Agenda and minutes

A welcome was given to Gareth Watts, who would be attending meetings in his capacity as Head of the Governance team, and Abi Philips, who was observing the meeting. Sulafa Thomas attended for the Commission items.

Apologies were received from Nicola Callow (Head of Finance), Elisabeth Jones (Director of Legal Services) and Chris Warner (Head of Policy and Legislation Committee Service).

There were no declarations of interest.

Adrian Crompton would draft a note of the Management Board discussion for the news page.

The minutes of 17 December Management Board meeting were agreed. The minutes of 8 December would be reviewed and agreed out of meeting in conjunction with the Review and Planning Board meeting minutes of 24 November.

Claire Clancy drew attention to the changes that had been made to the meeting's agenda in light of outcomes from the away day, to facilitate more focussed discussions. Everyone had contributed clear and simple points on what they wanted to see happen through Management Board and Claire would monitor progress on these. Board members would each follow through on the actions they said they would do.

Non Gwilym presented a draft paper, due to be presented at the Commission meeting on 9 February, on the public engagement activities delivered since 2011, which highlighted the main achievements and priorities for the remainder of the Assembly. These address specific areas that Commissioners would like to build upon, such as refreshing the Assembly brand and marking the 10^th anniversary and 2016 election.

Management Board provided input to further improve the proposal and link the Commissioner themes, in particular, putting Members at the heart of the work, for example, expanding on Chair's role in committees.

The Board agreed it was important to reassure Commissioners that engagement activities were focussed in the right areas. The branding needed to reflect future possibilities in light of constitutional change and give a consistent message about the brand whilst those changes were taking place.

Non offered to meet with teams after the Commission meeting, to talk about Commissioner priorities and what was being proposed.

Actions:

·      Non Gwilym to further improve the paper by brigading Commissioner priorities into 3 or 4 themes around which to structure the paper. Ensure branding section conveyed that it was at the heart of the organisation's approach to public engagement.

·      Further information to be included: evidence to substantiate claims; reference to capacity and resources; collaboration with Welsh Government; and infographics where appropriate.

Sulafa Thomas presented a draft paper on the scope and progress with planning for the dissolution of the Fourth Assembly and transition to the Fifth Assembly.

There was confidence that all necessary work would be delivered, but there was an opportunity to ensure the way it was delivered was smooth and not overly bureaucratic. There were areas of the transition that were less certain because of current constitutional changes and scenario planning was therefore important. Further work was also needed to confirm the scope and that responsibilities identified sat with the right person. Once the framework was finalised then work could begin on delivery. This would require a lot of coordination and a governance structure and it was agreed that one member of senior management should have oversight and responsibility for coordinating the work as SRO, with light touch reporting of progress to Management Board.  The Board reviewed several versions of reporting style and agreed that teams would use the detailed version (C), with reports to Management Board based on an abbreviated programme dashboard (A) with a high level pictorial timeline.

The arrangements proposed would be presented to Commissioners on 5 March for them to note and ensure preparations reflected their priorities.

Actions:

·      Adrian Crompton to lead on scenario planning.

·      Sulafa Thomas to prepare paper to present principles to Commissioners ensuring that it is Member-centric; provide clarity where there may be tensions; define responsibility for leaders of work streams and ensure clarity on what they were accountable for.

·      Once appointed, SRO to work with Non Gwilym to put a communications framework in place.

The Board received the final report of the five-year plan supporting the Carbon Management Strategy approved in 2009. The report provided a summary of progress made in 2013-14, together with overall achievements in relation to the corporate targets. This would be presented to the Commission meeting on 29 January for them to note key performance achievements and the approved strategy for the following five years.

Management Board recommended minor improvements to the paper to help set the context and acknowledge achievements without being overly applauding.

Action: include paragraph to seek a mandate from Commissioners for the Assembly to promotion its success on carbon management externally and invite organisations in to see how it was done.

The Board were asked to comment on the draft corporate performance report for the period April to December 2014 and check that the information they had provided was captured in the detailed tables. Particular items of note, to be included in the introduction, were:

·      improvements to Member satisfaction;

·      budget, managing resources and Value for Money savings;

·      social media, Senedd.tv, visitor numbers;

·      awards received during the period;

·      post ICT transition cost savings; and

·      further work needed on public engagement.

A root and branch discussion on the format of the next KPI report would be helpful to pre-empt items that could be included.

Action: Management Board to provide any further comments to Dave Tosh and Gareth Watts.

Claire Clancy outlined that IRB were actively managing investments and projects in the pipeline with a view to achieving a projected £50k underspend by year-end. Eric Gregory, one of the appointed Independent Advisers, had attended the IRB meeting to provide scrutiny, in particular to the next stage of the HR/payroll project.

Following the capacity planning discussions of Management Board in November and December, the recruitment authorisation requests had started to come through to IRB and the impact of these were reflected in the Financial Management report.

The Audit and Risk Assurance Committee were meeting on 9 February and Management Board were asked to ensure all audit actions had been completed ahead of then.

Following distribution of the equality impact assessment guidance, the Board confirmed that they were happy with the proposed approach and were asked to nominate a member of staff in their areas to liaise with the equality team.

The next Management Board meeting would be held on 2 February.