The Good Governance Standard
11th January 2005
The Association of Croydon Governors were invited by Sir Alan Langlands
to the Launch of the Good Governance Standard for Public Services
following their contribution to the consultations,
the commission used some ACG comments for their publicity literature.
Standard launched
Following extensive research and consultation, the Independent Commission on Good Governance in Public Services has produced a Good Governance Standard for Public Services. The Standard is available to download below:
Good Governance Standard for Public Services (pdf, 200kb)
Background
Over 450,000 people in the
*help formulate strategy;
*steward the expenditure of public money;
*ensure probity and transparency; and
*appoint, monitor and support top management.
Good governance is crucial for effective public services and improved social outcomes.
Problems with public sector governance
Some, but not all, parts of the public and voluntary sectors have devised good governance guidelines. The guidelines that have been developed vary enormously. This provides a poor basis for the public to compare and assess the effectiveness of governance arrangements or to demand improvement.
Research by OPM (Rubber Stamped?, 2003) shows that many governors appointed to public service organisations feel unable to carry out their jobs fully or effectively, thus undermining the effectiveness of their organisations. Where governors lack guidance about what their roles and responsibilities should be, it is difficult for them to argue for change.
The common code
In the private sector, governance has been strengthened significantly through the Cadbury, Greenbury and Higgs reports. These resulted in The Combined Code: Principles of Good Governance and Code of Best Practice. It is a short document that sets out clearly the principles of good governance and allows shareholders and stakeholders to call upon boards to comply with the commonly accepted standards or explain the reasons for not doing so.
The Code was developed independently from regulatory agencies, and then adopted widely by the business community and by regulators themselves. There is no equivalent code of good governance for the thousands of non-departmental public bodies, local public sector authorities and voluntary sector contractors that serve the public, or for new organisations (such as NHS foundation trusts).
An independent inquiry
The Office for Public Management (OPM) and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), with funding from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, established an independent Commission to develop a common standard of good governance for all public services.
The Commission comprised a small group of eminent leaders from the public, voluntary and private sectors, who:
*identified the main issues and any related research that was needed;
*considered submissions of evidence; and
*constructed a common standard for good governance in public services.
The Commission was chaired by Sir Alan Langlands, Principal and Vice Chancellor of the
Collecting and analysing evidence
The Commission was supported by research, to ensure that its work was well grounded in evidence and a wide range of experience. Various papers are available to download ? see the Research and papers for the Commission page. You can also see many of the submissions made to the Commission on the Consultation responses page.
The purpose of the Standard (taken from page 1)
We intend the Good Governance Standard for Public Services as a guide to help everyone concerned with the governance of public services not only to understand and apply common principles of good governance, but also to assess the strengths and weaknesses of current governance practice and improve it. We hope that the Standard will be useful to governors who are striving to do a difficult job better, and to individuals and groups who have an interest in scrutinising the effectiveness of governance.
The Standard focuses on the ways different functions of governance can support each other. Governance is dynamic: good governance encourages the public trust and participation that enables services to improve; bad governance fosters the low morale and adversarial relationships that lead to poor performance or even, ultimately, to dysfunctional organisations.
Scope of the Standard
The Good Governance Standard for Public Services is intended for use by all organizations and partnerships that work for the public, using public money. Most of these are public sector organisations whose services are used directly by members of the public or who are responsible for less visible activities, such as regulation and policy development.
However, the use of public money to provide public services is not limited to the public sector. The public also has an interest in the governance of non-public sector organisations that spend public money, and the Standard is designed to help them too.
Relationship with other codes and guidance
While the Standard has a wide scope, it does not seek to duplicate the codes and guidance that already exist for some specific types of organisation. We hope that those who develop and set these codes will refer to the Standard in updating and reviewing their own codes, and use it to enhance the debate about governance within and between different sectors. Where codes and guidance do not already exist, as in many formal and informal partnerships, we hope that the Standard will provide a shared understanding of what constitutes good governance.
Applying the Standard to different governance structures and sizes of organisation
The principles form a universal Standard of good governance and we encourage all organisations to show that they are putting it into practice in a way that reflects their structure and is proportionate to their size. We recognise that not all parts of the standard will appear to be directly applicable to all types and size of organisation.