House of Lords - Information

Select Committee on Information Report

Annual Report 2007-2008

CHAPTER 1: Introduction

1. The purpose of this report is to inform Members about the activities of the Information Committee during the 2007-08 Session in advising and supporting the House's information and communication services.[1]

2. We have produced this report in response to the 2007 review of the internal governance of the House of Lords, prepared for the Lord Speaker and the House Committee. In that review, Lord Tordoff and Lord Hunt of Wirral recommended that domestic committees "make more use than they have done hitherto of their power to report to the House, either on specific issues of interest, or by way of providing annual or sessional accounts of their activities."[2]

BACKGROUND

3. The Information Committee is one of the five domestic committees of the House.[3] Its terms of reference are:

"To consider information and communications services, including the Library and Parliamentary Archives, within the strategic framework and financial limits approved by the House Committee".

4. The House has agreed that the domestic committees should "function primarily as user groups, actively canvassing the views of Members and providing a forum within which they can make complaints or suggestions about services". The services that the Information Committee is concerned with are:

· The Parliamentary Information and Communication Technology service (PICT)
· Library services in the House
· Information services for Members, including Hansard
· Public information about the House and its work, including outreach
· Bicameral services, including the parliamentary website, parliamentary outreach, visitor services, the education service and the broadcasting of parliamentary proceedings
· The Parliamentary Archives

HOW THE COMMITTEE WORKS

5. The Committee considers current levels of services and makes recommendations for change. Any Committee recommendation that requires significant unbudgeted expenditure would also need approval by the House Committee. The Committee has thirteen members (see Appendix 1) and meets approximately six times a year. It meets in private to discuss issues with senior officials responsible for the services listed in paragraph 4 above. Agendas and minutes of the meetings are published on the intranet.[4] In the next Session we plan to establish our own page on the parliamentary website, like other domestic committees.

WORKING WITH THE ADMINISTRATION ON BUSINESS PLANNING

6. The House Committee approves the House's strategic, business and financial plans. The Information Committee "considers information and communications services within the strategic framework and financial limits approved by the House Committee." In their report on internal governance, Lord Tordoff and Lord Hunt of Wirral raised the option of creating a formal opportunity for domestic committees to input into the development of plans for the delivery of services to Members. The Information Committee adopted this proposal and decided that it should input into the business planning processes of the House's Information Services.

7. In July Committee Members attended planning meetings in the three offices within Information Services (the Information Office, the Library and the Parliamentary Archives), and in October the Committee reviewed the draft business plans of those offices. Such timing allowed the Committee to comment on office plans before the budgets for the forthcoming year had been finalised. This initiative was judged to be a success both by us and the areas of the administration involved, and we concluded that we should repeat the exercise next year.

8. We are currently developing this model further so that, in conjunction with the House of Commons, we could offer support to the Commons-led shared services within the Committee's remit (e.g. the Broadcasting Unit and the Education Service) in shaping future services. We also intend to input into future PICT business plans.

WORKING WITH INDIVIDUAL SERVICES

9. From next Session, individual members of the Committee will focus their interest on one or two of the services with which the Committee is concerned. Members will visit the teams to see their work, meet staff and discuss developments and/or look at key strategic papers. The arrangement will not pre-empt or circumnavigate existing lines of management or accountability; it will operate with a light touch and on an informal basis only.

10. We hope that this change will facilitate closer links between members of the Committee and individual offices. We will use the Red Benches newsletter (see paragraph 13) to canvas the views of other Members and report back to them. Committee members will thereby be able to act as conduits or informal contact points between Members of the House and the services in question.

WORKING WITH THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

11. A number of the services with which we are concerned are provided on a bicameral basis (e.g. by PICT, the Broadcasting Unit, and the Education Service). Where appropriate, we work with the House of Commons Administration Committee to ensure a joined-up approach in these areas. For example, in March 2008 we held an informal joint meeting at which we discussed improvements to the parliamentary website.

WORKING WITH OTHER PARLIAMENTS