Events

This first meeting of 2016, entitled ‘Improving Board Skills and Effectiveness’ took place on Wednesday 3^rd February 2016 in The Institute of Public Administration.

The Chair for the day was Ann Nolan, Chair of the the Civil Aviation Authority.

A combined total of 64 Chairs and CEOs attended the meeting, and 27 responded to the evaluation.  Of these 21 % found the meeting extremely useful, 25% very useful and 37.5% useful.

The meeting focussed on and discussed

• Ongoing challenges in achieving effective Boards;
• Clarity between Board, executive and parent department;
• Chair/Chief executive relationship;
• Balance between requiring expertise at Board and experience and diversity – need for further thought in the recruitment of Board Members;
• Significant differences in corporate governance arrangements across public sector agencies
• One size does not fit all, so standardisation may be difficult
• Importance of IPA in terms of training and governance issues within public sector which is very different to private sector
• Relationships and communications between State Agencies and their parent departments are still problematic and may have been unintentionally exacerbated by the new state board appointment process.
• It is difficult for a State Agency to attract the attention or interest of its parent department unless a crisis involving that agency has arisen.
• Good Governance is something that has to be worked on, and the relationship between the Chair and the CEO is fundamental to this happening.