States Assembly | Transcript - One Gov Review - Chief Minister and Chief Executive

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OneGov Review Panel OneGov

Witness: The Chief Minister

Thursday, 9th July 2020

Panel:

Deputy K.G. Pamplin of St. Saviour (Chair) Deputy R.J. Ward of St. Helier

Senator K.L. Moore

Senator S.C. Ferguson

Deputy K.F. Morel of St. Lawrence

Deputy S.M. Ahier of St. Helier

Witnesses:

Senator J.A.N. Le Fondré, The Chief Minister

Mr. C. Parker, Chief Executive

Ms. C. Madden, Chief of Staff

Mr. J. Blazeby, Director General, Justice and Home Affairs

Mr. M. Grimley, Group Director, People and Corporate Services Ms. D. Drieu, Programme Director, Team Jersey

Mr. A. Bell, Programme Director, TDP Team Jersey

Mr. J. Quinn, Chief Operating Officer

[14:01]

Deputy K.G. Pamplin of St. Saviour (Chair):

Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the OneGov Review Panel public hearing with the Chief Minister and chief executive. This is a Scrutiny review panel and obviously all normal Scrutiny rules and functions apply under the hearing. We are of course meeting remotely, so a reminder to members of the public, you can watch this live now and will be made available after the meeting has

concluded. This obviously will be transcribed as well, which is for our records as we continue our work. As for all Members, we are all used to this now but we have to say it, that if anybody wants to interject please indicate by using the virtual hand signal and chatting to us via the virtual chat. We have only got an hour and we will talk about how we want to deal with that in a moment but let us just, as we normally do, introduce ourselves. First on the Scrutiny Panel side. So I am of course Deputy Kevin Pamplin. I am now the new chair of this review panel.

Senator S.C. Ferguson:

I am Sarah Ferguson, a member of the panel.

Deputy K.F. Morel of St. Lawrence :

Deputy Kirsten Morel , a member of the panel.

Senator K.L. Moore :

Senator Kristina Moore , a member of the panel.

Deputy S.M. Ahier of St. Helier :

Deputy Steve Ahier , a member of the panel.

Deputy R.J. Ward of St. Helier :

Deputy Robert Ward , a member of the panel.

The Chief Minister:

Senator John Le Fondré, Chief Minister.

Assistant Chief Minister:

Deputy Scott Wickenden, Assistant Chief Minister.

Chief Executive:

Charlie Parker, chief executive.

Chief of Staff:

Catherine Madden, chief of staff.

Director General, Justice and Home Affairs:

Julian Blazeby, director general, Justice and Home Affairs.

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

Mark Grimley, Group Director, People and Corporate Services.

Team Jersey (1):

Denise Drieu, Team Jersey.

Chief Operating Officer:

John Quinn, chief operating officer.

Programme Director, TDP Team Jersey: Andy Bell, Team Jersey.

The Chief Minister:

I think that is it. I am not too sure if we have Steve Mair on the line as well or not. No, okay. Hopefully that is everybody.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

Thank you, Chief Minister. So a reminder to everybody to remain on mute and obviously you are all collectively together there so I am sure you are aware of all the feedback and putting yourselves on mute. If you can, if you can put yourself on camera for the public that would be great. Let me just start by saying that I am the new chair of this review panel. So I would like to put on record our thanks and my thanks to the previous chair, the Connétable of St. Martin, for her work leading this panel in this important review work. We are picking up, obviously because of the whole situation we have been through in the few months, there has been work already done on this. We are very close to releasing an interim report. That will still go ahead. Obviously, as the first line of questioning will reveal, we are very aware of where we are. It is my intention to pick up that and coming in afresh to understand about the whole context of OneGov and the public, through the Scrutiny process, of where we are and where we are heading. With that in mind we do have only an hour and as you can possibly imagine we have a lot of questions which have backlogged from pre-COVID, so if you are in agreement, Chief Minister, we will finish at 3.00 but if we can do another hour at a time our diaries allow we can pick up the questions that we wish to continue with, is that all right?

The Chief Minister:

Yes, that is absolutely fine.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

We will agree that between officers. Bearing in mind, and not to go all previous ex-job of mine on everybody, but I will be very, very tight on timing. We have only got an hour so if you could please keep your answers as short as possible and do not take offence if I interrupt you. All that is missing is a microphone and a red light behind me because it is going to be a bit like that. Chief Minister, COVID-19: so what has been the impact of COVID-19 and the pandemic on the OneGov programme to date?

The Chief Minister:

I will turn it slightly the other way round in terms of obviously the restructuring that was going through within the organisation - later on we will get on to target operating models and things like that - I would say that the structuring that was taking place was hugely beneficial in how we, as an organisation, have dealt with and continue to deal with COVID. Because if you remember, it was about dealing with the culture of the organisation, breaking down the silos, about people being risk averse and about speed of decision making. I think if you look back and look at the facts in terms of where we have been since February and March, and even from Members - and I will hand over very briefly to Charlie, if you want to get some more detail - if you look at what we have seen as Members in something like, whatever it is now, 18 weeks, we have had 40 pieces of legislation done. We put co-funding packages in place, stuff that would have taken months usually, if not longer, has been put in place in weeks. So the speed, the flexibility of the organisation, some of the tech stuff that we have done, which no doubt John Quinn will talk about, which is even for us the fact that we are meeting virtually through Teams, that rollout of Office 365 before Christmas, has all put us in a very good space. Obviously some impacts have been from COVID. You will have seen business as usual, to an extent, got put on hold in certain areas. Some services continued but being supplied in different ways, C.L.S. (Customer and Local services) would be an example. Obviously we are starting to go back to B.A.U. (business as usual) now but the flexibility that has come out of the restructuring I think, and I really say it generally, full credit to everyone in the team that has been putting that in place. It is a credit for everyone in there. Do you want me to hand over to the chief executive, or is that long enough for you?

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

No, that is good. That is all very positive and I am sure we will get into more of that in detail. Let us hear about the other things now. What has been highlighted because in a crisis you cannot escape it, it exposes everything, the good and the bad. Let us be also honest and say what has been identified during the process as hindrance or things that need a relook?

The Chief Minister:

I do not know if I would call this a negative; things like Team Jersey obviously were effectively reprofiled and so doing the piece of work that they were meant to be doing. Andy Bell is here and can talk to that. We sort of repurposed them to go into staff well-being areas. So there have been impacts on business as usual but it has been changed to doing something positive as well. Perhaps, Charlie or Catherine might want to add to that.

Chief Executive:

I think it would be fair to say that quite a lot of B.A.U. business has had to be either deferred or in some cases stopped. That obviously does affect some Islanders' lives and businesses. The capital programme we have obviously had slippage because inevitably we have not been able to commit and complete activities which have been impacted by COVID, albeit that the capital programme has been repurposed, which will form part of the fiscal stimulation programme. I am being told you cannot see me.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

You are in a black hole ... there you are. You have suddenly appeared.

Chief Executive:

I beg your pardon, the camera was not on. There has been some slippage in key projects. So the new hospital project, for example, albeit that we have kept it going but we have not been able to bring forward some of the original timetable but that has been repurposed. Clearly some policy legislation that was identified in the Government Plan inevitably has had to be reprioritised again. We will be doing that in a revamped Government Plan. There has been some impact on one or 2 areas around organisational activity that we were on with, so you will recall we had the changes to the G.H.E. (Growth, Housing and Environment) structure, which ironically we now have a plan because it has been to the Council of Ministers for the way forward and that is about to be again rolled out. There are areas where we have had to either reprofile and/or recalibrate activity, which has been impacted. Whether it is about not saying what has gone so well, I think as the Chief Minister said, that is probably the wrong language. It is what have we not necessarily been able to prioritise I think is the better way of looking at it.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

The biggest impact we are all facing obviously is the impact on people and jobs. Obviously as the largest employer in the Island, how has the pandemic and the new way of working affected OneGov, and also to aid the protection of jobs and helping the staff through this next process and also the economic recovery that we are all very much aware of?

The Chief Minister:

There is quite a lot in that. I will try and do a very quick overview and then Mark Grimley from H.R. (Human Resources) can fix some of that up in terms of how we have been helping staff. In terms of managing staff during the whole crisis, and there are a lot of concerns around that as part of the mental health side, I referenced that previously - Andy Bell of Team Jersey, et cetera - in terms of that obviously we have had more absenteeism. That has been brought very regularly in reporting terms to Ministers, competent authorities, et cetera, and that is being managed quite effectively by Mark and his team. He can give you the absolute details on that. Obviously things in the last few weeks have been significantly improving. In terms of the support to the wider economy, you know hopefully the size of the packages we have been putting out there and we are now addressing ... there will be a States Members briefing tomorrow on the next steps, which is the fiscal stimulus measures. The co-funding scheme is due to finish at the moment at the end of August and we are looking at effectively what we do about that. That, for example, might be about tapering it rather than making sure it is not a cliff-edge or just assessing what else we need to do. But there are more fiscal stimulus measures coming through, announcements tomorrow, for States Members first and then publicly in the afternoon. Just as a complete aside, I bumped into a business owner yesterday and he was just basically saying how grateful he was to Government because he effectively said: "Without you [he was talking to me] I would not be here." That was quite a heart-wrenching moment, if you like, because it did bring home that everything we have been doing and the direct impact beneficially to Islanders it has had. But going back to the organisation, if I hand over to Mark, and he can give you some information.

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

As you can imagine, we have a workforce of around 7,000 staff. The resilience of the workforce and their response to this has genuinely been amazing. In the first few weeks where there was very little known, there was a lot of information coming out in a short space of time, we managed to collect data from nearly 90 per cent of our staff and communicate with them at home. We have to reconfigure our health services and our blue light services, we worked across the wider state entities to get support; from Ports of Jersey, for example, for security for portering in the hospital. We also had teams stand up, including special resourcing teams, so we were able to get an extra 200 healthcare assistants on standby, should we need the Nightingale.

[14:15]

Alongside this we had a lot of work to do around informing and educating our staff, not just about COVID but also about the impact of working at home. We were very conscious that there were a lot of people who had children at home and it is very difficult to work from home, along with having children, and on occasional calls the dog barking. So we put in place a lot around the well-being. We had a "We are Team Jersey" programme that focused on the well-being of staff. But we also had guidance and updates to managers and staff on a weekly basis. Sometimes on a daily basis. We monitored the workforce every single day so we were able to see if there were issues coming up.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

That is really good to know but I am now looking at the forward picture now we come out and we are in this new ... we are out of the main impact of COVID and you are readjusting, taking your example of bringing in all those healthcare assistants, but what happens to the workforce now? As the Chief Minister has alluded to, we are looking at the fiscal and the recovery and the economy, decisions will be made, so are we looking at generating further reductions in budget, reducing the workforce? Can you give us any insight at this stage what the impact of COVID would be on that for me?

The Chief Minister:

That is probably one for the chief executive first and then Mark can pick up afterwards.'

Chief Executive:

Inevitably, we are looking to bring people back into work in the normal arrangements to support business as usual. Increasingly we said the latter part of June and throughout July gradually we have started to get people who were on secondment or working in different teams or where we had States-owned entity staff seconded back into Government, all of those arrangements untangled in order to be able to focus on the normal day-to-day business. But notwithstanding that, we have obviously stood up and maintained a COVID response. So COVID is not going to go away. All the work we are doing over test and track, all the work that we are doing around ensuring that the economic activity is maintained, all those arrangements are still there but we have then started to supplement some of the areas where we know that we are focusing on some core activities. So economic recovery is one, some of the work that we are doing about Brexit, which has been going on in the background, the emphasis on trade negotiations is another. Then we are dealing with some of the fiscal stimulus work, so how and in what way are we looking at various aspects of the Government's investment programme, so that will include people from C.L.S. or Treasury who have been focused and dealing with that. In terms of numbers, the Government Plan will be worked up and developed over the next few weeks. That will tell us what the fiscal position is going forward for 2021 to 2024. On the back of that, the Council of Ministers will have to make some decisions of which then the balance between how we meet our fiscal obligations will be determined and whether that includes changes in public expenditure and what that might mean for staffing levels, I think will be a matter for those discussions. The final thing I would say is that we are obviously learning the lessons from COVID so we have a lot of staff who are still going to be working remotely because we believe that has worked to our collective advantage, including some of those staff. So we expect about 60 per cent of colleagues that will be working 2 days a week from home, which has an impact on the way in which we obviously will be looking to both support them. So we are doing a lot of assessments to ensure that they have the right kit and the right facilities, as well as work that we are doing to get people back into the office and get the office working in the way that meets the post- COVID requirements around social distancing, hygiene factors, et cetera. I think on the back of that,

obviously going back to your original question about devolved responsibility and keeping people informed, and all of that. So we have had a big session this morning, a virtual 240 senior managers event, which we have been talking about some of the lessons learnt, the experiences that people have had during COVID, where we have had presentations from different teams who have been involved in activity on behalf of the Government. We have spent a lot of time communicating with staff during the period. I visited key areas where we have obviously had front line activity, such as in the Health and Community Services space, and others as well. We have spent a lot of time with colleagues, investing in colleagues, ready for some of that to come forward in the next phase but also learning the lessons from that.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

Chief Minister, picking up on all of that, where are you with the priorities then when considering both the savings and the maintenance of public services when you are going to be making those decisions and where would you be seeking the advice when doing that, as you and the Council of Ministers?

The Chief Minister:

Overall, as I have said publicly previously, and it remains the same today, everything is still on the table and nothing is off. We have made no guarantees whatsoever. Certainly my personal preference is that we do as much as we can to maintain front line services. That has to be the case and we know, if you go back to the pre-COVID situation to what we had in the Government Plan previously, things like improvements and getting more social workers in, in all those types of areas, we still want to make sure we do because those inherent problems are still there and we still need to fix. I think what we will probably have to be doing is looking at what are the top strategic priorities and making sure we deliver on those. It may be that there are some less critical, much more marginal issues that we may have to just reprofile or reprioritise. That is kind of the decisions we are going to be looking at. It will ultimately be in the hands of Members. We need to understand the overall financial envelope first. Those components are coming together. We have taken or are in the process of lodging some various bits. The prior taxation side is one element that helps address some of the financial pressures that we are looking at as well as assisting members of the public as well. It is a little bit too early to say but that is the principles behind it. Be under no illusion, we have some really big financial challenges ahead. I am absolutely confident we have the ability to do it because, as has been alluded to by the Members as well and for many years, we have fantastic levels of reserves. We are in a really good place compared to a lot of other jurisdictions therefore we have choices and we have options in front of us that gives us the tools to do the job.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

Moving to my last question before I hand to Senator Moore . Will there be an extension of your portfolios? I ask this of you, Chief Minister, and the chief executive as well. Some of these issues, and the big things you are talking about, how do you see your roles changing and your briefs developing over the next few months and how can we expect the dynamics of your roles to change? On that how can you today, give reassurance to a very nervous workforce who are all seeing what is happening with the jobs, who are all seeing with the slow impact of COVID, so how are your roles going to change and how can you deliver that reassurance to the members of your workforce?

The Chief Minister:

In terms of roles and responsibilities, I do not think there will be significant change. There may be different issues that come under us, as we go through, and we look at from the strategic level, a reprofiling of things and what have you but the actual roles and responsibilities will not change, I do not believe. In terms of giving confidence to the workforce, interestingly enough through the whole COVID crisis what has been absolutely brilliant to see has been how people have acted a lot differently to, I suspect, where we would have been in the past. John Quinn can talk about what his experiences have been, for example, under the T.O.M. (target operating models) and the restructuring under M. and D. (modernisation and digital) but you have seen people taking greater risks, acting at pace, being flexible, doing different things. That has been really good. We need to try and capture that and continue with that. In terms of security ...

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

You did say that earlier as well. What I am saying is all that goodwill, all that reassurance, on the other hand is we all see what is happening with the big choices you are making so when people hear that they think: "Is my job safe? Is the restructure the Government mean that the possibility is in this change and these big changes?" That is what I am talking about in the restructure because all that goodwill is there but on the other hand, in real terms, people are nervous so how can you address them both and what would you say to that as well?

The Chief Minister:

What we have got to keep saying is that certainly priorities have got to be around maintaining front line services, all those things and all the good things we want to do. We do know, as was in the past, that we have an ageing demographic within the organisation, which, if you like, assist - that is the wrong expression in there - but that gives you an opportunity as people retire what do you do? Do you look at those roles? Do you look at reprofiling? We have still quite a reasonable level of vacancies. That is about vacancy management. So there are all those tools in the box which is what we need to tap into. That is the big way of achieving some of the changes. There will be others, I am sure, but let us deal with that and until we have that financial envelope nailed down and some understanding about other actions one could take that is probably about as far as we can go at this stage.

Chief Executive:

I think Members will realise that when we discussed the Government Plan last year we talked about having to create efficiencies and there was the whole raft of questions which you have just asked, which were asked last year. We were very clear about the fact that there was quite a set of different ways in which you could look at the whole issue of efficiencies. There is no doubt that in some instances there will be some job casualties but, if you recall, we made it very clear that they are relatively small for the reasons that the Chief Minister has just rehearsed. So we had a lot of vacancies, we had a lot of posts that were not filled on a permanent basis and we also were dealing with a range of non-front line work where we were looking later on for some big savings to occur through automation, et cetera. All of that still stands. We still have to deliver the numbers that were in the Government Plan, which is around about £100 million. Clearly, moving forward, we will have to understand what the impact is for the overall public expenditure figures as to whether we have to change those estimates going forward into 2024 and beyond. If not, because the numbers are so big, there will be other fiscal measures that we have to consider. It will not all be about headcount, which is where I think your question was aimed at. But saying that, we also have to have an honest conversation with staff and we have been upfront throughout this whole process that our priority is to try and ensure that front line outward facing services are maintained but we would look for efficiencies in back office. We would look to do some of the things much more effectively across the whole of the public services. We are continuing that drive and I think what has happened in the post-COVID environment that there will be an incentive to drive some of those more quickly than was originally envisaged and much more broadly. So by way of example, customers. We still have pockets of activity that has sat in different departments for customer services. We can bring that together and we have got some revised plans about that. We believe that is what the Island would want to see of the use of public money. So prioritise front line but do not also add to the back office costs.

The Chief Minister: Can I just summarise?

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

Deputy Morel will pick up on that and he has a question.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

It is just to ask how much has been saved from the restructuring tier 1, tier 2, and separately tier 3 and tier 4? What savings have been made so far?

Chief Executive:

I think we gave those numbers previously. We can come back. I genuinely do not have them to hand but I can get those for you.

The Chief Minister:

To point out, it ties into what I was going to summarise. A lot of the target operating model changes is about getting the organisation to the right place. It is what I was saying earlier about changing the culture, changing the silos, being flexible. So although there is a driver about making sure it is not more expensive and does save something it is not the principal driver behind it. But overall, and the summary point I was going to make, whatever happens we have to have an organisation that is modern and delivers services fit for the 21st century. That has to be our overriding priority and that is always going to be the objective all the way going through. I will just point out as well, I know you made reference to a nervous workforce, it does depend on perspective and how you back up that comment from an evidence point of view, but the general perception we have at the moment is that morale has got better during the course of this year, oddly enough, but possibly because also everybody has come together as a team in delivering everything that has been delivered during a crisis.

[14:30]

Deputy K.F. Morel :

Very quickly, because I appreciate it is Senator Moore 's time. I just wanted to quickly ask: going back to that question that was asked earlier on about the negatives that you have spotted that you have identified. One of the negatives that has been identified to me was that the organisation, while it tried to reach out to external advisers in terms of the Jersey public in dealing with the crisis, the feedback I have had from many people who perhaps got involved early on but then the organisation seemed to close down and people are saying that the organisation is not very good at taking information in from the outside or taking advice from the outside. I was wondering, as you were not able to identify any real negatives, how you would respond to that one as a negative.

Chief Executive:

I am not totally sure when you say about where that has come from. By way of example, our community support package and the work that we have for Connect Me was incredibly well received and we took on board lots of ideas and experiences from Islanders who are involved in that. They helped shape that and indeed we took secondment, as you will know, from the third sector and voluntary organisations to support that. So we had an incredibly good set of discussions with Parishes and with representatives from a vast number of organisations and Islanders on that. If you are talking about the ...

Deputy K.F. Morel :

I will let you know what I am talking about, if you want.

Chief Executive:

No, but if you were going to reference some of ... for example, we had some of the former military people on Island who came to us and offered advice, if it is something like that. We spent a huge amount of time talking and listening to some of their ideas, many of which we went through and where it was appropriate we worked with them. But where it was not appropriate we declined their kind offers and made suggestions about why it would be better and we did do that. But if that is the area where some of that advice came in because we had a lot of advice but not necessarily all of it was perhaps quite as it might have been played out to third parties when we got down to the detail of that. I do not think we ever shut our doors. We had lots of meetings with people but there were some disagreements about strategy and way forward, which ultimately, I think, we probably took the right decisions, albeit on some occasions we also took their advice and acted on their advice, so I think it was a 2-way situation. It was not all of us going into our sort of bunkers and not listening to their advice but there were some agreements and some disagreements.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

There are also people in the business community thought that they were kept at arm's length.

Chief Executive Officer:

I genuinely do not know who they are. We involved many representatives from the business community at the beginning for the preparation for the early co-payroll scheme. We talked to the business community around some of the work that should be done to extend that and the areas where we particularly needed to go and there was a lot of dialogue. We have subsequently involved representatives from the business community in the fiscal stimulus package that will be announced tomorrow and are involving them in other forums where the economic recovery is being engaged in. Genuinely, there will always be some people who feel that their voice is not being heard in a crisis. One of the things that you have to do in a crisis is leave people and get on with it and sometimes you cannot be as inclusive as you would ideally like in normal circumstances.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

Okay, thanks, folks. Yes, let us get back on track with OneGov. Senator Moore has got questions around the target operating models.

Senator K.L. Moore :

Thank you. Yes, nervousness was mentioned earlier and that nervousness largely came from the incomplete nature of the target operating models and concerns from people in the workforce who did not know how their job would be moved around, whether they would be put on to a lower level of pay, et cetera; that process was running behind pre-COVID. Could you please update us as to where it is and when the target operating process is now anticipated to be complete?

The Chief Minister:

Yes, thank you. I think the update is

Senator K.L. Moore :

That would be for the chief executive because it is more of an implementation.

The Chief Minister:

Yes, exactly or the head of H.R., yes.

Chief Executive Officer:

I will ask Mark to come in with some of the fine detail, Senator. Can I just say though that the

Senator K.L. Moore :

We are quite mindful of the time and we only have 25 minutes left, so if you could be quite brief. It is quite a high-level question initially.

Chief Executive Officer:

Yes. The first things I would say is that most of the restructuring that took place in the target operating models at tiers 1 and 2 were completed before the COVID pandemic started. There were 2 main areas, G.H.E. and J.H.A. (Justice and Home Affairs), where there were changes partly through, in one case, the Assembly decision and partly through some second opinions around regulation and ministerial on G.H.E., and we will come back to those in a minute.

Senator K.L. Moore :

The question is in relation to, if I could just be really clear, all of the tiers and particularly where that tiers 3 and 4 were not complete when we arrived at March this year.

Chief Executive Officer:

I was about to say, so the other 2 areas where 3 and 4 was affected most particularly was Children, Young People, Education and Skills and the work that was started and continues to go through in H.C.S. (Health and Community Services), where there were clearly impacts that came about through COVID where it was felt not appropriate to continue that. We suspended at the beginning of COVID all further discussions around target operating model arrangements that were impacting on front line staff, in particular in 3, 4 and 5 and then we have restarted those. But Mark can come in with the fine detail.

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

Just to put it into context because I do not know if I missed out there around the numbers of people affected and what that means then. If you think about the target operating models in both Health and Children's Services, the clinical workforce and education workforce are not included; they are about 40 per cent of the government's workforce. We have concluded the Treasury and Exchequer, the C.L.S. ones. The chief operating officer, the modernisation and digital have continued through COVID, commercial has continued and people in Corporate Services finishes before then. We are a long way with the central services, it is just those 2 big departments the chief executive mentioned.

Senator K.L. Moore :

But the chief executive was talking about tiers 3 and 4 in those departments and, of course, there is still 5 and 6 to go after that as well. My main question was: when will the whole process be complete?

Chief Executive Officer:

I cannot give you the exact timelines because the Council of Ministers have just recently agreed the new framework for G.H.E. We will have to go out and complete that. We have got also the economic activity that was split out of G.H.E., which is currently in the O.C.E. (Office of the Chief Executive). I would like to think we may well have some of the key principles of all of that completed by the back end of the year but I just genuinely at the moment do not know what the timeline for that would be because that has only just been approved through the Council of Ministers. I do expect the majority of the other areas to be completed, so we know that the J.H.A. consultation is being reactivated; that should see us through. The H.C.S. is being reactivated and will see us through. We know, as Mark has said, that 4 other departments, that is S.P.P.P. (Strategic Policy, Performance and Population), C.L.S., the C.O.O. (Chief Operating Office) and the Office of the Chief Executive, minus the economic activities, all been completed. If I am being honest we just have to go through those consultation programmes in the right way and we will have some time lag on that. But at the end of the day the other configuration that we will, potentially, have to consider, which goes back to Deputy Pamplin's question, which is if there are some changes made through the Government Plan for reasons that we just rehearsed and that has any impact on target operating models, we will then have to do some further work around consultation on Tom's, potentially. But that, at this moment in time, has not been finalised, so I cannot give you a view on that. Until the Government Plan is complete I do not know the potential implications of that, if any, for any further target operating model changes.

Senator K.L. Moore :

Okay. Could I just be reminded who has ultimate responsibility for the delivery of this project, please?

Chief Executive Officer: From an officer point of view?

Senator K.L. Moore : Yes.

Chief Executive Officer:

Of course, the OneGov initiative is something that I have been driving as chief executive but different aspects of the project have different S.R.O.s (senior recruitment officers), as we have been through with you before and a lot of those have been identified in previous sittings, and we have given you all that information.

Senator K.L. Moore :

But you accept that your role is not simply driving a project, it is the ultimate responsibility for it.

Chief Executive Officer:

Of course, the chief executive has ultimate responsibility for an awful lot of things, some of which will not be directly done by myself and some will be, yes. But in the circumstances some of these things obviously are not in my control. The decision by the Assembly, by way of example, I could not influence. That decision was taken and, therefore, it changes some of the timelines. The decision taken by politicians in whatever position obviously impacts on some of the timelines. Those are not matters that are within my control.

Senator K.L. Moore :

Okay. Is there a formal framework that tracks the progress of this project?

Chief Executive Officer:

Yes, there is, which links also to the OneGov Political Oversight Group, which works on behalf of the Council of Ministers and then there are a range of different because if you remember we talked about a range of initiatives. There is no single programme because that is a key point that we have reiterated many times. There are a number of initiatives which had boards, which are attached to them, that feed into it. Whether that is the office board

Senator K.L. Moore :

If you could remind people, they are interrelated but go on.

Chief Executive Officer:

There are different S.R.O.s that will lead different aspects of the modernisation of public services. If you are talking about, I do not know, the office project, there are a separate set of arrangements. If there is the hospital, if there is work around the Jersey Care Model, all of these contribute to the modernisation of public services. It goes back to the Chief Minister's earlier point this is all not about just organisational change, this is also about a whole series of modernising initiatives. If we take, which the chief operating officer is involved in, all the technology modernisation arrangements, then those are in turn driven by a set of governance, which have project boards, political oversight and they feed into the development of the overall programme that is, potentially, in the Government Plan for modernising public services.

Senator K.L. Moore :

Okay. Have those project boards, et cetera, set key performance indicators for the project?

Chief Executive Officer:

They all have timelines, performance-related activity to them and we provided previously all the documentation around most of the initiatives that you have asked for specific details on where appropriate.

Senator K.L. Moore :

I am not sure if it is me or you who has just

Chief Executive Officer: I have finished my answer.

Senator K.L. Moore :

Right, okay, there was a glitch in the line. Thank you. Who is in charge of assessing the progress and the success of the target operating model?

Chief Executive Officer:

I am not sure I understand the question.

Senator K.L. Moore :

If you have set key performance indicators, I did not quite hear all of your previous answer, so I apologise. Who is their achievement?

Chief Executive Officer:

There are different arrangements for the various initiatives, all of which funnel into an overall modernisation agenda. To give you an example, there is a very clear set of milestones, objectives and performance where appropriate for different projects if, by way of example, we are talking about the office, we have a timeline, we have deadlines; you know those through the work that we have been doing with Scrutiny. There is a political oversight group that monitors that and that then forms part of a decision-making process that goes through the Council of Ministers. If you are talking about something which is less about projects and more about people, so there is Team Jersey, by way of example. There is the Team Jersey Board that meets regularly, that oversees the arrangements for whether Team Jersey is meeting its key targets. We, again, I think, have reported to Scrutiny on that, which is linked back to the original contract.

[14:45]

If we are talking about some of the customer services arrangements, we have a customer services board that looks at the performance around where we are trying to make improvements, for example, on the way in which and how quickly we respond and what some of those milestones are at. We have a performance framework that sits within every departmental delivery plan which people are judged on. There is a golden thread that runs from the Government Plan, right the way down into individual departmental performance plans and further down then into the appraisals of individual key members of staff.

Senator K.L. Moore :

Thank you. We are just trying to understand the implementation of the actual framework. At the moment are we still working to the original framework, albeit there have been a couple of changes at the top of G.H.E., as you mentioned earlier, or have we moved to an official target operating model version too?

Chief Executive Officer:

The target operating model is what it has been. There have been some changes, which we have just discussed; that has not changed. We do not have more departments, we have changed some of the more thematic areas of work. I used customer earlier where we had some people who kept Customer Services within their own portfolios; that has changed. I.T.S. (Integrated Technology Solution) is another area where we had some departments, most notably Education and Health, where we had some of that activity while we got the modernisation together. Apart from functions being consolidated, the overall framework has not changed.

Okay, thank you. Is there currently a recruitment freeze?

Chief Executive Officer:

I think we have discussed this before; you asked the question in Scrutiny. We have not got a formal freeze but we have a panel which looks at all recruitment that goes on. You would not freeze social workers, teachers or nursing staff, by way of example. What you would look at is ensuring that you are not spending lots of money on back office and admin staff if you can make efficiencies in the way that I described earlier. It is not a freeze but there is an expectation that you should not be going out and recruiting staff unnecessarily, apart from in key front line workers, which is where, as I think the Chief Minister said, the political priorities are.

Senator K.L. Moore :

Thank you. Just if I could quickly go back to the nervousness point that was made earlier; how is the well-being of staff being monitored?

Chief Executive Officer:

I think we just heard earlier from Mark that we have been doing a huge amount throughout the whole of the COVID period, in which we have had regular communication with staff and we have been getting a huge amount of feedback about how people are. That is going to be followed up. End of the month we have the staff survey that you will recall we do every 2 years; that will give us another indication about what the temperature of the organisation is at the moment. When we talk about nervousness, I think that was in relation to the fact that there is bound to be nervousness. It was not our term, I think it was the chair's term for the session today. I think staff are in a reasonably good place at the moment. The nervousness is about the fact that you have got some people coming back to work who have not been in the office for many months. You have got some people who have got health issues, who we have been supporting over these last few months. You have got some people who have had to make some big adjustments, home-schooling and working and how and the way we support them, all of which we have been dealing with. We are very acutely aware that we have a lot of very tired staff that we need to support and we have been making it clear that they need to take their leave. We are making sure that managers understand all of those things. I said today we had the top 250 managers on a virtual arrangement, which talked about some of the things that we have got to do to ensure that we maintain our support for staff. I think over this last period we really have spent an awful lot of time working with colleagues to determine how they are feeling, what the temperature is of the organisation. I think we are in a reasonable place, considering what we have just come through.

Senator K.L. Moore :

Thank you. I will hand back to the chair.

Deputy K.G. Pamplin:

Thank you, Senator. We are mindful of the time but we all want to hear from Senator Ward . Senator Ward , I have just promoted you. Deputy , over to you.

Deputy R.J. Ward :

Yes, thanks very much. These are really questions for Team Jersey and I am aware of the time, so I will try and merge a few together. What measurable successes have there been encountering the findings of bullying and harassment issues raised in the H.R. Lounge report? When are the H.R. Lounge coming back for their follow-up review of the States of Jersey workforce?

The Chief Minister:

I think we will give that to Mark first and then go to Andy from Team Jersey.

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

I will not repeat a lot of the responses that the Chief Minister and the vice-chair have given in the States Assembly; they are well documented. In terms of the question about H.R. Lounge, they have returned this week. They are undertaking a very similar methodology to before. They are looking at the recommendations that they have made and the effectiveness of our work in that. They have started their fieldwork this week; I expect them to finish in 4 weeks' time. They will be working with staff, they will be using focus groups, they will meet the senior managers and the trade union representations. They will also do an audit of putting in harassment cases that have come up over the past year since their report.

Deputy R.J. Ward :

Okay, we will leave it at that. In terms of Team Jersey, what have they been active in through the COVID crisis?

The Chief Minister:

Andy, do you want to address that?