Fife Partnership…Strengthening Fife’s Future The SOA as strategic performance management – a...

Fife Partnership…Strengthening Fife’s Future

The SOA as strategic performance management – a

local authority view

Chris Mitchell, Corporate Research, Fife Council

Annual Statistics Stakeholders Conference


What I want to cover

• The Fife approach to the SOA

• Lessons from Scottish experience

• Thoughts on next steps


SOAs – the basics• ‘Purpose and scope: the joint commitment and

mutual accountability of the Council (yr 1), SG and CP Partners (yr 2) to delivery of agreed outcomes’

• governance and future development• Local contextual fit with National Outcomes • National and Local Outcomes and Commitments

including national and local indicators, sources, baselines and targets

• Required actions by local partners to meet performance targets

• Required actions by SG – ‘the Asks’High level, comprehensive, complex, evolutionary

and radical


The Fife Partnership SOA approach

• Fife Partnership’s not Fife Council’s SOA• Three year perspective • Fife’s Community Planning strategic management

– Scenario planning and ‘winds of change’ – our contextual analysis – tell-tale indicators

– Milestones - Community Planning strategic performance indicators

– The 2007 Community Plan’s • levers of change: Educational Achievement; Tackling

Worklessness; Energy and resources; Keeping Fife connected

• Goals and themes

– Annual State of Fife Reporting


Fife’s Community Plan and the National Performance Framework

Goals for Fife: Inclusive, Sustainable, Best Value

• Fife CP Themes– Stronger and more

flexible economy– Health and wellbeing– Educated and skilled– Sustaining environment– Safer communities

• SG Strategic Priorities– Wealthier and Fairer

– Healthier– Smarter– Greener– Safer and stronger


SOA sourced in Fife local public services corporate management systems• Partners’ corporate plans and performance reports

– Fife Council Plan: Big 8 priorities and Performance Scorecard Indicators

– NHS Fife’s Local Delivery Plan and HEAT targets– Fife Constabulary’s Policing Plan

• Services’ and Strategic Partnerships strategies e.g. – Joint Health Improvement Plan

And in existing Statutory Reporting systems• SPIs• Statistical returns to SG


KnowFife Dataset progress against Community Plan Milestones


KnowFife Dataset Interactive maps looking across Fife


Lessons from Scottish experience so far (Improvement Service review of 2008 SOAs: Sarah Gardener)• 2008 was a learning experience from a forced pace.• Convergence: some 20 Local Outcomes and 32 indicators

recur in all SOAs. What we can all count? Need strong data.• Divergence: outcomes range form 6 to 68, n=30; indicators

range from 44 to 319, n=130. Whose priorities?• Mix of SMART and direction of travel targets. OK?• Varied interpretation of National Outcomes e.g. alcohol,

inequality• Too detailed – all parties want activity reflected. • CP partners see other SG priorities as ‘must include’ HEAT• Big variations in integrated area profiles or context for each

outcome – former more strategic?• Too much use of output rather than outcome indicators?


Some thoughts on next steps• The elephant in the corner – a Fife SOA ‘ask’ -

a bonfire of the statistical returns or review to keep and apply best practice?

• Light touch• Stop kicking the ball into the directors box –

start running with it towards the goal• Build local government capacity for evidence

based practice


Building evidence capacity• Scotstat potential – we’ve got it so use it• s/t Knowledge Exchange pilot on building stats

capacity (Napier/St Andrews Univ. with four councils)• Secondments between governments?• Scottish Knowledge Skills development programme?• Capitalise on Improvement Service research and

knowledge resource• More engagement with research councils, Scottish

Funding Council and academic centres• Promoting and Developing Scottish Neighbourhood

Statistics – single national platform?• Building local tools – KnowFife Dataset• Inputs and outcomes – expenditure analysis

– “Participatory Budgeting in every (English) local authority area by 2012” Hazel Blears 15 Sept 2008

– Can we enhance the tools we have?


“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not

everything that counts can be counted” EinsteinBeyond statistical indicators – what other evidence?• Qualitative sources?

– Stakeholder and political engagement, BVA lessons– Resourcing Scrutiny – Strategic self or directed evaluation– Whole system action research – counting or learning

• Balance new outcome evidence focus with best of inputs, processes and outputs (Martin, Down, Grace and Nutley etc research for ESRC Public Services Programme)

• ScotStat ,ScotResearch, or ScotKnowledge?


Attitudinal evidence of performance• Significant feature of SOA and National Indicators (NI)

– NI 28: % Rate neighbourhood a good place to live in.

– NI 31: public perceptions of the crime rate

– NI 41: attitudes to Scotland’s reputation

– N1 43 and 44: quality of public services and health care

• English National Indicators– Overall/general satisfaction with local area plus others

– Satisfaction of over 65s with home and neighbourhood

• Cautions– National surveys not for l.a. levels; l.a.s lack survey capacity: must

rationalise and boost national samples; support core questions and build l.a. survey capacity.

– New English Place Surveys – statutory duty of each l.a. for Audit Commission – is this the route for Scotland?

– Satisfaction = performance minus expectations: must contextualise (age, ethnicity, culture, SEG, local history, council tax level) Possible ceiling on overall levels even if expectations met, (Oliver James, Exeter Univ. research for ESRC Public Services Programme)


What’s relevant to the SOA?

– Just measures of what we as Local Government can change?

– measures of what we want Scottish government to change and they of us – that’s the Concordat.

– Our UK, European and Global contexts• UK Comprehensive Spending Review – the Red Book• UK and European Legislative context e.g. carbon • Price of oil, FTSE and Dow Jones• Interest and inflation rates• Banking liquidity!• What else…..?

– Agile and flexible planning not an end state.– Quality of Life not just services


And finally……..

• “Culture shifts are necessary at the centre and local level – but will we be able to keep our ‘hands off’?!”Jim Stephen, Head of Children and Families Services, Scottish Government, at launch seminar for SOA, Feb. 2007

• Can we in community planning partnerships be more ‘switched on’?

• ‘That’s democracy Jim…but not as we might like it’ Central and Local government will and probably should agree to differ.


Evolving Strategic Performance Management

• Corporate Planning and Bains– Regional Reports of 70s

• Strategic Performance Indicators (SPIs)• Key needs data – poverty – Indices of

Deprivation (SIMD) – better tools and wider applications

• Community Planning • Single Outcome Agreements• Constitutional balancing act: central v local

government

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