A hand for the public service non-executive

The problem with the Good Governance Standard for Public Services produced by the Commission on Good Governance in Public Services is that it while it provides a good background of the issue, it is but a checklist that is far too general for daily practical use.

It is a good addition to the list of analyses and reports, however, we are still in need of a practical checklist of day to day to do's to achieve good Board governance.

See the list of Governance Documents in the left column on this site for some documents which provide practical guides, particularly the Issues.

I will be producing the Governance Focus Board Governance Checklist, which aims to provide just that, a practical checklist of day to day to do's for Boards, both corporate and non-profit.

Following is an interesting and positive summary from the Financial Times.

OAM

A hand for the public service non-executive

By Nicholas Timmins

Published: January 31 2005 02:00 Last updated: January 31 2005 02:00

It is tough being a non-executive in theprivate sector. But the experience in the UK suggests that it is no bed of roses in the public sector either.

Earlier this month, the non-executives of the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust were fired after the trust hit financial trouble and they were judged to have failed to hold its executives to account.

Last month, Bill Moyes, the chairman of Monitor, an independent regulator for foundation hospitals, replaced the chairman of the Bradford foundation trust after it hit financial trouble.

In the UK, some 450,000 people - often unpaid, and when paid usually receiving a pittance compared with non-executives in the private sector - act as governors or non-executives for public services including hospitals, schools, police authorities, housing associations, social care organisations and the like.

Too many of them, according to Sir Alan Langlands, the former chief executive of the National Health Service and now vice-chancellor of Dundee University in Scotland, "are not sure what they are doing, why they are there and what is expected of them".

This is far from entirely their own fault, Sir Alan says. They receive too little training; they have to balance the public interest with their accountability to government for taxpayers' money; they often operate in special areas that are becoming more businesslike as markets are introduced into public services; and, as the regulatory environment, with new forms of inspection and regulation, becomes more complex, they are judged against government-set standards, regulators' demands and local people's views of the purpose of them.

It is not, Sir Alan says, an easy job. There is "clear research-based evidence that many of these people find real difficulties in fulfilling their responsibilities".

Yet, with public expenditure expected to top £500bn this year, Sir Alan says: "Good governance is critically important to ensuring that the money is well spent".

It is to deal with this that he has spent the past year chairing an independent commission, backed by the Office of Public Management and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, that has just produced a new code of governance for public services.

It is the first that has tried to look across the sector and produce a sort of gold standard for those who have to grapple with the job. It is an equivalent for the public and voluntary sectors of the UK's combined code of good governance for the private sector that emerged from a series of reports by Sir Adrian Cadbury, Sir Richard Greenbury and Sir Derek Higgs.

It is a measure of how far the lack of such a common set of standards is seen as a problem that people such as Sir Ian Blair, commissioner designate for the Metropolitan Police, Jim Coulter, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, Ed Mayo of the National Consumer Council and Lucy de Groot, a former Treasury official and now head of the local government Improvement and Development Agency, gave up their time to join him on the commission.

What has emerged, after much consultation, is a code that sets out six principles of good governance for public sector organisations. It provides a set of standards that in turn suggests questions that governors should ask themselves - plus questions that the public can ask of them in order to establish whether organisations are well run.

It falls short of being an idiot's guide on how to be a good governor. But it provides a clear framework for thinking about the job. Anyone who reads it will not go far wrong if they test their own organisation's operation and their own performance against the standards set out.

Sir Alan's hope is that because the code has been produced independently - not issued by the Treasury or some other arm of central or local government - it will be seen as an aid, not a burden.

Certainly it has had no difficulty winning the endorsement of the big watchdogs. Sir John Bourn, the head of the National Audit Office, who this month exposed the exorbitant travel spending of Prince Andrew, says the code, with its emphasis on accountability and transparency, "will make an important contribution".

The code is available at www.opm.co.uk