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From
The Chair
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CREATING
EFFECTIVE RESEARCH IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT
The
new LARIA/LGA toolkit “Creating Effective Research” received
a very successful launch at the sell-out workshop held in London on 23rd
November. For those of you who have not seen the toolkit yet, copies
may be downloaded free of charge from www.lga.gov.uk (click on ‘Publications’,
then on ‘R’, and enter ‘Effective Research’ as
the keyword.)
In the same week a leaflet jointly produced by LARIA and the LGA, “Local
government needs effective research”, was sent to all chief executives.
Further copies are also downloadable from the LGA website as described
above. I hope that this is by now having an impact up and down the country.
All in all, I regard the total “Effective Research” research
programme, with its four separate outputs, as possibly the best research
programme LARIA has been associated with during the whole of my time
with LARIA. I would like to pay tribute to Roger Sykes, formerly of the
LGA, in helping to bring this about, but most of all I would like to
express my thanks to Janie Percy-Smith and Alison Darlow who undertook
the research and produced the various reports. I trust you agree with
me that they have really delivered full value.
By the time you read this, another new LARIA publication will have appeared
on www.laria.gov.uk. “Managing Research in Local Government” has
been written by Bryan Hall, formerly of Cheshire County Council and a
past Chair of LARIA.
REPRESENTING
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Every now and then LARIA receives requests to provide a person to represent
local government researchers on various boards, study groups and so
on. In the past we have endeavoured to meet such requests by nominating
a LARIA Council member, but this has become increasingly problematic
as the number of such requests has been steadily increasing.
From one point of view this is, of course, a positive development which
shows that efforts to raise the profile and credibility of LARIA are
gradually bearing fruit. However, that very credibility may be put at
risk if we, as an organisation, are unable to respond positively to such
approaches.
I would therefore like to say to all LARIA members: if you have any interest
at all in taking on such a representative role, please make yourself
known. There’s no need to be backward in coming forward! All you
have to do is to let our Administrator, Graham Smith, know of your interest.
We will do the rest and, should a suitable opportunity crop up, you will
be contacted and the position discussed with you. Your only obligation
would be to keep the LARIA Council informed about your participation
and you would be likely to make significant additions to your network
of contacts as a result.
STATISTICS USER FORUM
LARIA has been invited to join the Royal Statistical Society’s
new Statistics User Forum, which is chaired by Keith Dugmore, whom many
of you may know. This forum is intended to:
- Establish strategy and policy for coordinating the statistics user community, and in particular:
- Appoint members to the Statistics User Executive Committee in accordance with the constitution of the Committee
- Consider and advise on any issues referred to the Forum by the Statistics User Executive Committee
Discussions are in hand with the RSS to arrange for LARIA to become
affiliated to the Forum or to be coopted on to it.
I have, so far, attended one meeting of the Forum (as an observer) and
I believe LARIA’s association with the Forum could well develop
into something very worthwhile.
GOODBYE
This will be my last “From the Chair” column, as I will be
standing down as Chair at the AGM in March to coincide with my retirement
from local government. I will be attending the Annual Conference in Exeter,
however, and hope to be able to say “farewell” in person
to as many people as possible at that time.
It would be invidious of me to single out by name any particular individuals
for thanks. There have been (and still are) too many excellent colleagues
I have worked with through LARIA to try to name them all. I would therefore
just like to say a big, big “thank you” to all the myriad
people who have helped me along the way and made my time with LARIA so
rewarding.
DAVID KARFOOT