July 2006 Minutes
Final Draft Minutes: Becta Board 19th July 2006, Tavern Room, RSA,
London
Attendees
Andrew Pinder (Chairman)
Anthony Lilley
John Gray
John Roberts
Stephen Crowne
Stephen Lucey
Tony Richardson
Ben Andradi
Michael Stevenson (DfES Assessor)
Christine Vincent
Nicola Newman
Stephen Gill
Peter Avis
Vanessa Pittard
Pat Hunt
Niel McLean
Victoria Yeowell (minutes)
Apologies:
Graham Badman
David Hassell
Chairman’s Introduction
1. Following the recent news that Michael Stevenson would be stepping
down from his post at the DfES, the Chairman thanked him for his
support and efforts in the last three years as the Board Assessor.
Minutes of the Last Meeting
2. The minutes were approved and signed by the Chairman.
Matters Arising
3. The Chairman referred to the action log and flagged the pension deficit
as an ongoing concern. He also thanked Peter Avis, Graham Badman
and Stephen Gill for arranging the Board venues later this year.
Action: The Chairman and Chief Executive to continue discussions with
DfES regarding the pension deficit
Minutes of the last Audit Committee Meeting
4. John Roberts, as Chairman of the Audit Committee said that their
meeting had discussed the draft accounts and they were satisfied that
Becta was is in good shape financially despite the pension deficit. The
auditors were happy to approve the accounts. The minutes were noted
and accepted.
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Becta Board Minutes July 2006
Future directions for Becta
5. The Board discussed the recent development of Becta’s role and DfES
internal restructuring. Michael Stevenson clarified the announcements
from David Bell (Permanent Secretary of DfES) made last week that the
department’s technology function would become more internally
focused on its own IT systems. Michael stated that he will be in his
current role until the 1st September. The rationale behind the changes
was that Becta is now best-placed to lead on the development of
technology in the wider education system and the department should
do what only the department can do. He said that the DfES would look
to minimise its risks in the area of IT and were rationalising the
corporate centre of DfES, with a CIO role reporting to Jon Thompson
(Director General, Corporate Services).
6. The responsibility for delivering the e-strategy would be passed to
Becta ‘lock, stock and barrel’ and Becta would have the role of
supporting policy development on learning and technology. The
technology group is 50 strong and work relating to learning
technologies and the e-strategy would shift to Becta. The area of
“Knowledge Architecture” may, in part, support the new CIO role,
particularly in making more coherent the business processes of the
DfES. All staff involved will move into the new CIO function at the DfES
in the first instance. The new DfES Board would be smaller with five
Director Generals, each taking responsibility for cross-cutting DfES
issues – and it was likely that Ralph Tabberer would take responsibility
for the area that Becta was working in.
7. In discussion, the Chief Executive was optimistic and supportive of the
changes but recognised the policy role was a large issue for Becta to
tackle. The Chairman supported this, recognising that there was often
a sensible division between agencies and government, where one
advises on, and the other forms, policy.
8. Board Members raised a number of issues. First, what were the
implications for Becta sponsorship within the Department? Second,
how could Becta be proactive and make a clear proposition to the
Department on its role? Third, Members were concerned that the
developments would need to be managed to allow Becta to maintain its
present progress and continue current work to drive delivery, and
suggested creating a separate work stream to identify and drive
change. Fourth, members were concerned that the positioning of the
CIO at a step below the main DfES Board was a downgrading which
would have an influence on the perception of the importance of system
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wide IT. Fifth, that the work in different sectors and the system-wide
approach taken so far would suffer through these changes.
9. The Chairman said that since these many decisions ultimately lay with
the Permanent Secretary, it was agreed that he and the Chief Executive
should meet very soon with David Bell. This would be followed up with
detailed work on the transfer process with Michael Stevenson and
Kevin McLean (who will deputise for him). If there was a need to
involve the Board in a telephone conference he asked Peter Avis to
ensure that he had an up-to-date picture of where the Board was, and
whether they were contactable over August.
Action: Board members to notify Peter Avis whether they were
contactable over August to support a telephone conference, if needed.
Action: The Chairman and Chief Executive to set up a meeting and
discuss these issues further with the Permanent Secretary
Paper 1 – Delivering the e-Strategy
10. Tony Richardson introduced the paper on delivering the e-strategy and
also spelt out the close relationship between it and the other two papers
for the meeting. In particular he bought to the attention of the Board a
clear and simple model of change based on key system levers
impacting on both the supply and demand sides. He asked the Board
whether the strategy for delivery was convincing. What might need to
be strengthened and does it meet the requirements of our priorities
letter?
11. The Chairman said that in his view the strategy was plausible but there
was a need to get on and do it. Members asked about the national
delivery group and were told they had met four times this year, with a
fifth meeting arranged in September. They said that it was critical that
the strategy was clear on what success would look like from the user’s
perspective; for it to provide the compelling argument. Members also
asked for more focus on high level outcomes and metrics, particularly
based on the existing work the Board had previously discussed.
12. The Chairman said it was important to engage with learners and we
needed greater analysis of this from their perspective. Members were
given details of the November Conference: 500 participants had been
invited by the partners, and 30 learner delegates would be invited.
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13. Members discussed the critical role of partnership and the need to
ensure good alignment amongst agencies including LEAs. They were
informed that a more detailed plan would form the partnership plan with
a more general publication for a general audience being produced for
the November conference.
14. Summing up, the Chairman suggested Board Members should be
invited to the conference and that further consideration be given to the
strategy following discussion of the other two papers. The principal
message was sensible but Becta needed to consider how it can be
stronger and harder hitting.
Action: Becta Executive to develop the plan in the light of this
discussion.
Action: Becta to invite Board Members to the conference.
Paper 2 – Marketing and Communications
15. Introducing the paper Nicola Newman said that Becta now had market
research evidence that showed that Becta was not having the clear
impact we wanted. Becta was not communicating effectively enough or
with enough clarity and focus, and the organisation was better at
knowledge gathering than knowledge sharing. She invited Members’
views on the paper.
16. Members were clear that this area was crucial to the success of Becta
and that it was a complex area. It is not just a case of publicising the
things we do: it is central to the overarching strategy of developing
practice. The Board suggested that this area was the next big step for
Becta and that targeting our communications to specific audiences was
crucial to the success of achieving our goals.
17. Stephen Crowne said that, coming into the job, he was clear there was
a need to get a stronger corporate ownership of Becta’s outputs,
focussed on the needs of the audience.
18. The Chairman made the comparison to the role of the e-envoy office
and UK Online as a campaign brand. He suggested that Becta could
think about the use of such a campaign brand to help in getting its
message across.
19. Members believed Becta still had a long way go to ensure it had clear,
short messages targeted on the audience. To do this it would need to
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Becta Board Minutes July 2006
listen to that audience. There was a debate about the relative
importance of communicating to the educational institution or to the
learner direct. It was agreed that the Becta Executive needed to
consider this in the context of the best use of resources, but should be
open to using other people’s channels to getting messages to
audiences such as parent-governors. Members discussed approaches
including viral marketing, having debates directly with learners and how
to create headlines.
20. Michael Stevenson reminded the Board that the recent changes were a
challenge to Becta since it was now responsible for communications
across partners and to the end user for the whole e-strategy. Whilst it
would not have to do it all itself it would need to orchestrate it.
Summing up, the Chairman suggested a continuing discussion between
Nicola, Stephen, Anthony Lilley and those involved with UK Online to
get ideas from that approach, and to keep this item on the agenda for
further debate.
Action: Nicola Newman, Stephen Crowne, Anthony Lilley to have a further
discussion and report back to the Board.
Paper 3 – An ‘e-mature’ Educational System
21. Introducing this item Niel McLean gave a brief introduction to how
maturity models had been used in other sectors to link ICT use to
business improvement, and how Becta had developed this into a self
review framework for schools’ use of ICT. He then described the work
looking at applying this thinking to the education system as a whole. He
spelt out the need to better link technology to the key business
processes of education and the key drivers for change. He spoke
about the need to consider demand side ‘pull’ as much as the supply
side ‘push’ which we have concentrated on previously. He suggested
bringing together the work of the three papers into one as the next step.
He asked for Members’ views on the impact on the future direction of
Becta’s work.
22. Board members agreed this was a logical and important way to analyse
the future direction and agreed that it was important to focus on
mechanisms that create pull as well as push. They asked the question
“who is against it” and it was felt that there was still a culture of
underplaying the role of technology amongst key decision makers.
23. Summing up, the Chairman said it was a good paper and hoped it
would drive the focus of internal discussions.
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Paper 4 – The Chief Executive’s Report
24. Introducing this item, Stephen Crowne asked for initial feedback on the
first attempt at the high level risks and asked the Board for their views,
either at the meeting or following it.
25. The Chairman suggested Becta should consider a generic risk which
could fundamentally affect our business, and look at the differences
between long and short term risk.
26. The Board Members welcomed the high level risks and asked that they,
and the actions to manage them, should be reported to the Board. They
agreed that it is useful to have the longer report on progress and the
performance indicators in the report but that it was important for the
Chief Executive to bring out the critical issues from them for discussion.
Action: The Executive to produce the report quarterly, in the longer form, but
with key issues brought out and reporting high level risks and their
management.
Any Other Business
27. There was no other business
Conclusion
28. The Chairman thanked everyone for their contributions and involvement
in the meeting. In particular he wished Michael Stevenson well for the
future. Michael thanked the Chairman and the Board, and looked
forward to seeing Becta put into effect the strategy developed to date to
help learners and institutions across the system make best use of
technology.
……………………………………………………………....Signed as a true record
Chairman
……………………………………………………………….Date
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