Supplementary written evidence submitted
by the British Council
The Carter report provides a clear framework
for the overall co-ordination of the UK's public diplomacy, a
revised definition of public diplomacy for partners to work to
and, for the first time, a definitive figure of the UK's grant-funded
expenditure in this area (£617 million) between the FCO,
the British Council and the BBC World Service.
ESTABLISHMENT OF
THE PUBLIC
DIPLOMACY BOARD
We believe the advent of the Public Diplomacy
Board offers a major opportunity to provide strategic direction
for all public diplomacy work. We welcome the conclusion of the
Carter report that it should be responsible for agreeing the strategy,
advising on resource allocation and responsible for performance
measurement and monitoring.
The decision to have the Board chaired by an
FCO Minister will ensure a higher profile for public diplomacy
inside Whitehall, while the inclusion of an independent Vice-Chair
and an independent member with experience of evaluation and monitoring
will provide welcome additional expertise and broader experience.
The Director-General of the British Council will play a full part
as a full member of the Board.
We also welcome the finding in the Carter report
that the UK benefits from the existence of the British Council
and the BBC World Service as two world-class institutions with
strong brands, and the recognition by the review team of the importance
of appropriate editorial and managerial independence in maintaining
that reputation internationally.
We believe the key to success for the Public
Diplomacy Board will be to ensure that its role is set at a strategic
level, with members able to assess the outputs and results through
clearly-defined and measurable indicators, while public diplomacy
partners remain responsible for operational activity under their
own clear brands. There will, as now, be co-operation and joint
activity where this will increase impact, through cross-Whitehall
initiatives such as the India-UK Education Initiative, or through
the Prime Minister's Initiative on international students.
We are working closely with the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office in developing a comprehensive public diplomacy
strategy for the new Public Diplomacy Board to consider, and are
seconding staff to the new strategy and performance management
unit, including the head of the new unit.
MEASUREMENT AND
EVALUATION
We agree with the finding that the overall impact
of public diplomacy work should be measured through the development
of a commonly-agreed measurement system. This will assist the
Board in assessing the relative value of each individual institution's
contribution to the objectives of public diplomacy. The British
Council brings practical experience of measurement and evaluation
systems to this process.
We believe that the new evaluation system should
be light touch in its nature and focus on public diplomacy impact.
Where possible, measurement indicators should be compatible with
existing evaluation systems run the public diplomacy partners.
We do not believe it is the intention either of the report or
of public diplomacy partners that the PD Board metrics should
supplant the current scorecard and Heads of Mission surveys, as
these provide important measurement information for the British
Council across all its work.
Our current evaluation systems are already extensive
and a summary of their findings has been published in our annual
report for 2005-06.
ACCOUNTABILITY OF
THE BRITISH
COUNCIL
We provided a note to the FAC in October 2005
outlining the range of accountability mechanisms under which the
British Council is held to account to Parliament through its sponsoring
department, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We believe that
these mechanisms provide full and substantial accountability in
terms of strategic direction, performance reporting, and assurance
in terms of audit.
We do not believe it will be the function of
the Public Diplomacy Board to duplicate or take over these functions
of oversight or parliamentary accountability. We believe that
care needs to be taken to ensure that there is no unnecessary
duplication or overlap through the new systems now being established.
TAXATION AND
STATUS ISSUES
The Carter report called on the British Council
to be pro-active in resolving tax and status issues. We have undertaken
a review of this area. While it is not practical for there to
be uniform status across all the countries we work in, (given
that the terms we operate under vary according to different legal
systems and whether we operate under memoranda of Understanding,
Cultural Centres Agreements, or other forms of government-to-government
agreements), we are now adopting a pro-active policy of regularising
our status across our network.
Martin Dowle
Head, Director-General's office
8 March 2006
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