing and some of them are more strategic and smaller based and therefore in the way that public services gradings work, there is, whether we like it or not, a bit a bit about areas of responsibility that feed into the demarcation for salaries and for job titles so that is because we are part of a system that is not just set for Jersey, it is set for government organisations.
Deputy S.M. Ahier : Thank you.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
I would like to just come back to you on suggesting that we are a business and while I appreciate that there is a very heavy business side to government, we are in a public service funded by the public for the public and that is the reason I asked you the question about whether salaries were, or not, made public knowledge because it is the taxpayer's money that inevitably pays for the salaries and if there is a band that already exists and it is going to be somewhere within the band, I do not understand why maybe even just the bands are not made publicly available.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
They are, we do it every year. We publish our salaries and our ...
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
On the website where the jobs are advertised?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
No, it does not work like that. With the greatest respect, Deputy , if you give a band and it has a range, everybody will want to come to the top of the range. That is not good value for money so if you are a public body, which we are, you have a duty to also protect the public purse so what you have is a conversation about the range, the experience and you make a judgement based on the full assessment process that you go through.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
Oh, so do people not know the top end of the band when they come in, is that what you are saying?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
No, they will know the range in the final negotiations about what is available but what you will always do ... we had lots and lots of people who applied for jobs who only applied for 2 reasons. One was it was Jersey, not because they had any interest in Jersey but because of the tax regime, and secondly, because they wanted to be paid at a certain figure. They were not necessarily eligible, qualified or whatever so the recruitment process is a much more comprehensive one than just advertising.
Deputy J.H. Perchard: I am very aware of that.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
For transparency though, and I am not trying to be disrespectful here, we will tell people what they are paid. We will produce performance frameworks for them and we will give you, ultimately, the figures that the public service costs and you will be able to look back and compare that, if we can get all the accounting and financing right, with what we paid before. That is what you should be doing, so when I talk about a business, I do not mean that we have to be anything other than business-like. We have different sets of shareholders which are taxpayers so we have different returns. We do not give a dividend, we give good public services, we give transparent value for money services.
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
We should also be socially minded while we do that.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Of course we should but that ...
Deputy J.H. Perchard:
For some reason, all the other positions on the website, the gov.je jobs public sector, they are all there. Every time you click on a job they are very, very clear in noting that and the only reason I ask the question is simply because they are a higher level job and the salaries are not shown compared to the lower level jobs where the salaries are. That was ...
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
All the jobs at Tier 1 and Tier 2 are advertised as competitive' and that is just good practice for the reasons I have rehearsed.
Deputy J.H. Perchard: Thank you.
Senator K.L. Moore :
I think we will move on to another sector and I am going to challenge everybody, because I a rather mindful of the time. Answers, although very interesting, have sometimes been a little long, so 5 minute section now on office strategy please and I think Deputy Ahier is going to lead.
Oh yes. Now, in your 6 month report you mentioned that announcements will be made shortly about moving the staff out of Cyril Le Marquand House into a new building?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Yes.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
When will this announcement be made?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Imminently and I wish I could give it to you today but I cannot. We are in some commercial negotiations. We expect to be able to announce it very, very soon. I would really, genuinely like to be able to say that and cannot but I am hoping that it will be very imminent and we will be able to announce that and clearly we just have to respect the commercial negotiations being finalised.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
The near future, the foreseeable future?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Imminent future.
Deputy S.M. Ahier : Oh right.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: I mean very imminent.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
What is the benefit of everyone being in one building?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
We have at the moment quite a large portfolio where people are spread all over the Island and they do not work together for the reasons that I have rehearsed. This will start to bring people into 3 buildings, in effect. La Motte Street, the new building and linked to La Motte Street we have a couple of satellites around children's and adult social care facilities which we have brought together into 2 buildings where before they were spread around 4 or 5 sites so we will get a downsize in sites, we will get more people working together, we will get more agile working and we will get better liaison and communication across different departments where previously they would be in their place so by way of example, if you are not teaching, why does Education senior management need to be at Highlands?
[16:15]
If you are not a consultant surgeon, why does your hospital management have to sit in the hospital? It does not but the relationship between hospital senior staff and Social Security, between Adult Social Care and other services that might be linked to the States, there are quite important discussions and negotiations that should take place every time; efficiencies, effective working arrangements, closer liaison and finally it would be about asset disposals and about reducing the number of properties that we have, the costs associated with them and freeing them for either development or ...
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
Relating to that, what is the plan for Cyril Le Marquand House? Will it be used for housing?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
It could be and certainly key worker housing could be an example. The building is not configured very well for adaptation. My expectation is that it will probably, if that was going to be the end use, need to be completely rethought on the footprint. I am not sure many people would be sad about that, if I was being honest, but not withstanding that, we have not got a final plan on that. We also have a number of other sites that would be disposed for housing.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
How long will it take to deliver a new building at La Motte Street?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
La Motte Street, we have already got a building there. The longer term plan about whether the States might be in a single building is yet to be determined by the Council of Ministers so these arrangements are a step in that direction and it is about bringing people together and it is about supporting and underpinning the cultural change that I have talked about earlier today.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
So Liberty House and the building on New Street, how do these fit into the strategy?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Liberty House, we brought all the Children's Services into one place so if you had ever been to La Bas, it is a pretty poor, run down place. If we have children and vulnerable people and families coming in, we need to give them time and space and respect and we need an integrated service offer. Eagle House, same thing for adults and for people returning to work.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
So the Le Bas Centre, moving forward?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
We will dispose of the Le Bas Centre. It is one of those assets that will become ... so we have got 12 buildings ultimately that we are in and a number of those will go quite quickly.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
The future hospital team have a number of offices. Over the last year have they been relocated?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
They were consolidated. They are currently in Cyril Le Marquand House now and they will be relocated into one of the offices that we will have once we have done the full rationalisation.
Deputy S.M. Ahier : Thank you.
Senator K.L. Moore :
The plan, is it still to eventually move into the La Motte Street site?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I think for the former Council of Ministers, the objective was to be able to create a new build which would help regenerate that part of town and be an anchor for it. That debate has not been had with the current Council of Ministers. What they have agreed to is the interim solution about bringing everybody together to support and underpin whether ... and that debate will be had as part of the planning around the Government plan and the financial decisions for the M.T.F.P.
Assistant Chief Minister:
I think at first pass it does look logical to have everyone in one building and La Motte Street does seem the logical site for that. I cannot prejudge the Council of Ministers' decision but I would expect that they would support that.
Senator K.L. Moore :
We need to move on now and congratulations for fitting that into 5 minutes.
Assistant Chief Minister: We did our best.
The 2018 information services strategy referred to States workers moving to cloud based computing?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Yes.
The Connétable of St. Peter :
Do you have the timeframe for that?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Well we are hoping that the first phase of that will be by the end of this calendar year. There is a debate going on about how quickly we can get everybody on to that. The next milestone is March 2019 but we are going back and having a conversation at the moment about whether that could be speeded up at all and/or whether some of the subsequent phases that were predicted from March 2019 to July can be brought forward. The first part of that will be completed by the end of this calendar year but we are not going to get full migration because we do not think we have the resilience to do that and we have to switch off legacy systems as we go and because, unfortunately, going back to the property point, a lot of these things are located in individual buildings, we do not have a single system. You can imagine the problem that we have so by moving into a single building or 2 or 3 buildings but pretty much a smaller portfolio, we will be able to exercise the shift to the cloud.
The Connétable of St. Peter : The cost of the project?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I think the first phase of that is somewhere round about half a million. I think there is a bigger conversation then about what the full transformation is going to be so a big part for me is around our overarching business architecture. Office 365 and Azure, which is the cloud based solution, is one bit of it but we do not have a real clarity about the wider I.T. operation requirements and the work is going on now and that will be complete in September, which will then tell me about the full business architecture. Unfortunately, I think in the strategy we have so many ambitions we just need to do that. We need to get and land some of this stuff and then we need to move forward on to the next phase. The other bit for me is data management and that is a really big problem based on the cyber security and the whole G.D.P.R. debate that I referenced earlier and we have got to get a solution around data management and that will be a cost we do not know but we are moving towards having an understanding of that, again in the Autumn.
The Connétable of St. Peter : Right, thank you.
Okay, so we are going to move on now to talk about communications and the recent report that was published. The report was undertaken in November 2017 and I believe it was only revealed following an F.O.I. (Freedom of Information) request. Why was that?
Director of Communications:
I am sure, as in all departments, we do an awful lot of work in the background planning and helping us to design new structures so when I was hired to set up a communications operation, the first thing I needed to do was check what we currently had and how it was working so I put a team together from across different parts of the States Communications and we went out in, I think, 5 weeks and pulled together all the information we could to say: "This is the current state", not: "Why we got here, how we got here, who made what decisions" but: "This is what it currently is" to help us to understand what we needed to do to improve it. I do not think all the internal workings of future plans end up on gov.je. When we were requested to release this under F.O.I. then I said: "Well if it is under F.O.I., let us just publish it on gov.je so that anyone can see it who wants to" but it underpinned our thinking through of what we then needed to do in terms of our strategy for communications and then what structure there needs to be to support the delivering of that strategy, knowing what we have discovered about the current operation and the various failings that we had found in that operation. The report, if you have read it, is fairly relentlessly negative because I was looking at what was not working rather than necessarily what was so we had some very good people doing some very good work but we also had an awful lot of stuff that was not right that we needed to fix and we came up with 60 recommended action points, not all of which belonged to Communications. Some were advisory to other parts of the States of Jersey saying: "Well this is something that you really ought to be doing" and I think I counted the other day that we have already done 21 of those 60 action points. There an awful lot still to do which is awaiting the arrival of new team members in the new structure so that we can do a lot more in house than we have been able to do before and also to professionalise an operation which has been, as you will remember from your term in office, quite fragmented. We have had some very good people working very hard but trying to do everything as individuals in a department without the underpinning structure to help on internal communications or on media, whether it is graphic design or marketing or digital. We were giving a hospital pass to Commons people in departments to do everything a Commons Department would do with only one person.
Senator K.L. Moore :
You referred just then to a number of people exiting this department and there had been a lag before the new entrants arrived?
Director of Communications: Yes.
Senator K.L. Moore :
What had been the loss rate and how many more people are coming into the organisation?
Director of Communications:
I think we have lost 6 or 7, none of whom have gone at my behest. I think what often happens when you go through major change programmes, and I have been through them before, is that some people get really enthusiastic about the potential and other people, particularly if they have been in post for a while and if they have been jaded over a period of time by not being able to do what they want to do, they reach the point where they think: "No, I want to do something else" and so a number of people have gone. We are in the middle of recruitment at the moment. We have made a number of appointments but people have to work through notice. I have been really heartened by
the number of people that have applied for roles and I specifically and exclusively targeted Jersey. We will not fill all the roles in this first round, particularly if I stick to only trying to bring in people from Jersey. The communication profession in Jersey is small and I want quite a lot of the people who are good in Jersey to come and work for me so we will either run under capacity for a while or we may have to take a decision to look further afield than Jersey if we are not able to fill those roles but I am looking at a structure of around 34 people. We will not get there in one leap; I want graphic designers in house but I do not need to appoint 4 graphic designers immediately because we will not have enough work for them. What I want to do is bring work in, as and when we need to do it. We will hand that over to the internal team and when we get too much work we will hire somebody else so instead of going off to an agency at £100 per hour, someone in house will be able to do the work for us which will generate not just efficiencies but brand consistency and flexibility because they will be sitting next to us in the same room and will be able to nip across and check everything that is being done and not have to arrange meetings in 2 days hence.
Senator K.L. Moore :
The reports show that there were 34 people working in the Communications sphere across the organisation previously so throughout this organisation it has remained static in terms of the total number however what you are saying there is that in fact your costs will be reduced because there will be less agency work and combining in of the services.
Director of Communications:
It is a bit of a mix, Chair, because the number of people is about adequate but some people are working 0.2 so 10 hours per week whereas my structure is 34 F.T.E. (Full Time Equivalent) so it is roughly the same number of bums on seats but it is more work than we had in the previous structure so it will cost more in terms of having full time equivalents but we will save on costs in buying in design and also, because we will have more consistent and professional marketing coming through a central funnel we will be able to see whether we are spending money that we should not be spending on advertising in areas that are not going to reach our audiences and to drive a better deal as one government through our purchasing power when we do need to go outside for specialist service and when we are buying advertising.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Do you see this as a cost neutral or a cost saving or a cost increase?
Director of Communications:
I would hope that it is at least cost neutral but do bear in mind that in doing stuff that we did not do before we are adding to our portfolio of activities so we effectively had no internal communications. We had 2 temps working on specific projects for H.R. and they communicated a bit with the rest of
the organisation if they had time on some stuff that was being done across the rest of the organisation. Establishing an internal communications function to support the drive of modernisation means more people and we cannot deliver change without communicating with people about that change so we are adding cost to internal communications because it really was not being done and because we need to do that so that our 7,000 colleagues understand what is happening, when it is happening and how it is happening. Although I hope that we will end up cost neutral in generating efficiencies in one part of what we do, there will be increased costs in other parts because we are doing stuff that simply was not done and although this is to some extent hearsay, my head of Internal Communications had an email a few weeks ago from a colleague who she did not know who said: "I just want to thank you. I have learnt more about what the States does in the last 3 months through the intranet than I have learnt in the previous 13 years", because we have started telling people stuff that we did not before.
[16:30]
We did not tell our staff what we were telling the media so my learned colleagues were often functioning as the internal communications channel to staff because we issue press releases to the Jersey Evening Post and that is where staff would find out what is happening. We have a principle now to always tell staff first. We do not issue anything without telling staff first because they have a right to know about what affects them and we did not have that principle.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Does that a work a bit like telling States Members first, which is usually about 2 minutes before the press gets to hear of it?
Director of Communications:
It is a first among equals approach where it is virtually instantaneous.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I think it would be fair to say this is work in progress and because we have been operating below capacity we need to get better, smarter and more on the front foot about communicating and sharing and explaining so communications, I think, is also about engagement and also about campaigning around the understanding of key issues. I do not think we have done that particularly well in the past. Doing that does inevitably cost, particularly as we were not doing it but the benefit is reaped later when you see the ... so if you take the hospital programme, I think it would be fair to say that we have not properly communicated and engaged in the right way and had we done that much earlier, we possibly, possibly would not necessarily be facing some of the issues about which people are concerned. That is not to say the site issue would not have been ... it is always difficult but some of the way in which decisions, activity, information ... we did lots of road shows, we did lots of other things but that is not the same as engagement. There are other things in this period of change and it goes back to the question, for example, about reaching out to Islanders and developing a cada if it is warranted. That is a campaign, it is an engagement programme and we need to do more of that longer term and we were not but the benefit will come in reduced recruitment costs, more local employment opportunities, better career prospects, more sustainable arrangements etc., etc.
Director of Communications:
If I could just add very, very quickly that there are benefits we can monetise from communication outside of the communications budget. We know around 77 per cent of Islanders who should have a flu jab in the winter get a flu jab. Now, that is a pretty good result because those 77 per cent are not therefore getting ill generally and they are not ending up in hospital and they are not displacing someone who is about to have surgery but now cannot because the beds are blocked. Effective communication increases the percentage of people who do something that we want them to do; get a flu jab, have breast screening, cervical smear. It leads not just to benefits to the individuals but cost benefits through the system because we are encouraging behaviour change through effective communications and I have done this before in a previous organisation where we were able to demonstrate how simple, effective communications can drive better behaviour around customers. We stop them phoning for information which they could get elsewhere which saves cost on call handling and improves call handling performance because we have got fewer people calling so we should not just look at communication in terms of the budget of my team but also in terms of the wider benefits that effective communication can deliver to the States.
Assistant Chief Minister:
I am sure we have exceeded our 5 minutes Chair, but ...
Senator K.L. Moore :
We were not working to
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: We have been ticked off once.
Assistant Chief Minister:
If I can just add, part of my portfolio of responsibilities is communication and I think it is fair to say that Stephen did share his strategy with me immediately he knew that I had that brief. I have had a lifetime of communications experience so I can say, looking at what was there previously, it was very fragmented and an awful lot of money was wasted. I am determined, with Stephen, to make
sure that we implement an effective and efficient communication strategy and also an efficient marketing strategy where we are saving the money on the marketing that we are doing. Take, for example media buying. We have a completely uncoordinated media buy. In my lifetime I have spent millions from budgets on advertising and media buying can probably save between 20 and 30 per cent at this by engaging the right agency to use it so there is a lot of pickup that we can get from a proper negotiation strategy and I have to say, what Stephen does has my complete support.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Do you think enough is being done to communicate the one government project and what is going on?
Director of Communications:
I think we have done a lot to communicate internally about what the future is, which is important. You set the vision and you tell people what's coming, even if you do not have all the detail and you keep telling your colleagues so they understand it and engage with things which are going to affect them. In terms of communicating to Islanders about one government, you have to have something to communicate which is tangible. Charlie has made a few speeches in the public forum to set out the vision and it had been very well covered in the media but until you can see what this means for Islanders in terms of the services that they are going to get, until you can say: "We are moving this online" or: "We are moving to one front door for Government services, this is going to happen shortly, you do not have to run around different Government offices around St. Helier to do bits of Government business. You can go in through one front door and do everything you need to do. That is going to be a real tangible benefit" ... the thing about communication is you only really want to tell people when there is something you want them to do, not just about things generally, about one Government and: "This is going to be wonderful"; you cannot build a reputation on what you are going to do. I cannot remember who said that, it was someone very clever and so we want to tell people about things that we are doing that will affect them at a time when they need to know. We are moving to online tax, which is revolutionary for Jersey, and we will not have to queue outside Cyril Le Marquand House but telling people about the benefits of that a year before we are going to bring it is basically wasted communication. We will tell people when we need them to know that something they need to do is changing so that they can engage with it at the time they act.
Senator K.L. Moore :
You talked earlier about values and community. Surely that is part of developing a set of values within the community, having a conversation with ...
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
We are starting to do that, so by way of example, I think you are noticing the one government structure. There is the construct of a local services function which reaches out more, working in parishes, working with third sector, working with the voluntary organisations so that a conversation can be started. We are doing a bit of consultation at the moment. We are going out and we are meeting the Connétable s. It is quite difficult to get that meeting at this moment but it is happening.
The Connétable of St. Peter :
The problem with the parishes is all 12 of us never agree.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
There are areas of common interest whether you sit on this side or the other side of the table. I think there is more than you might think there. We need to just do things once for people.
The Connétable of St. Peter : Yes.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
It does not undermine the uniqueness of the parish system but enhances the opportunity for people to be able to connect with services and we are involved in that now and we are doing much more around, as I say, walking and talking with stakeholders to hear what they are saying, so that conversation about how you co-design your activity is beginning. We are going to do more survey work and work around making sure that we understand how Future Jersey is going to be, so part of our performance framework is to look for an outcome based system which is more about getting the views of resident stakeholders, third sector, partners and businesses etc. so that it is not just an internal conversation that we keep having. We are in the foothills, we have a long way to go but that is part of our ambition and that conversation about local services is the first bit so grouping together some of our health and adult provision for mental health, working on parishes who have better networks for people who are excluded or do not want to know or do not want to talk about pressures that they facing. How do you then provide that connection to give those that are going down a certain route which is not for their wellbeing the right support and some safety and anonymity instead of us finding people coming into the system very late on, costing us more money? That, I think, requires a very different model long term so that genuinely is something that we are beginning to develop now.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Thank you for answering the question which we received from a member of the public about the parishes and communication strategies on the table.
Can I just say, I think from a political point of view, from my perspective, I will remain keen to ensure that we present as much of the story as we can to the general public because what I am not keen to see is senior appointments being made without some sort of context being put around that about how important that is and how much is being saved by the restructure we are doing so I will be bring pressure on these guys to make sure that we do tell as much as we can do.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Do you think that has been achieved to date? There has been a significant amount of change already.
Assistant Chief Minister:
I think we perhaps, in places, could have done better and I am sure that we will do better in the future.
The Connétable of St. Peter :
Well I suppose the only question is: "If we could go back in time, how many years ago should you have really started this?".
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Well I made the point when I was last in front of the previous committee that if I got here 5 years ago, I think we would have done an enormous amount that would have saved huge amounts of money but we would also have done some of the stuff you, quite rightly, were talking about. We would have started that journey about developing our long term workforce planning to give this Island the sustainable workforce needed for its services based in Jersey and I think whatever we do long term, we have to think about these much more systemic outcomes and legacies that are needed to help develop a workforce and a public service that ultimately it is not in the same place again. It is not to say we do not now have some brilliant people who work incredibly hard and do some brilliant things about public service but it is fragmented, it does not reflect a common strategy and approach and if we did that 5 years ago, this round of recruitment would have been quite different. That is a good example. The costs that we would have had for public services would have been different, the I.T. that we have talked about and Camilla has not even talked about what she is doing - this is the second time you have come to one of these things - and the list will go on. I think with regards to the previous Council of Members there was a sense we could have also provided the right support for the strategic interventions politically for people to be able to deliver successfully, which is what we want to do for the current Council of Ministers, and that has to be where the public wants us to be.
I will also pick up on Richard's question to say from a finance perspective, and I served 40 years in the finance industry, a common theme in the finance industry is how inefficient the Government is and it has needed to be reformed. I, for one, absolutely welcome what is happening because everyone in the finance industry will be behind it. We in the finance industry are having to pay the cost of the inefficiencies and it adds substantially to the costs of living on this Island which also drags down people's ability to pay their bills at the bottom end of the income scale so it is going to have a lot of benefits, in my view, going forward.
Senator K.L. Moore : In terms of productivity?
Assistant Chief Minister: Yes, productivity.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: Absolutely, yes.
Okay, thank you. One final question is, I think is you mentioned the Future Jersey Project and outcomes based performance. Will you be continuing to use Future Jersey as a reference for the key outcomes that would define work government?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Yes, the conversations we are having about the development of the Government plan ... we have already got quite a lot of feedback from probably the best responded to consultation, whether you like the outcome is a different matter, that the Island has ever seen. Within it there is quite a good and clear set of outcome performance indicators and frameworks that we should be using. In their deliberations the Council of Ministers do not want to reinvent the wheel. What there might be is tweaking around some of how you take forward activity but I think that was inevitable because it is quite a high level strategy and you do need to be able to distil that into practical examples of what we are doing to be able to deliver those outcomes but the objective is not to lose sight of all of that very valuable work.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Will you be setting your own Key Performance Indicators?
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
Yes, so part of what we are talking about is establishing the performance framework, which we have not got to yet. We are in the throes of making the critical appointment there and part of that builds on the outcomes. Then you will start to see a link back to some of the Future Jersey stuff which I think is quite valuable.
Assistant Chief Minister:
I will also add it obviously goes without saying that the Council of Ministers would be very keen to make sure that it does succeed and does not fall because clearly there is a lot riding on it.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey:
I am under no illusion, I will be held to account for it because that is what I now know and that is fair enough but I think there is no doubt that the Ministers are very clear that there will be pointers and that is going to be public as well and that will help with some of that transparency because ultimately that is where you will be able to go back and say: "Well hold on a minute you said ... did you do?".
Senator K.L. Moore :
We look forward to playing our part in that process as well.
Chief Executive of the States of Jersey: I am sure you will, yes.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Okay, so I think there are not any further questions at this point? Thank you all very much for your time today.
[16:45]