Government Social Research
Welcome to the first 'GSR News Bulletin'. This monthly update replaces the old GSR quarterly newsletter. Visit this space on the website every month for a summary of current activities in GCSRO and across departments.
Look out for 'Focus On', an in-depth look at cross-departmental issues, published quarterly on the news page of the website. The first feature is coming soon and will 'focus on' devolution.
Sue Duncan has been busy promoting GSR and its work at various conferences and events, both in government and in the wider research world. This is helping to raise our profile, though more needs to be done. She has also been addressing the implications of Freedom of Information for GSR; legislation comes in in January and we need to be ready. She's also been working with the Government Information and Communication Services, looking at issues of mutual concern on research and publication. She is involved in Sir Richard Mottram's committee on Professionalism in the Civil Service; this is exploring a number of issues relevant to GSR and other professional groups in government. She has also been working with HoPs to ensure that GSR is in good shape to deal with current and future demands on it. The world is changing and we must change with it. This work came together in an Awayday for HoPs in June; We hope that lots of good things will come out of this - watch the website for details. Sue needs to know what you think and she wants to hear your good ideas.
Phil Davies' activities include:
Teresa Williams joined the team on loan from the Home Office in April to lead work on research planning. The aim is to find ways of helping departments to:
She is, therefore, working on a project to analyse how research is currently planned in departments, share existing good practice, and identify areas where the centre needs to take action to facilitate co-ordination and/or break down barriers. This work will involve collection of basic information from all departments as well as more detailed case-study work in the 4-6 departments or policy areas. Initial analysis of the problems and proposed solutions will be available end 2004/early 2005.
Teresa will be keeping GSR HOPs in departments, as well as central heads of profession for other specialisms, in touch with her work. She is keen to hear from other GSR colleagues, who may be able to contribute their ideas and experiences to this project.
We were very sorry to say goodbye to Julia McMillan in April, when she left GCSRO and the Civil Service. Julia has provided an excellent foundation for further work in the area of GSR recruitment and career development by developing the GSR logo, website, and associated promotional materials to explain what GSR is and to promote careers with us.
Rebecca Laffineur joined the team on 5 July from the Fast Stream Recruitment Team to take forward work on GSR recruitment and career development. Early priorities for Rebecca are:
Sarah Halls and Maria Brown were delighted to welcome Glyn Davies to the support team on 21 June. Glyn joins GCSRO from Cabinet Office HR where he provided administrative support and ran the filing system. Glyn will provide support to all of the GCSRO team, working mainly on the Training Course Programme, the website and careers / promotional events.
As part of his consultancy service to departments, Ricky Taylor organised a one-day seminar on 22 June for the Welsh Assembly on the issues involved in the harmonisation of social surveys. The event was well attended and generated a useful discussion about how harmonised surveys would make it easier to compare results between data sources, make comparisons over time, and generally make better use of previous findings from research commissioned from both government and non-government sources. In addition, the harmonisation of social surveys would reduce the costs of surveys by the use of off-the-shelf questions. The seminar had previously been run for the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency and will be re-run for the Scottish Executive and other Government Departments.
Sharmila Kaduskar is continuing her work on developing, in consultation with other government departments, an ethical framework to underpin the scrutiny of government social research. The Framework will support government social researchers in upholding their ethical and legal obligations while commissioning and conducting social research, by communicating principles, proposing a process for scrutinising proposed projects and signposting sources of advice and guidance. The Framework will be available by the autumn.
Correna Callender is continuing to work with the Communication Committee and colleagues in Cabinet Office Corporate Communications Group on the development of a Communication Strategy for GSR. This includes developing initiatives to 'join up' GSR (internal work programme) and promote GSR to stakeholders inside and outside government (external work programme). The 'GSR Roadshow' has begun to rove, making an appearance at events both inside and outside government, including a career event at HMT organised by the Economics in Government Team and the ESRC Research Methods Festival at Oxford University. We have spent many months developing the Communications tools (the website, the new corporate identity and the promotional materials) needed to facilitate progress in both strands of the communication work- we will now use these tools as we press forward in strengthening networks within GSR and taking our message to policy colleagues, potential recruits and the wider research community. Please contact Correna if you require promotional materials or the electronic version of the logo.
Annette King also attended the ESRC Research Methods Festival and stepped in at the last minute to deliver a presentation on the review of pilot's report 'Trying it out- The role of Pilots in policy Making'. Annette also accompanied Correna on the GSR stand, and received a lot of interested queries about GCSRO's publications, in particular the 'Trying it Out' report and the 'Quality in Qualitative Evaluation' paper. The festival was a very useful in up-dating on some of the methodological developments in the social research sphere. It is highly recommended that more GSR members attend such events in future.
John Scott Cree has been updating the GSR website with details of events, publications, vacancies and resources. He's also been monitoring usage and is pleased to report that visits have climbed steadily to just under 4,000 a month.
Recent GSR initiatives to identify a core set of social research databases, identified several which are available already freely on the web. John has added these to the Resources page. John also manages www.policyhub.gov.uk
Siobhan Benita attended the Excellence in Policy-Making Network on 11 June and facilitated a discussion about more effective use of research in decision-making. Siobhan is continuing to work with GCSRO colleagues and policy makers across Whitehall to try and ensure that research is integrated into policy development. On 14 June Siobhan attended a CMPS course for senior entrants to the Civil Service and gave a presentation on the role of the Strategy Unit in general and, in particular on the role of GCSRO within it.
For more information on GCSRO please visit our page on this site. The team very much welcome your thoughts and queries so contact them at any time.
News from Across GSR
There has been a good deal of change at the Scottish Executive in recent months, with Karen MacNee moving to Finance and Central Services Department as Senior Principal Researcher and Lisa Bird will be covering the Senior Principal Researcher’s post vacated by Karen in the Office of Chief Researcher for the next seven months. In the last 3 months, 9 Research Officers have moved post and 7 new Research Officers have joined, too.
The Scottish Executive is in the process of setting up its Professional Development Programme, which aims to strengthen our professional identity within government and promote our role as partners in policymaking. It is led by 8 Project Groups - Ethics, Making an Impact, Knowledge Transfer, Freedom of Information, Communications, Procurement and CERES and Training and Development - and supported by the Professional Management Board (senior principal researchers within the Executive). An update on the projects will be available soon.
Social Research and Communications have been making the headlines recently, following the publication of research investigating Scotland's international image. This work was led by the Office of Chief Researcher working with the Executive's Media and Communications Group and policy colleagues - OCR currently manage a research framework arrangement for the evaluation of all the Executive's media campaigns on behalf of Communication colleagues.
In recent months at the Welsh Assembly 3 new researchers have been recruited - Becca Thomas as an SRO in REACT, Kevin Austin as an SRO in Agriculture and Mirriam Purple as an RO in Housing. Recent events have included a visit by GCSRO on June 22nd to deliver their Information Seminar Can we harmonise concepts and questions for social surveys? and a Q&A Session for Assembly researchers with our HoP, Chris Tudor-Smith.'
Analytical Services at the DfES has undergone some significant changes recently. As part of the ongoing restructuring of the DfES (and the more general changes to the Civil Service), Analytical Services has been broken up and entire divisions embedded into policy directorates. In addition, a small central analytical division remains and a Data Services Group has been created to oversee data collection within the Department. To ensure that the integrity of analysts remains in place, a Concordat has been developed to ' maintain a coherent and connected analytical community which is closely linked in with policy partners'.
Analytical posts will continue to be designated as specialist disciplines.
In June, Paul Johnson, the head of Analytical Services and Chief Economist left the DfES to take up a post in the Treasury. His post, which has changed considerably due to the restructuring, is currently filled by John Elliot on temporary promotion.
ODPM was restructured in April to reflect its Strategic Priorities. GSR members in Research, Analysis and Evaluation division are now part of an Analytical Services Directorate bringing together economists, statisticians and social researchers to meet the Office's analytical needs as part of a larger Corporate Strategy and Resources Group.
Local Government and Fire researchers work within the Local Government Group and researchers in the Neighbourhood Renewal and Social Exclusion Units form part of the Tackling Disadvantage Group.
Jan White has taken over as acting Divisional Head of RAE and Head Of Profession following the departure of Waqar Ahmad to become Director of Research and Assistant Vice Chancellor at Middlesex University.
Look out for more news from across GSR next month - please make sure we know about news items in your department, agency or unit.