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DFID Management Board

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

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

Meeting on 14 July 2006

Topic	Attending	Purpose	MB Obj	Papers
Quarterly Management Report 4th 1/4 2006/07), including update of the Corporate Risk Register	Richard Clvert Jane Clark	To assess DFID's performance on the basis of programme expenditure, IT, HR, and risk indicators	A, B, C, D	Covering Minute QMR
Diversity (a Sexual Orientation (b Race Equality Scheme	Kamalijit Kerridge-Poonia Charlotte Seymour-Smith Angela Bevan Kamalijit Kerridge-Poonia	To discuss sexual orientation issues with Stonewall (Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual issues organisation) To approve the race Equality Scheme requested by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE)	C and D C and D	Verbal update Race equality scheme covering minute(28 kb) Race Equality
Restricted Senior Management Review	Sue Wardell	To agree DFID organisational review report.	B, C and D
Attendees Regrets	Suma Chakrabarti (Chair), Mark Lowcock, Minouche Shafik, Bill Griffith (Non-Executive Director), Sue Owen Helen Ghosh (Non-Executive Director)
Observing for items 1 - 3	In Palace Street - Cindy Berman, Nafisa Ziauddin, Sarah Dunn, Charlotte French, Aisha Zuberi, Manu Manthri, Ben le Roith, Kevin Gardner and Halima Begum In Abercrombie House - Tom Andrews

Suma introduced Mr Evans Chibiliti, Secretary to the Treasury, and Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane, the Deputy Secretary to Cabinet - Finance and Economic Development, in Zambia, who are visiting London this week to discuss public service reform and learn some lessons from the UK experience. He also introduced Sir Peter Ricketts, who is about to start as the new Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Diversity

a) Race Equality Scheme

Joy Hutcheon, Ian Barr (consultant helping on the scheme), and Kamaljit Kerridge-Poonia introduced this item. They highlighted that:

as stated in the Race Relations Act 1976, Public Bodies have a duty to eliminate racial discrimination and promote good race relations, and a specific duty to produce a Race Equality Scheme;

there has been a discussion on whether the UK duties apply to our work overseas. Legal advice has indicated that the race duty does not apply outside the UK jurisdiction. However, DFID will aim to apply the spirit of the 1976 act in our offices overseas;

there is more to be done to develop a screening and assessment tool to monitor ethnicity (which could also later be used for gender and disability). This will be developed after we have agreement of the scheme itself;

In discussion the Board:

asked about the reputational risk of the publication of the scheme; and

noted DFID’s previous scheme did not record enough of the wide range of activities we undertake which promote race equality, but the new scheme has included these.

In conclusion the Board:

thanked the team for all the work on this;

agreed the scheme, which will now be sent to the CRE for approval;

endorsed the positive move to apply the spirit of the act in our overseas offices;

agreed it would be useful to stay in touch with the FCO and British Council on overseas office issues; and

agreed that it would be useful to feed DFID views into the Cabinet Secretary’s meeting with Trevor Phillips. Sue Owen will talk to Gill Rider and Joy will feed in DFID views.

b) Sexual Orientation

Charlotte Seymour-Smith introduced this item. She highlighted that

18 months ago, Mark Lowcock, then Diversity Champion, asked Charlotte to do some work on sexual orientation. It was felt that we were doing less well in this area of diversity than in others;

Since then, a number of actions have been taken:

there has been progress on updating our procedures to take account of the recently-introduced civil partnerships;

country notes have been updated to provide information for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual (LGBT) staff; and

DFID has commissioned research, in the form of a staff attitudes survey. Action to be considered by the Human Resources Committee.

Stephen Frost from Stonewall gave a short presentation on the importance of sexual orientation and what DFID could do to improve the position of LGBT staff in the workplace. The key points made were as follows:

the moral case for taking account of sexual orientation: there are 3.6m LBGT people in this country; 1.6m are in the workforce. Half of these are in the closet and more likely to suffer harassment. 68% of LGBT people say they face discrimination;

the business case: when people are better respected, they perform better. Surveys indicate that in more supportive environments, LGBT staff perform 20% better. Attitudes to sexual orientation affect reputation, recruitment, productivity, and risk;

what DFID can do: in Stonewall’s workplace equality index, DFID came 15th out of 16 government departments. 5 suggestions for how DFID could move up the list: auditing DFID policies in advance of legislation;

creating a network group for LGBT staff to support each other;

mentoring and staff development;

monitoring – improving data on sexual orientation in DFID; and

looking at improving the policies of DFID’s suppliers.

In discussion the Board:

thanked Stephen for a persuasive presentation – noting that both the business and moral cases were very powerful;

welcomed the five proposed actions;

noted that there is an issue with some staff coming out in countries where homosexuality is illegal or frowned upon and that FCO have had some success in these environments. It was agreed that we could do more to learn from FCO on this;

asked about the likely success of the proposed network, given the stigma around disclosure. Informal networking has already started, and any more formal network should build on this, starting small and engaging those who are already in contact;

asked how the proposal on suppliers’ policies fits with current debates about public sector policy on procurement. Checking suppliers’ policies can be labour-intensive; and

noted that strong signals from senior management of other organisations have been helpful in combating discrimination.

In conclusion the Board:

agreed that 15th out of 16 was not good enough – DFID should do better in this area;

agreed that the Management Board would use the upcoming results of the survey to send a message to staff highlighting senior management commitment to improve our performance; and

agreed to examine what more we can do on the 5 strands, given the business context we work in. Kamaljit Kerridge-Poonia will look into this.

Quarterly Management Report – Q1 2006/07

Richard Calvert and Jane Clark introduced this item, highlighting the following issues:

significant positive movement on portfolio quality, especially in Africa. This is partly due to a lot of projects being scored for the first time. It is good news, but we need to continue working on this;

good financial results from 2005/6:

the position on programme spend was deliberately tighter this year than previous years – an underspend of £35m on a £3.9bn programme; and

there is a deliberately higher underspend (£15-17m) on the administration side. We are expecting to see pressure growing on admin budgets;

need to continue to pay close attention to admin costs in fragile states; and

need to encourage staff to respond to the Management Survey.

In discussion the Board:

thanked the team for producing an excellent management report, commending the content and the format;

welcomed the improvement in portfolio quality, following the actions taken particularly by the regional divisions. They stressed that we must continue to ensure robust and transparent scoring;

welcomed the over-delivery on our 90:10 target for LIC:MIC spending and £1bn to Africa commitments;

noted that the target for 70% of EC ODA to go to Low Income Countries would be extremely difficult to reach (this currently stands at 55%)

welcomed HR’s work on reducing the headcount; and

on payment performance elsewhere in the organisation, welcomed the improvement in Policy Division but noted that we can still do more: we are in the middle of the Whitehall league table on this.

In conclusion the Board:

asked for information on divisional breakdown of the headcount;

agreed that headcount allocations will be looked at in the Autumn. The Board needs a full discussion with ministers on this;

asked for information on the differential impact of the voluntary departure scheme;

asked for further work looking at the costs of staffing issues in fragile states;

asked for more information on the choices staff are making on flights, as in some cases there may be legitimate reasons for not taking the cheapest flights, e.g. the cheapest route takes longer;

noted concerns over the GCPP audit and agreed that a senior discussion should be set up soon with FCO and MOD;

on portfolio quality, noted that as previously a sample of project scores should be externally validated to ensure consistently accurate scoring;

asked Richard Calvert to clarify the implications of Tom Clarke’s Private Members’ Bill on our reporting procedures;

agreed we need to explain to staff how the various reviews and planning processes link together. This will be done soon after the Leadership Group away day in September.