Agenda and minutes

There were no apologies.

Dave Tosh would draft a note of the Management Board discussion for the news page.

The minutes of the 22 June Management Board meeting were agreed as a correct record.  The minutes of 6 July required a clarification and would be cleared out of meeting.

Manon welcomed Al Davies to the meeting to present the work programme for 2017-2020. It was intended to complement the Framework for the Assembly’s International Engaging during the Fifth Assembly, which had been presented to the Commission on 15 May, and was designed to reflect the Assembly as a small but progressive and innovative international legislature that was open and outward looking. The proposed work programme was sufficiently flexible to accommodate additional engagement and activity as necessary, with consideration having been given to the impact of Brexit and alternative links.

Value for money was always considered in the forward planning and, although it was a high level draft at this stage and not budgeted in detail, it would be delivered within the current engagement budget.

Management Board was invited to discuss and suggest amendments or additions to the work programme.

The Board agreed that the work programme presented good value for money, recommending that current staff that speak other languages could be used to support the international team.

Oral item

Aligned to the budget situation, Dave Tosh led a discussion on some early thinking on how to improve investment prioritisation, following requests from the Commission and Audit and Risk Assurance Committee (ACARAC) for more visibility of decision making. He and Gareth Watts were developing a set of criteria to demonstrate a proposed method of prioritisation - a way of collectively discriminating between and ranking the high priorities.

A set of proposals would be presented for Management Board to consider, to include a qualitative decision making process to help prioritise and give reassurance to stakeholders on how priorities were determined.

ACTION: Heads to review how they were currently delivering their service plans, to see if it could be done differently to release resource, or not done at all in order to give capacity for new priorities, taking into account impact on other service areas.

The Board then discussed the plan for the all-staff meeting to be held on 21 July.

Management Board discussed the June Financial Management Report. There was continued pressure on the budget, which was expected to remain for the rest of this financial year. Nia Morgan reiterated the need for careful management of budgets and investment plans. The Investment and Resources Board (IRB) were meeting in August to focus on this year’s capacity plans, resource requirements and planned investment projects, with the aim of agreeing the absolute priorities for investment, whilst retaining some financial capacity for unexpected needs. It was agreed that an additional Management Board, ahead of IRB, would be useful to assess the relative priorities across all investment needs. These meetings would also inform further discussion with Commissioners on the detailed budget proposals going forward, priorities and timeframes.

ACTION: Heads and Directors to provide a summary position of the latest assessment for the resource requirements identified in the March capacity planning exercise, highlighting what was still essential and what has changed, if there were alternative ways of fulfilling the resource or no longer needed, risks and implications.

The Board considered the outcomes of the sixth staff survey and discussed plans to respond to the findings. It has been a positive survey considering the pressures that staff were under within the climate of significant constitutional change and uncertainty. The 2017 survey was based on selected questions from the Civil Service People Survey and was identical to the 2016 and 2015 surveys in order to allow comparisons over time and benchmark with other public sector organisations. Highlights included an 82% response rate and 74% engagement index score, both significantly higher than the Civil Service scores of 65% and 59% respectively.

The report would be published internally to staff on 21 July and service specific data reports would be available to Heads shortly.

Management Board undertook its regular review of the corporate risk register, which had been updated to reflect the current status of risks.

At its meeting in June, ACARAC had reviewed the summary risk register noting the movement in risks, also receiving an update on the ongoing discussions at Management Board on the combined impact of the risks being faced. Additionally, they had carried out a critical examination of the organisation’s preparedness for the General Data Protection Regulation due to come into force in May 2018. ACARAC were satisfied with the action plan, commenting that it was well advanced compared to other organisations.

The Board agreed the changes and the recommendations proposed.

Paper to follow

A presentation had been given to Commissioners on 17 July to review the recommendations from the Digital Task Force. Further work was now being done to consider the cost and resources needed to implement individual recommendations. More detailed information on the practicalities and resource implications would be presented to Commissioners in the autumn to enable them to respond.

ACTION: Non Gwilym to circulate that work in due course for input.

Presentation

Non Gwilym presented a communications grid that would be shared with Management Board on a regular basis, for consideration, as a forward look of all news worthy items that need proactive planning for.

ACTION: Heads to review and consider any additions; that need more publicity or may become news-worthy.

Chris Warner informed the Board that the National Library had confirmed the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales archive. He thanked everyone who had contributed to the work on it.