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DFID Management Board

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Meeting on 19 July 2007

In working towards the delivery of the Public Service Agreement the Management Board will aim to:

  • A. communicate the vision, role, direction and priorities of DFID to staff and other stakeholders;
  • B. ensure DFID's financial resources and staff are allocated and managed effectively;
  • C. monitor and improve DFID's performance;
  • D. protect and enhance DFID’s reputation as a highly effective international development organisation.

10.00 – 12.00 Location: PS 3W13

Time

Topic

Attending

Purpose

MB Obj

10.00

People Strategy Update

Liz Davis

Anne Freckleton

To update the Board on progress in implementing the People Strategy and HR Transformation

A & D

10.30

Quaterly Management Report (1st ¼ 2007/8) including update of the corporate risk register

Sam Sharpe

To assess DFID’s performance on the basis of programme expenditure, IT, HR and risk indicators, and agree the update of the Corporate Risk Register

 

A, B, C & D

 

Attendees

DFID Board: Suma Chakrabarti (Chair), Sue Owen, Minouche Shafik, Mark Lowcock and Bill Griffiths (Non-Executive Director)
 

Observing

In Palace Street: Rosemary Stevenson, Mandeep Haur-Grewal, Edmund Knollys, Jennifer Leith, Anna Lake, Louise Thomas, Jo Yvon

In AH: Steven Bartlett, Simon Gill, Hugh McGarvey, Vivienne Paterson, Sandra McAllister, Michael Morris, Lorraine Rennick, Richard Montgommery

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Thanks

1. Suma Chakrabarti thanked Helen Ghosh (in her absence) for the contribution she had made to DFID as a Non Executive Director to the Management Board over the last 2 years. Recruitment is underway for a NED to replace Helen.

The People Strategy

2. Liz Davis and Anne Freckleton presented this item. Liz highlighted the amount of hard work that had gone into by HRD and the wider Department.

3. The Board:

  • welcomed the work and endorsed both paragraph 16 and Flag A;
  • suggested that that the level of detail provided was too much for MB and that in future annexes should be limited;
  • suggested that the self assessment was too positive and that closer examination of the indicators and targets was needed in the next generation of the People Strategy in order to ensure objectitivity;
  • reinforced the need to continue to highlight the business-led approach to people management which DFID is now implementing;
  • asked HR to undertake more work on:
  • communicating and discussing the career proposition in the UK HQs ;
  • developing what DFID’s learning and development offer is;
  • asked FCPD (with support from Bill Griffiths) to establish a clearer vision of improved financial management in DFID, and indicators for measuring better financial management skills, as a basis for prioritising financial training needs;
  • reinforced that DFID needs to provide more systematic qualitative feedback on learning and development.

Quaterly Management Report – 1st quarter 2007/8

3. Sam Sharpe presented this item.

4. The Board:

  • thanked FCPD for a good paper and agreed the priority management actions for the next quarter outlined in it;
  • welcomed the extra work that had been done on analysing the different performance of high risk projects in the three regions, but asked FCPD to keep working on developing a better understanding of the different risk profiles between regions;
  • noted that DFID’s eventual 2006/7 outturn was very close to the estimates provision, and asked FCPD to do some further thinking about the right size for the end year margin of the total DFID framework, to avoid risk of an excess vote;
  • noted the changes proposed to the calculation of portfolio quality figures, and requested that FCPD produce a paper in the autumn summarising all the proposed changes to the ways we will measure departmental performance in the next CSR period;
  • agreed that there should be a closed session at a future Management Board to discuss CDC;
  • noted that more work was being done on corporate risk by the Strategy Team and that this would be discussed by the Management Board in the Autumn;
  • agreed that there should be another big push, using the internal reviewers, around IiP behaviours at the Mid Year Review point;
  • emphasised that NAO knowledge and confidence in DFID must be maintained and that FCPD should ensure they provided a good introduction to the new NAO Director as soon as possible;
  • emphasised the importance of cascading through the organisation the lessons from NAO’s audit of this year’s accounts, especially on budget support;
  • Asked for the following be added/included in the QMR:
  • the forthcoming NAO studies on budget support and fragile states as potential reputational risks;
  • air miles figures further disaggregated to show the divisional pattern of air miles per head;
  • breakdown of consultancy spend into different categories;
  • more analysis of fraud data to unpack the amber/amber scores.