Good morning, panel—it is still morning.
I enjoy talking about this subject, because it is what I did for a living before I came into politics and it reflects the experience that I have had in implementing such systems across a range of organisations.
On the positive side, it is great that we talk about empowerment and systems thinking. That is correct. It is clearly important that we measure the right things, and we understand the need to dig in and understand unintended consequences and make sure that we are focused on the right stuff. I can see that the thought processes are starting to go in that direction.
However, what concerns me when I look at this, thinking about organisational review and things that I have done in the past, is the fact that, although it is great that you are measuring things and having a conversation about whether you are measuring the right stuff, there is a long way to go on whether the things that are being measured line up with each other and are measuring what is important to the organisation and on whether you are living and breathing this stuff and using it to drive process improvement.
I do not have the feeling that, when you wake up in the morning, the first thing that you think about is the national performance indicators or that they are the last thing that you think about before you go to bed. If you were following the process properly, that is exactly what you would do, because the indicators on the paper in front of us would be completely aligned with everything else that is important across the organisation and everything that is happening in the organisation. You would understand the linkage between those things and the indicators on the paper. I think that there is still a way to go on that journey, but that is fine because the further we go, the better things are going to get.
In a perfect or sensible world, the national performance indicators, the work that is done on indicators and the work that health boards and integration authorities are doing on local delivery plans should all be joined up so that we know that what is happening in one place links up with what is happening in another and we understand the linkage and relationship.
We must understand that what is happening in a health board at a local level has a direct impact on an indicator on a piece of paper in front of us. How are we getting on with joining all of that up so that it is all linked?