The post I drafted on Friday and forgot to upload…

[Looking back - and looking forwards]

This week has been one which has seen some important developments in the world of ARO.

Monday March 31st saw the release of the consultation document, outlining proposals for legislation to implement aspects of the sub-national review of economic development of regeneration.  The document has been jointly released by CLG and BERR, reflecting BERR’s responsibility for regional economic development, and CLG’s overview of disparity, disadvantage and issues around place, neighbourhoods and localities.  The move through all recent government documentation has been towards a broader vision of growth – beyond GVA, beyond economic growth in isolation or as an end to itself, providing a more explicit understanding of the opportunities and results that economic growth could or can provide.

This development has meant that there is something of an inevitable schism between regional and local government, not least with those two tiers reporting to different departments.  The hope was that this document would provide a real demonstration of how those departments would work together.  To some extent, it does. There is something of a dearth of substantive development in the document, over and above the proposals around local economic assessments – something of great interest to ARO members.  The suggestions from yesterday’s training on public affairs has meant that I’m now in the process of contacting the Bill drafting team – not an opportunity that I had previously considered, but now of key importance in influencing at the appropriate time and level.

Tuesday was the opening of the LARIA conference.  Perhaps due to my being unable to attend more than one day, I didn’t get a real sense of how those in the data and intelligence community at local level would be responding to these recent developments.  However, I did see a great presentation by Rob Radburn from Leicester council – he’s an engaging and self-deprecating speaker, and the topics he and his co-presenter (from City University) were really interesting although there was a suggestion that they covered too much in a short time, leaving an audience suffering from information overload.  I think, given the right audience, that a day’s event combining Ed Swires-Hennessey and Rob Radburn (good practice in presentation for everyone – then new development – make it interactive and so on) would be a real winner.

Yesterday’s training in London was also very successful, despite not providing me with a magical silver bullet to solve all my public affairs needs!  The key messages really reinforced what I already knew – make and maintain contacts, think carefully about your objectives and then use resources wisely to target appropriate routes.  A strong argument was made for the need to actually spend some time around the politicians and civil servants you hope to influence – i.e. in Westminster.  I’m going to have to make a more convincing argument for the hot-desking idea mooted previously, plus make some plans to attend select committees etc.  Having identified this as one of two key roles, I will need to persuade ARO that this is a good investment of time and personnel.

The work spot, 31.03.08

Twelve months after starting a work blog, I have decided that I will get greater benefit from it as a work tool if I am able to use it on a regular basis. Therefore, I have decided to try and set myself the task of writing a post once a week. During learning / courses etc, time is built in for reflection on what’s been learnt, how it might be used, whether you are putting it into practice and where further training / research needs lie – or how to better adopt the training you’ve had. I think I would benefit from this in a work context, making my actions and my evaluations more mindful.

This is also a good time to start on this, because it is time, once again, for the LARIA conference – the event which initially sparked a blog as a place to log my thoughts on the various speakers and topics at last year’s conference. This year, I am only attending for the opening day (not least because I have noted a certain number of similarities in this year’s programme – but also because I have encountered the speakers in other places) and so I am hoping to make best use of the time by seeing the opening keynotes and plenaries without spending a lot of time in very specific breakout sessions.

Last year was also very useful as a networking exercise and this is something that I need to remind myself is worth doing. It is perhaps an inevitable corollary of being based in a very separate organisation, with virtually the smallest observatory, and with few connections to relevant national policy, that networking can get a little bit forgotten.

There has been talk recently of ARO building a closer relationship with LARIA, and perhaps putting ourselves forward for a place on the steering committee (or equivalent title). It is an interesting notion but the recent strategic planning process has left me questioning the extent to which the strategic objectives of ARO would be served by such a move. Would being part of, essentially, a local government professionals network, serve our wish to support evidence-based policy-making?

Evidence-based policy-making (I’m sticking to my hyphens!) [EBPM, or EBP] has become something of a dirty word(s) of late. Perhaps after 10 years of avowing obeisance to the concept, the patter is wearing thin, particularly for policy-makers who find that evidence is at worst unhelpful (difficult to understand or not answering their questions) and at worst positively obstructive to their plans. Also, throughout the planning process, the consultant assisting my colleague in her comparable process has sworn away from ‘evidence’ as a concept. I appreciate the challenging nature of his thinking but in some ways it is less helpful for me due to my explicit remit to support observatories, whose role (as set down in legislation) is to provide an evidence base.

EBPM can also sound a bit trite. Perhaps the fact that all those in the evidence world feel underappreciated or underused by their policy colleagues means that some cynicism about the real efficacy of the process is creeping in?

You’ll notice that this blog is not hosted on the original server – sadly my original blog host appears to have disappeared beneath the waves (perhaps it felt neglected by my lack of posting). I will try to back up my original posts here as a useful archive of notes and thinking.