Plan looks to create a 'golden thread' of States authority

SINCE its inception, one of the key roles of the States Strategic Plan has been to join together all the discordant strands of government.

Where once there were individual fiefdoms at times only working to undermine each other, now, we are told, progress has been made towards the departments working as a collective with discipline and direction.

But is not simple. Or indeed painless. Neither is the States at the end of the journey.

SSP chairman Charles Parkinson stands down at the end of this term having made progress with his team over the last three years, but has not yet refined it to its ultimate conclusion.

His foreword to an at times mind-boggling report in the September Billet d'Etat is telling in what he believes has been achieved and, more importantly, what lies ahead.

'The objective has been to create a line of authority or "golden thread" from the definition of the corporate objectives of the States, through long-term policy and resource planning, to a costed and prioritised work programme, to performance monitoring to ensure that the States is achieving its goals,' he said.

'The SSP is a tool for delivering effective government.'

But he warns that new members next year need to be told how to use this tool.

'The SSP does not limit political choices, other than in requiring a degree of consistency between service delivery policies and resources.

It does not determine the structures of government or what form of government Guernsey should have.'

In his own words Deputy Parkinson stresses that the plan is not detrimental or contrary to consensus government – but what it can do is make it effective.

'...what it certainly and intentionally militates against is chaotic and disjointed government,' he said.

Deputy Parkinson outlined what he believed were the main issues that still need to be addressed:

• the clarity of corporate objectives as an expression of what the majority of States members want government to achieve

• the development of political accountability for the objectives and of public sector responsibility for efficient, cost-effective delivery

This is an area where the Scrutiny and Public Accounts Committees will have an increasingly important role to play in exercising oversight, he said.

'In addition, bearing in mind my other responsibilities as Treasury and Resources Minister, financial controls and financial records still need to be improved to ensure the cost-effective use of public money and, in my view, the States need to adopt zero-cost-base budgeting if they wish to test the rationale for expenditure against States objectives. These are all matters where financial management complements policy planning.'

Zero-based budgeting could be a revolution in ensuring value for money – each year departments would have to make a case for every element of their spend.

If sufficient scrutiny and oversight is applied, it could be a game changer in persuading the public that everything is as efficient as it can be.

Strides in adding direction to the States have been made within the civil service structure itself too, the SSP showed.

The Policy Council has moved to give the chief executive post more authority over his chief officers, who run the departments.

'Chief officers remain responsible to their boards for the delivery of matters which fall within departmental mandates but they are accountable to the chief executive for their performance both in respect of departmental goals and corporate objectives,' the SSP states.

'As a consequence of these changes, the format of the Chief Officer Group has also changed such that it now meets on a quarterly (rather than a monthly) basis for a more formal business meeting at which the focus is on reporting progress against targets rather than the previous more informal consideration of a range of issues.'

There was an impression in the past that the chief officers' group was simply a mirror of the Policy Council talking shop.

A smaller executive leadership team has also been formed, with the chief executive as chairman, the deputy chief executive, chief officer of Treasury, head of human resources & organisational development, the chief accountant and the head of policy and research.

Further change and clarification of the structure within the States lies ahead when the Joint Committees (Scrutiny, Public Accounts, and States Assembly and Constitution) report back at the end of the year with how the States is going to apply the principles of good governance.

Next term will be the challenge for the SSP.

Its predecessor, which also attempted to set a clear direction for the States, was the Government Business Plan.

It was criticised as simply being a long wish list and did not long survive the change in personnel between elections before being consigned to history.

Could a new set of deputies, unhappy with the key policies that underpin the SSP, send it the same way?

That is where the education element comes back in, and the SSP of 2011 seems much more embedded in the system that the GBP of 2008.