Agenda and minutes

A welcome was given to Candice Boyes and Rhodri Wyn Jones who were attending to observe the meeting.

Apologies were received from Nicola Callow (Head of Finance).

There were no declarations of interest.

Kathryn Potter would draft a note of the Management Board discussion for the news page.

The minutes of 19 January would be circulated out of meeting for agreement.

Mair Parry-Jones presented the Bilingual Skills Strategy, which was a requirement of the Official Languages Scheme to ensure that there were the appropriate bilingual skills across service areas to support the Scheme requirements. A skills audit had been prepared to capture the language skill levels of staff and inform each service area’s future language plans. 

Management Board was asked to review and approve the Strategy and Audit. It was important for the Board to shape and fully support the Strategy’s objectives. Final versions would be approved by the Assembly Commissioner with responsibility for Official Languages.

The Board agreed that the focus of the Audit should be on Welsh language skills, including individuals’ confidence levels to use those skills.  The Audit would be a sensitive matter for some staff and, therefore, it was important that sufficient reassurances were provided within the Audit form itself as well as a clear communications plan for the rollout. The Board recommended piloting it further to test a sample of staff to ensure the data returned was useful.

Action: Mair Parry-Jones and Craig Stephenson to ensure clarity and improved flow for the Strategy’s objectives. Skills Audit form to be amended as discussed with next steps, a communications plan and revised versions to be further considered by Management Board.

Lowri Williams was welcomed to the meeting to discuss draft recruitment principles aimed at increasing transparency in the recruitment processes. The Assembly was committed to recruiting on the basis of merit, fairness and openness and the principles, devised following an internal audit of recruitment, provided a clear framework for the recruitment policies, guidelines and practices.

Management Board welcomed the document as providing clarity and a safeguard for future recruitments and agreed the content and style. Further work would follow to review the suite of HR policies and ensure they were in line with the principles.

The document was due to be considered by the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee at their meeting on 9 February.

Actions:

·      Lowri to add ‘the principles’ to the bullet points in 3.2

The Board carried out their periodic review of the corporate risk register including a horizon scan for potential risks. They considered whether Programme and Project Management should be raised as a corporate risk, but agreed that there were sufficient controls in place and regular monitoring by Management Board.

They further considered and agreed that the Telephony project should be raised as a corporate risk, in respect of there being a definitive deadline to exit the current contract. Dave Tosh advised that amongst the many controls and mitigations, discussions are currently underway with the supplier about options for extending the contract if necessary.

Non Gwilym advised that social media was still a corporate risk until an appointment was made to the Social Media Manager role, but this should take place soon.

The Board reviewed the summary chart that plots the likelihood and impact of each corporate risk and agreed it would be helpful to revise the format.

Action: Dave Tosh and Kathryn Hughes to consider alternative formats that would make the information more meaningful and present with the next update.

Oral item

Claire Clancy gave an update on the last IRB meeting, where it had been agreed that a reconciliation chart would be prepared for the following meeting to show the movement of available funds for investment between recent meetings and confirm the most up-to-date investment fund balance. This would enable accurate planning of projects that could be undertaken before the end of the financial year.

The Board approved the robotic camera head replacement for committee room 3, subject to confirmation of the investment funds available.

Action: Management Board members to ensure that Finance have up to date budget projections to end of year.

The next meeting of the Management Board would be held on 26 February and was dedicated to the annual Governance Statement challenge session.