National Assessment Governing Board’s Post

Don't forget to register for the CIPR Public Affairs Group's webinar tomorrow on 'Measuring the Impact of Public Affairs'. For anyone with the slightest interest in #publicaffairs or #lobbying this is a great opportunity to hear from some brilliant professionals on how you can actually define public affairs success, how you measure the impact of your work, and (perhaps most importantly) how you can report on what value your work is bringing to stakeholders. You will hear from the below experts (and me) at this webinar, and you can register through the link below. You don't need to be a CIPR member to watch along and it takes only a minute to make an account if you don't have one already. - Alan Hardacre, PhD, co-founder of Advocacy Academy - Craig Beaumont, Chief of External Affairs at Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) - Heather Yaxley (PhD), Managing Consultant at Applause Consultancy - Lewis North, Head of Public Affairs at Rail Partners - Scott Pepé, Acting Head of External Affairs at the NFU (National Farmers' Union) Register here: https://lnkd.in/eqMg-Tb4 #publicaffairs #governmentrelations #governmentaffairs

ICYMI: we’re running another free, interactive webinar on our governance reform consultation, where we’ll be able to answer any questions you may have: https://ow.ly/1lBj50SrvBn The webinar will be delivered by Dr Sue Paterson FRCVS, RCVS President, Eleanor Ferguson, Registrar and Ben Myring, Policy & Public Affairs Manager. The aim of this session is to: • Explain how we compare to other regulators and Royal Colleges, • Describe the modern regulatory landscape and the need for governance reform, • Outline the preliminary recommendations that we are consulting on, and • Detail how to take part in the consultation Before you join the webinar, please read the background information available at https://ow.ly/gUfr50SrvBo. Note: This webinar is a repeat of the session we held on 11 June. If you attended that, or have watched the recording, there’s no need to register for this one!

✍️Our Chief Executive, Meadhbha, is the guest writer for Pivotal Public Policy Forum NI this week. Click the link below to read her blog titled: 'Embracing the public as assets – the need for a strategic approach to public participation.' 👇 Pivotal Public Policy Forum

📢 Really excited to see this new paper out. It was a huge undertaking, led by Jennifer Lacy-Nichols 🎉🎉 https://lnkd.in/gTJtXViP 🌍 Making Lobbying Transparent: Introducing the FOCAL Framework 🌍 Lobbying is a powerful tool, often dominated by commercial interests. Unfortunately, due to limited government disclosures, the public rarely has a clear picture of who is lobbying or why. To help increase transparency & make lobbying activities more visible, we developed a comprehensive framework designed to strengthen lobbying disclosures. 🔍 Our Approach Through a systematic scoping review of over 1,900 peer-reviewed and grey literature articles, we identified 15 frameworks evaluating lobbying transparency. These frameworks evaluated lobbying disclosures, and some touched on key areas like enforcement & compliance. NGO frameworks often focused on improving lobbying regulations, while academic frameworks sought to measure & evaluate transparency. However no framework we found was truly comprehensive in its approach. 💡 Introducing FOCAL Our work resulted in the development of FOCAL - a Framework for Comprehensive and Accessible Lobbying which includes 8 categories that cover 50 total indicators: - Scope - Timeliness - Openness - Descriptors - Revolving door - Relationships - Financials - Contact log 🔑 Why This Matters FOCAL offers policymakers a detailed blueprint to develop or enhance lobbying regulations. By increasing transparency, we can ensure that commercial political influence strategies are more visible and open to public scrutiny. This is a crucial step toward rebalancing influence in favour of the public interest, empowering communities over commercial agendas. #Transparency #LobbyingDisclosure #PublicInterest #FOCAL #PolicyInnovation #Governance #PublicHealth Eric Crosbie UQ School of Public Health

Concerns about a lack of responsiveness to new demands and the public service’s ability to meet new policymaking needs have led to questions about how much analytical capacity, and of what kinds, the public service possesses. An article in the Australian Journal of Public Administration, summarised by ANZSOG's The Bridge, examines the roles public sector policy advice, expertise, and policy advisory systems play in a time of shifting conceptions of expertise and evolving systems of advice. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gtsSn6Sb

UPCOMING COMMISSION MEETING: Thursday, September 26, 2024 5:30 pm ET Online This is an online meeting of a public body held in open session via Zoom. Members of the public are invited to observe the meeting live online on CAH’s YouTube channel. Members of the public may request three minutes to speak during the public comment period held at this meeting. Public comments are intended to be an opportunity to provide information, knowledge, experience, and opinions directly from the community, for Commissioners to consider and keep in mind in their oversight of the Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Requests must be submitted by no later than Noon ET on Tuesday, September 24, 2024. You can also submit written comments by Noon ET on Tuesday, September 24, 2024, in addition to spoken comments. Public comments, both spoken and written, will be included in the public record of the meeting. This meeting is governed by the Open Meetings Act. Please address any questions or complaints about this meeting to the Office of Open Government at opengovoffice@dc.gov. Click here to RSVP: https://lnkd.in/e763sPQj

Dear PEng (Ontario) Colleagues, As you know, the voting period for the 2024 PEO Council Elections started on Friday January 12. Voting information was emailed to the members by vote@simplyvoting.com on Friday and over the weekend. If you have not received your Elector ID and Voting PIN please check the Spam/Junk folder. The list, statements and links to the Websites of candidates are at https://lnkd.in/gkskXWfg. Please also check the recent Council motions at https://lnkd.in/eXn_uSb. If you have concerns regarding the PEAK-based CPD related issues that members have been raising, please review the minutes of the 538th Meeting of Council - February 26, 2021 at https://lnkd.in/gmS6KhJN (and the CPD related motions and pertinent discussion). These will take some time if you are not familiar with the candidates and their platforms. Please cast your vote for a Council and its leadership that will be in compliance with the Act, and will respect the mandates of the legislated and standing committees and the professional engineers (members and volunteers). A council that will enhance our self-regulated profession by improving its relevance to the public and emerging disciplines, fair admissions process, and member inclusive peer review, knowledge- & evidence-based decision making, as well as increasing the transparency. As one of many examples revealing the need for these enhancements consider transparency. Late 2021, Council decided that for any discussion item to be included in the minutes the Council approval is required, even for discussion items pertaining to the duty of care and fiduciary duty of a Councillor: see the defeated motion at the 544th Meeting of Council November 19, 2021  https://lnkd.in/dU8mqZNj . It is good to see that the recorded Council meetings since January 2021 are now posted following many requests from a couple of councillors! Thank you for your continued support for self-regulation, Council and PEO.  #PEOelection

An interesting read. Consultation Paper 1: Independent review of complexity in the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme. https://lnkd.in/gSXcg5vW Deadline for submissions is 14 October 2024.

A new paper by Jonathan Fox, Brendan Halloran, Alta Folscher & Rosie McGee for the Accountability Research Center presents a new framework to help accountability advocates and practitioners interpret government reactions to their efforts and boost evidence-based advocacy. The paper⤵ 🗳 Unpacks the broad umbrella category of government responses to citizen-led accountability initiatives, discerning within it three overlapping categories of responses, responsiveness, and accountable responsiveness (RRA), and pinpointing what distinguishes them. 📌 Maps out the public financial management (PFM) system as the critical conduit for any public service to progress from non-response through these three categories, reflecting the terrain and priorities of the SPARK program and International Budget Partnership (IBP) more broadly. 🗣 Discusses how the RRA framework can be used to take stock of partial or incremental responses and assess whether change is moving towards accountable governance by reference to the #SPARKProgram and other IBP efforts. https://lnkd.in/eUU5_6WF #ShiftInPower #Governance #Advocoacy #Accountability

For public servants, ministerial advisers can be friend or foe. They can be a helpful sounding board to test advice, or problematic and overstep boundaries. My latest research brief looks at the role of ministerial advisers in policy using a framework of buffering, bridging, moving and shaping. ANZSOG - The Australia and New Zealand School of Government https://lnkd.in/gveDEvke