Agenda and minutes
Venue: Presiding Officer’s office, 4th floor - Tŷ Hywel. View directions
Contact: Sulafa Thomas, 02920 89 8669
No. | Item |
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Introduction |
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Introduction and apologies Minutes: David
Melding AM had sent his apologies. |
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Declarations of interest Minutes: There
were no declarations of interest. |
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Minutes of the previous meeting paper 1 Supporting documents: Minutes: The
minutes of the 3 November meeting were agreed. |
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Constitutional change paper 2 Minutes: Commissioners
considered an update on key constitutional issues and their implications for
the Commission. The
Commission’s objective is to ensure that the support provided to Members by
Assembly services are prepared for the implications of constitutional change. The
work is focused around three strands: ·
ensuring
that legislation meets the needs of the Assembly (Wales Bill, any subsequent
legislation to implement Silk II); ·
readiness
for change, including capacity planning and wider implications for the
Assembly’s ways of working; and ·
awareness
raising about the changes to ensure the possibilities are taken into account in
planning for the Fifth Assembly. The
Commission recognised that there is a degree of certainty about some of the
issues being faced, whilst others remain more speculative at present. On
the subject of the Member capacity at the Assembly, Commissioners considered
the resourcing and service implications of increasing the number of Members.
They also discussed the increasing challenges faced by Members while there are
only 60 Assembly Members. The
Commission agreed to return to this subject early in the new year and asked for
more detailed information be compiled. In the meantime, they agreed to write to
the Remuneration Board to ask them to consider options for additional support
for Assembly Members in the fifth Assembly. |
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Machine Translation - conclusions paper 3 Minutes: The
Commission discussed a paper which provided them with a summary of the
achievements of the machine translation project. Commissioners considered how
to sustain the benefits that had been achieved beyond the life of the project
and meet increasing demands for translation. Commissioners
commented on capacity issues that had been highlighted and the importance of
prioritising translation in the right way to deliver a service that enables
Members to do their job. A key driver for the project was to enable the
translation team (TRS) to translate more text more quickly. Tests
undertaken by TRS earlier this year suggested that the use of Machine
Translation, coupled with translation memory, could increase the capacity to
translate by around 20% - this has been borne out in practice. The increase in
productivity has coincided with an upturn in demand for translation. It has
therefore allowed us to provide bilingual documents and messages where we would
otherwise not have been able to, and enabled the translation team to respond to
requests to tighter deadlines, for example, Members’ committee briefings. The
Commission agreed to continue to work with Microsoft and external organisations
to gather data for the system to improve its quality, embed its use in the
organisation further and to share our experiences of using machine translation. |
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Review of Reporting of Proceedings - update paper 4 Minutes: The
Commission received an update on progress of the review of the way in which we
report our proceedings. Commissioners
discussed the importance of making appropriate linkages between projects and
achieving benefits from the ways that technology can be used. Commissioners
also fed back on examples of good practice from their recent visit to Canada. The
intention is that the next steps will be to: ·
focus
on users’ needs through workshops, focus groups and drop-in sessions; ·
assess
the success of the trials carried out over the autumn term that have not yet
been quantified; and ·
produce
a more efficient process, with the aim of publishing the RoP more quickly in
both languages. |
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Review of support for committees paper 5 Minutes: Commissioners
discussed the enhancements made to the support for committees since they
considered the issue last December. They commented on the good progress that
had been made, particularly with regard to the provision of increasingly
concise background documents, provision of bilingual services and the
innovative work done on the challenging issue of engagement, which had been
acknowledged as exemplar by other legislatures. They
also talked about the importance of committee work being led by the committee,
the role of the Chair in facilitating the operation of the committee and the
significance of Chairs participating in CPD (for example the Leadership seminar
in January 2015). They acknowledged that
this would be useful in developing CPD for the Fifth Assembly. The
Commission considered how analysis and evaluation of outcomes could be
undertaken to inform further improvements and felt that it could be useful for
committees to be provided with data on their achievements to consider when
thinking about their legacy reports. |
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Any other business Minutes: The next meeting will be held on 3 December. Agenda items will include a discussion of European
issues with Gregg Jones, and updates from the Audit and Risk Assurance
Committee and on the ICT changes in the Siambr. Secretariat November 2014 |