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Accountable
body role
The accountable body generally takes
responsibility for the legal and financial
management of the grant disbursed
to the project. As the organisation
receiving the funding, the accountable
body is therefore responsible for
putting in place an audit trail, overseeing
contract management with suppliers
(but leaving this operationally to
the project steering committee and
project staff) and ensuring that the
project has sufficient cashflow.
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Role
of steering group
All of the WuC projects formed a
steering group or management committee
that met every month or so. The steering
groups tended to draw its membership
from community groups, voluntary organisations,
the local authority departments (Education,
Chief Executive, Corporate IT), the
project's 'community forum' and other
interested parties.
The role and influence of the steering
group depended largely on the personalities
attending the meetings and their level
of interest in the project. A common
theme to emerge was how the projects
were able to get on with the day to
day business of running the project,
but that important decisions on future
direction or policy went before the
management group for decision or ratification.
Some examples of these included the
following:
- applications/bids to external
funders
- charging policy
- extending the geographical boundary
- flagging up contractual problems
with suppliers
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Project
review & future plans
The 'accountable body is responsible
for leading on the development of
the project in consultation with the
management group. Notwithstanding
the DfES external
evaluation, wholescale periodic
project reviews were not generally
undertaken, reflecting perhaps the
relatively short implementation and
delivery timescales on the WuC programme.
However, key aspects of the project
did come under scrutiny - in particular,
the need for revenue funding (and
associated bids to external funders)
and the longer term sustainability
of the project. The accountable body
tended to have a strong influence
on how such plans developed for setting
up a social/community enterprise to
take over the running of the project
and strongly reflected prevailing
attitudes to the notion of 'community
led'. The projects could be categorised
to the following stages of development:
- Stage One - Accountable
body led, but with no plans for
a handover to community organisation/social
enterprise
- Stage Two - Community organisation/social
enteprise with an arms-length accountable
body, albeit in the middle of the
handover phase
- Stage Three - community
organisation/social enterprise with
complete autonomy after 'handover
phase'
With capital grants to six of the
WuC projects totalling more than £1m
each in 2001, it was unsurprising
that the WuC projects were at stage
one or two, but none had moved to
stage three by April 2003.
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Focus
groups
A series of four focus groups - two
each on web portal content issues
and planning for sustainability, were
held with representatives of the WuC
projects and their communities, and
DfES staff. Each was managed and developed
by Halcyon Consultants, and the outputs
for these have been incorporated into
this toolkit. All were part of the
investment made by DfES to bring support
project staff in order to develop
ideas, consider progress, reinforce
learning and develop best practice.
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Useful
Documents
Accountable body / steering
group role
A draft
Board Constitution (Word, zipped
12kb) sets out the relationship between
the accountable body (local authority)
and the project.
Objectives
roles and responsibilities (Word,
zipped 8kb) describe the sum and the
parts of a project.
Project review
ICT
Management guidelines (Word, zipped
31kb) is a document produced by Resource
drawn from an evaluation of the IT
Challenge Fund. It contains useful
pointers to a number of management
issues, including skills, content
services, partnerships, communication
and community involvement.
The sample
research questionnaire (Word,
zipped 6kb) was used to survey residents
about their use the web of and attitudes
to the project. An online
questionnaire (Excel, zipped 5kb)
surveyed residents via a posted and
web based form. A follow-up
questionnaire (Word, zipped 10kb)
was distributed to recipients in 2003
to gauge the impact of the scheme.
Regular project reviews can include
a risk
analysis (Word, zipped 9kb) and
this example shows the complexity
of this in an innovative situation.
Minutes from the Content
Focus Group.
Minutes from the Sustainability
Focus Group.
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