Paper from the Scottish Parliament
BACKGROUND NOTE FOR SELECT COMMITTEE ON MODERNISATION
1. The Parliament created in Autumn last
year an Access and Information Directorate, bringing together
our "outward facing" offices together with information
services. The new Directorate, headed by Carol Devon, comprises
the Parliament's Media Relations Office, Broadcasting, Security,
Research and Information Services, Corporate Publications and
Participation Services which covers Education and Outreach, participation
events, public enquiry handling, and public information and visitor
services including the Visitor Centre and the shop.
2. The Directorate's priorities for the
coming year are to develop visitor services for Holyrood, and
to take forward an external communications strategy. The structure
of the Directorate is under review to ensure we are best placed
to meet the challenges of the coming year.
3. The creation of the Directorate reflects
the Parliament's continuing commitment to live up to one of our
key founding principles of openness, accessibility and participation.
4. We achieve this in various ways:
Information and improving public understanding:
— informing people about the parliament
and how to access it;
— through a wide range of information
leaflets (in a range of languages), information on the website,
our visitor centres and partner libraries;
— our education officers working with
schools and colleges across Scotland;
— out Gaelic officers working with
the Gaelic community, and producing information in Gaelic;
— webcasting our business so that people
can watch, listen and better understand the work of the Parliament;
— working with not only the public,
but local authorities, public bodies, civic, voluntary and professional
organisations, and private business; and
— working with the media.
Engagement:
— We want people to engage with the
Parliament;
— interactive forums on the website;
— Open Days where the public can come
into the Parliament, to meet and question the politicians and
the staff;
5. Outreach sessions are delivered by staff
across Scotland. This can range from Committee Clerks delivering
information talks to key audiences for their committee (eg local
authorities) to information sessions as part of bigger events
(eg a seminar at a voluntary sector conference).
6. There are no staff posts that are currently
dedicated to this function on a full time basis. Staff from a
number of business areas (eg Broadcasting and Participation Services)
contribute alongside their other functions. Resources such as
display screens have been acquired to assist with presenting a
professional image of the Parliament. We are piloting outreach
sessions in community venues, including our Partner Library Network.
A recent extension to this outreach network has been to set up
Linked Libraries which see us working with libraries that serve
communities of interest, eg women or Gaelic speakers, as well
as the geographic communities that the Partner Libraries correspond
to.
7. Outreach aimed at encouraging active
public engagement is being developed with a one-year staff post.
Key tasks include working with Committee Clerks to disseminate
good practice (through the development of a participation handbook)
and to pilot new approaches (eg to bring disadvantaged groups
to Parliament as part of an inquiry into oral questions).
8. The two strands, information giving and
encouraging active engagement, have come together in a pilot of
seminars (delivered in Edinburgh and in Dumfries) for community
workers. Our aim is to inform this network in order to reach out
to the grass roots level community groups that the workers engage
with locally. This will enable us to reach a wider section of
Scottish society than the "usual suspects" (by which
we mean the level of civic society that is well set up to engage
with the policy and decision making process, for example either
through umbrella groups such as the Scottish Civic Forum or through
professional contacts).
9. The Education Visits Programme was introduced
in September 1999—over 20,000 young people have taken part
since then. In the last year, 4,272 pupils and students took part
in these structured education visits—51% of the participants
were primary pupils, 46% were secondary and the remaining 3% were
FE students:
— The visits take place on Wednesdays
and Thursday to co-incide with plenary sessions. Six visit slots
are offered each week throughout term time. MSPs are invited to
each visit for a Q & A session but bookings etc for the visits
are made directly with staff.
— Two dedicated members of staff (with
teaching experience) as part of wider team of six.
— Dedicated classroom facility for
hosting class visits, seminars etc.
— Budget of £30,000 per annum
for resources (eg to make a video) plus support from central budgets
for written materials and for other costs eg catering for seminars.
10. Teacher seminars take place in Parliament
(10 in current year) and outreach sessions in schools/educational
establishments (two in current year), involving primary and Modern
Studies teachers as well as student teachers. The website section
and written materials are key methods of delivering outreach by
supporting teaching about the Parliament in schools and other
educational establishments.
11. A strategy for engaging with the public
through public information and other external communications techniques,
including media relations, is being developed currently. This
has been informed by public opinion research commissioned by the
Parliament in 2003 to assess current levels of knowledge about
the Parliament and about the ways in which people access information
and where they prefer to do this.
12. Current practice includes:
— Telephone enquiry line (switchboard)
staffed by Public Enquiry Officers so offer same level of service
from all initial points of contact.
— Visitor Centre (1st parliamentary
visitor centre in the UK) for face to face contact.
— Accessible enquiry and information
service offering products in a range of languages (English, Gaelic,
community languages, European languages) and formats (Braille,
audio tape).
13. Our website is currently being redesigned
to assist with navigability and to encourage interactivity.
COMMITTEE WORK
14. Scottish Parliamentary Committees gather
evidence, information and draw on the views of external groups
to inform their scrutiny of the Executive's policy and legislation
in a range of ways. The tools used for gathering this evidence
and information are varied and include:
— written and oral evidence;
— in-house and commissioned research;
— conferences, seminars and events.
15. Oral and written evidence is the core
formal method for Committees to inform their work. Most of this
evidence is received from individuals and groups with a knowledge
of the policy, legislative and scrutiny process.
16. In scrutinising Executive policies,
our Committees have met in locations the length and breadth of
Scotland, talking to local people about local issues, or wider
policies that might affect them directly.
17. We recognise the need however to engage
more with people who are not actively engaged in politics or who
are not a member of an organisation or a lobby group.
Access and Information Directorate
March 2004
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