Peer Review and Cities

1

• Peer Review and Cities
• Final conference
• The Hague
• 16th-17th September 2004

2
Peer reviews and cities

• Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA), PRESUD
  partner - Who we are
• What is peer review?
• How we have pioneered this method to support
  improvement in the UK, and its impact
• How we have customised the peer approach to
  PRESUD
• Strengths and weaknesses of peer review
  performance assessment
• Lessons learnt from IDeA perspective

3
IDeA who we are

• Our DNA
• Democracy and involvement are the lifeblood of
  strong, confident communities and form the
  cornerstone of local government, enabling
  councils to best deliver to the people they serve
• Our vision
• Local government is a vital and valued part of
  peoples lives councils can deliver excellence
  and best class public services in tune with local
  context, needs and aspirations
• Our approach
• Connecting ideas and practice focus but forward
  thinking recognising uniqueness and responding
  to it flexibly carrying risk on behalf of the
  sector by innovating and incubating new, joined
  up local initiatives
• Our improvement focus
• Leadership, corporate capacity, service delivery
  and sustainable communities
• Our governance
• created for and by local government in England
  and Wales
• Our outcomes
• our work saves time, money and achieves
  improvement.

4
What is peer review?

• Peer dictionary defines a peer as an equal,
  friend, colleague (includes politicians)
• How we use this in the UK Local Government
  Improvement Programme (LGIP)
• Peer review classic model (1999, 3 detailed
  Benchmarks)
• 6 team members (including a Chief Executive, Lead
  Councillor of an authority, IDeA review manager)
• Review Manager and Team Leader
• Pre- review preparation, establish contact and
  rapport with host authority
• 5 days on site, culminating in presentation
• Report agreed and signed off by host authority
  within 4 weeks
• Follow-up visit to assess progress on Action Plan
  (6,12, 18 months later)
• Peer challenge Comprehensive Performance
  Assessment
• Team of three (Chief Executive, Lead Councillor
  and Review Manager) with short intensive follow
  up
• Benchmark was modified annually, now takes into
  account Comprehensive Performance Assessment
  (national inspection criteria)
• Clear focus on top level questions and central
  Comprehensive Performance Assessment themes
• The Audit Commission is saying that for an LGIP
  visit to count as peer challenge it needs to
  take place 1-5 months ahead of the self
  assessment statutory regulation submission date

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Our PRESUD aims

• Our 4 main objectives
• Elaborate upon the peer review methodology as a
  pan-European tool to measure and encourage
  implementation of sustainable development
• Use peer review tool to assess concrete
  performance of partner cities in achieving
  sustainable urban development
• Implement specific, measurable, achievable,
  realistic and time-limited (SMART) action
  programmes across the cities to achieve
  improvements of between 10-25
• Contribute to good practice knowledge of European
  sustainable urban development by demonstrating
  the usefulness of the peer review tool

• Approach
• Build on political value Peer Review has in UK
  governance system could a similar system accrue
  in EU if used?
• Adaptation of OECD measures, usage of peer review
  and IDeA LGIP benchmark of
• Leadership
• Community and democratic engagement and
• Performance Management
• Partnership working match funded EU LIFE 3
  project (we joint fund, not cost recovery project
  as other tailored projects are)
• Timeline
• Start date Nov 2002
• Finish date July 2004
• Final conference September 2004

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Customisation of peer review for PRESUD

• Team profile 6 team members including
• political leader (member champion or portfolio
  holder/member peer)
• IDeA team member
• a trans-European technical specialist in
  sustainability field
• Review manager, and for follow-up reviews, an
  assistant review manager
• Process partnership, piloting the innovation,
  TD, mutual learning, creating teams
• Pre-review preparation, documentary review
  (Pressure, State, Response analysis)
• On-review interrogate, evaluate and record
  evaluation criteria, including consultation of
  stakeholders), culminates in presentation of
  findings
• post-review compile draft of full assessment
  report within 4 weeks, identify means of
  verification and progress chance for
  retrospective evaluations by host municipality
  and stakeholders team participants complete
  post-review evaluation on-line survey
• SMART Action plans - How useful? Verifying impact
  of PRESUD intervention?
• Overall dissemination - sharing of learning
  project learning workshop

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Process at-a-glance
(3) Reporting within 6 weeks of each review
being completed
(1) Training Workshops Venice, Vienna
(2) Round reviews / Performance assessments Nov
2002 April 2004
(4) Post-review evaluation by each team member
(5) Partner Steering group Meetings (on-going)
All partners
Review Team members
PRESUD project manager
(6) Post project conference publications
(Sept 2004)
(7) Dissemination rolling out the
learning (on-going)
(8) Project closure (October 2004)
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Strengths and weaknesses of using peer review in
PRESUD

• Strengths
• Balance of critical and motivational
• Multi-dimensional e.g. more than short term
  efficiency drivers for reduced costs and
  increased output
• Participative involves others, pools skills
• Focused week on-site
• Led to action planning - Municipalities are
  planning improvement in service delivery
• Qualified evaluation - good experience Localism
  helped locality focus and bend/overcome central
  barriers
• Leadership - political and management but very
  different across cities, key sensitivity is
  public accountability
• Identifiable champions - commitment of key
  personnel (key offices, or members) evident

• Weaknesses
• Methodology tension between technical v
  generalist
• Technical understanding remains low esp. in
  areas of social and economic themes
• Variable assessment skills hence quality
• Does it work well with technical service areas?
• Strategic fit - regulation different in other
  European administrations
• High level of tailoring needed each city is
  very different (e.g. Venice v Leipzig)
• Reliance on host authority to provide dependable
  information and logistics (e.g. theme tables,
  workshops)
• Once team disbanded, reporting delays are
  exacerbated by distance, language, workload
• PRESUD intervention yet to prove evidence of
  broader ownership and buy in, but good start

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Top 10 lessons learnt by IDeA

• Timetable was too ambitious as process is more
  complex (need for extend deadlines)
• Cultural, technical and political diversity of
  the peers has both strengths and weaknesses
• Consistency of quality - varying degrees of
  success across the participating cities
• Political leadership in some partner cities is
  highly sensitive/resistant to the findings, so
  different levels of political buy-in
• Broader partnership working was a challenge led
  to clearer roles and responsibilities, more
  dependability of information provided by partners
  (e.g. evidence to context)
• Different levels of capacity of team members
  e.g. real extent of this apparent when reviews
  were up and running, quality of reports variable
  etc, hence re-vamped training
• Changing staff (within Agency, on teams)
  introduced shadowing and refresher training
• Adaptability made better use of staff (e.g. 2 x
  3 interviewees) to get more coverage
• More participative and less prescriptive
  approach evolved IDeA model is very rigid
• Dissemination became more accessible, user
  friendly, interactive, and creative e.g CD ROM
  with video clips, web site, newsletter (led to
  less reliance on printed material).