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To: Mena Rego cc: David Miller
Head of Programme Development John Main
Jonathan Evans
Paul Rich
Liz Moran
From: Don Grey
RGM NE
Subject: HORIZON IMPLEMENTATION - EMERGING ISSUES
There are some important issues which have surfaced recently and which need to be
factored in to our implementation activity, namely:-
yt) Live Trial Review
One of the actions Paul Rich took away from his recent visit to Newcastle was to agree
with Jonathan a mechanism for formally reviewing the live trial. Some of this review will
be embedded in the work commissioned by Jonathan after the CEC Awayday in May. I
understand you have recently asked trial region RLMs to provide comment on experience
to date. How does this fit with other activities and how are we ensuring a co-ordinated
and comprehensive review of all elements of the live trial?
2 Implementation Resourcing
Iknow you have expressed concern that regions “were progressing in their individual
sweet ways.” Iam sure all regions, and definitely ours, do follow the national resourcing
policy guidelines and Margaret Beaumont has acknowledged that appropriate processes
were used. I would suggest this is more a case of regions developing approaches in the
absence of any specific national activity. I doubt if anyone, however, would argue against
aco-ordinated approach and consistent deployment and perhaps your concern highlights
the need to ensure due provision is made for handling such issues within our new
implementation arrangements.
As you may know, we have trawled our subpostmasters to scope the likely interest in
temporary contract employee status as POs to supplement the internal resourcing for our
field support team and have been pleasantly surprised by the responses. Despite the not
unexpected but unnecessary intervention of the NFSP we are now in a position where we
need to move on assessing the quality of these candidates and give them some response
on suitability of selection. Iam, however, keen that we should be developing an early
and consistent approach across all regions in the context of job evaluations for field
support posts.
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woe
Perhaps some of these issues will be addressed at next week’s Workshop but if not your
3 Pathway Work Quality
What measurement systems are we putting in place to verify the standard and sufficiency
of implementation? This is particularly pertinent in the context of the WTL and sub
contractors where we stand to incur additional costs if we do not exercise proper control.
Have we any plans to establish a clearly defined fitness for purpose specification
nationally, which satisfies not only Horizon implementation but also supports our
business requirements in the longer term?
thoughts on how we can take them forward would be welcomed.
DON GREY
2 July 1997