Rambles around computer science
Diverting trains of thought, wasting precious time
Wed, 17 Jan 2018
How to be a Scrutineer (and a better one than I managed to be)
From December 2015 until October 2017 I served on the University of Cambridge's Board of Scrutiny. This is a high-level governance body that is “the University's chief internal mechanism for ensuring transparency and accountability in all aspects of University operations”. The role of the Board is to “examine the way in which the University is run and to comment on this to the University's governing body, the Regent House”, taking its lead principally (but not necessarily exclusively) from the Annual Reports of the Council and the General Board, and from reports concerning accounts and allocations. My service on the Board was hugely valuable experience to me personally. I hope it was also, in some smaller way, of value to the University.
One of the most difficult things was not so much discharging the responsibilities as figuring out how best to do that in the first place. So I've written the following retrospective notes on how, in my opinion, one might serve on the Board effectively. They are more about reach than grasp. Doing all of them perfectly is impossible. Doing even most of them pretty well is extremely difficult. But it's what I would aspire to if I were to re-join the Board.
Serving on the Board is a combination of learning, doing good (according to the University's mission and hopefully one's own principles) and doing necessary: putting in service that others in the University will benefit from. When I joined, I was rather underestimating the significance of the latter. Doing a service to fellow Regents is the most constructive spirit in which to operate. As a non-obvious example, one of the pragmatic roles of the Board, even in a well-functioning University democracy (alas, currently lacking) is to communicate to the University community things that the administration can't say, whether for legitimate political reasons or for regrettable lack of spine (often the reality is somewhere in the middle). One example is criticising the national government. Another is admitting the University's errors in PR-sensitive arenas (e.g. the North-West Cambridge debacle).
Understand the formal structure of the University. I spent many hours studying various web pages before I began to get my head around this. The “Officers Number” issue of the Reporter, published every Lent Term (currently: this one), is perhaps overkill but useful. The governance web site has a gentler introduction. The Statutes and Ordinances are worth consulting and getting to know your way around (roughly). One of the difficult things for me has been to remember which stuff is in Statutes, which in Special Ordinances and which in Ordinances... it's easy to be scratching your head about why you can't find something you saw previously, until you realise that it's in one of the others.
Understand both the Board's formal remit (as specified in Statute A chapter VII and Ordinances Chapter 1 section 6) and (separately) its de-facto role—including differing opinions on what the latter should be. This has been controversial since the early days of the Board. Perhaps the best reading material is the Remarks at the Discussion of the Fifth Report, which showcase the whole spectrum of opinions. Gordon Johnson had previously (at the Discussion of the Fourth Report) espoused the view that the Board should not write a report, simply lead Discussions. Among his concerns was that the University's “officers... devote a tremendous amount of time and effort to meeting the Board, providing it with information, and answering its questions”. At the next year's discussion, then-Chair Michael Potter countered that claim, after which, Johnson laid into the Board's newest Report quite ferociously, reiterating his views that its approach is wrong. Richard Stibbs countered again with the view of the Board as “interested amateurs”, in both senses of the latter word. This is a view I personally find to be realistic, again in two senses. None of this is very conclusive, but it makes clear the spectrum of opinion and strength of feeling.
Understand the Board's history. Johnson was part of the Wass Syndicate on whose recommendations the Board was created. In the aforementioned Discussion, Johnson is the most forthright in this discussion; he is not necessarily correct. I personally found it very odd that he considered it the Board's responsibility to “to explain more in layman's terms the background to what was being proposed [in the Annual Reports of the Council, General Board and of Allocations from the Chest] and the reasonableness or otherwise of [their] content”. I see no reason why these reports cannot and should not be made readable to the lay-Regent within themselves, including their own background. And of course, the reasonableness of their content has very much been the subject matter of every Board's Report. In the present era, where these Reports contain more spin than ever, it becomes ever more important to highlight their omissions rather than explain their merits. The CAPSA debacle is often cited as one of the Board's major successes to date, since the Board was part responsible for instigating the Shattock and Finkelstein reports. (I must admit I have yet to understand by what mechanism the Board did this.) This Discussion of March 2003 is good too, covering post-CAPSA attempts at governance reforms which were rather mishandled.
Obviously, read the Reporter every week. Slightly less obviously, read the Council's minutes every month. Talk to people who have been through the political mill. But also, talk to the rank-and-file, such as colleagues in other departments. Talk to as many different kinds of staff and student as you can. I did not do wonderfully at this. One thing in that spirit I did, for a period, was to work from the Combination Room one morning a week; this was partly for focus, and partly in the hope I would overhear information about what was concerning the rank-and-file admin staff at the Old Schools. I'm not sure I overheard very much of interest, but I did get a sense of what I could (somewhat blandly) call the “different culture” that operates in the Old Schools and UAS worlds compared to elsewhere in the University.
Obtain minutes. Where minutes are not made available (whether publicly, only to the University, or only to the Regent House), consider finding out why not. For example, in August 2017 I noticed that the Council's Resource Management Committee appeared to have a practice of publishing its minutes online, but also hadn't archived any since 2012 in its online archive. Was this because the committee did not meet? That seemed unlikely. Had it changed its policy on publishing minutes? There was no indication. I queried this with the Registrary's Office; for four months I received no reply, until I re-sent my reply and (not coincidentally) spoke at a Discussion (not on anything related, I might add). I then received a reply saying roughly “we can't do anything about committees choosing not to publish their minutes”. But, coincidentally I'm sure, a big pile of RMC minutes did appear in the archive at around the same time. If there's a moral to this, it's that perseverance and a certain amount of pig-headedness are necessary to help ensure diligence is applied where needed.
It's not just minutes. Other widely-circulated documents can be telling about what is going on centrally. The University's Risk Register conveys a lot about current priorities, and is available online (internally only). The annual Planning Round guidance is also telling, and usually appears online too. (In general, “following the money” is illuminating.) There's probably others that I'm overlooking here.
Make the Reporter and collected minutes searchable, in a way that works for you. In my case this means saving them on my laptop and converting them to plain text. Automating this is not too hard, because the web pages have a fixed structure. (Ask me for my Makefile!)
Know how to juggle hats. When interacting with University staff to whom it might matter, be clear whether you're acting for the Board, or personally, or on behalf of some other group.
Keep at arm's length from the Council, but have your sources. The Board's main sources of information on Council business are of course the Proctors, but they often have reasons to be discreet. A lot of University business can easily pass you by unless you go out of your way to hear it.
Protect the Board's neutrality and perceived neutrality. Avoid appearances of conflicts of interest, even if there is no conflict. For example, in hindsight, it was a mistake of mine to nominate a candidate for election to Council while I was serving on the Board. Even though there is something of a a revolving door between a subset of the Board and a subset of Council, it is best to avoid being so nonchalant about this as to plant doubts in people's minds. (As an example of something less blatant: one of my nominators for election to the Board later joined Council part-way through my term. If anybody had been paying sufficient attention, this might have been perceived as a conflict of interest, but the chances are much lower. I hasten to add there never has been any conflict on that account; the question is one of appearances.)
Develop a mental model of Council's operation, and check it with actual Council members. One thing that I learnt only quite late was the complex dynamic between the Registrary's Office and Council. The Registrary's Office has huge power over the University, since it does much of the “real work” behind business that is ostensibly done by the Council. For example, as I understand it, responses to Discussion Remarks are drafted by the Registrary's Office, as are parts of the Annual Reports of the Council and General Board. The influence of that office is huge. On certain occasions there is tension between members of Council and that Office; usually the “official story” communicated to the University, such as in the Reporter, reflects the Registrary's Office's side of any such contended matter.
Understand the HE landscape beyond the institution. Initiatives in the Old Schools often have their origins in sector-wide movements, either directly provoked by government policy or indirectly emerging from ongoing cultural shifts. A good example is the “100% FEC” issue: the claim that the University loses money on research. If I had read this article in the Times Higher Ed, or these slides, I might have pressed certain people harder when this line came out of their mouths.
Understand personal dynamics, and compensate. Like any committee, not everyone on the Board will be equally engaged or equally effective at any given time (and for various good reasons, too). These need not be in proportion to the loudness of their voice or their apparent authority in the meeting room. Compensating for this is part of the Chair's job; but everyone can help.
See membership of the Board as both an individual and a collective matter. The Board will never be of one mind. Signing off on the same Report is the basic standard of consensus. Beyond that you should not expect necessarily to have the same priorities or same position as your fellow Board members. At the risk of displeasing the Chairs I have served under, who did not hold with this policy, I believe individual Board members should be free to exercise their right to see documents—as long as this is with a valid concern in mind. I don't see why any member of the Board could not be trusted to use this privilege reasonably. Seeing this privilege as only a collective Board matter seems to me to close off the opportunity for individuals to follow their noses. I must admit it is not clear to me to what extent there was a statutory intention to empower Board members as individual rather than just collectively. But at least, I perceive that individual dimension is recognised in the case of Council.
Don't be collectively timid. During my time, I felt we were too timid on certain occasions. As one example of a potential timidness that Council and/or the Registrary's Office may play to, the Board should never accept redacted documents, unless the redacted content is “irrelevant”—the latter being the only statutory grounds for withholding information from the Board without the VC's written permission).
Don't be ashamed to have issues you care about. Obviously there are some relevance criteria. Actions of the Board should be in the interests of the University, within the Board's remit, and allocate attention proportionate to issue's importance. But if you believe something is important by those criteria, it probably is. Don't be afraid to raise it even if other Board members appear uninterested. Put differently: being a diverse cross-section of the Regent House, different Board members will care about different issues; the intention of having a twelve-member board is to obtain a cross-section. Conversely, this means allowing time to other Board members' concerns even if they don't resonate with one's own experience.
Develop a habit of contributing to the Board's ongoing recruitment and succession. The Board is continually struggling to recruit. Many people seem not to care about whether their University is governed democratically and accountably. Many do care, but haven't yet realised that the Board might be a good way to act on that. Every Board member should take care to notice anyone who seems to be an Interested Sort of Individual. Find them and encourage them to serve. Note that filling the spaces is not enough; the Board will only be in good health when elections are contested. Having a choice of membership and some effective choice of officers (Chair and Secretary) are important. (I write that as a Secretary who felt somewhat roped into it, on the grounds that “nobody else will do it”. In hindsight I think it was a positive experience, but it was unwelcome at the time, and I don't think I'm being uncharitable to myself in saying I was not the ideal candidate.)
Don't believe that everybody knows what they're doing, or that you do. When I started on the Board, things were done a certain way; it had its benefits but it also had several drawbacks. In my second year on the Board we changed a lot of things, generally to the Board's benefit. I suspect several logical continuations of those changes will come about in the next year. If I'd known earlier how much flexibility there was in how the Board conducts its duties, I might have helped push some of those changes along sooner.
Doubt people, charitably. This extends to oneself, one's fellow Board members and also to the many senior figures whose work the Board scrutinizes—who are grappling with very difficult and demanding jobs. However formidable they are as individuals, they will invariably be grappling imperfectly and may even be happy to admit as much. Among its many other modes of operation, the Board has the potential to help people out, by nudging the gears into better alignment. (That is not to say that raising the red flag or kicking backsides are never appropriate modes of operation....)
Be cooperative where possible, but don't be a pushover. One of the trickiest and most controversial aspects of the Board's operation is the question of how much it should be a savage bulldog, and how much it should be a conciliatory force. At different times, both can be necessary; good taste is required. This is a difficult balancing act.
Believe in the Board's importance, so that others will. I was quite surprised at my first Board meetings to detect hints of nerves on the part of some interviewees—people who were very senior figures in the University. But also, in those early days, we had one instance of a senior figure “shutting us out” owing to accumulated bad relations. The Board's power may be limited to giving voice to issues and arguments, but that power is still considerable. There is much latent capability for doing good, but this is slippery; harnessing that capability effectively is difficult. If the Board acts and acquits itself with fitting diligence and seriousness, including a sense of realism about what options are available to Council, it can be taken seriously by others. It stops being effective when its demands are impossible, or when it seeks to direct attention where it is ill spent. In an era when both Council and ordinary Regents are ever more disempowered by central managerialism, a strong Board is essential to elevate the University's supposedly democratic business from mere theatre to the actual rule of good sense. During my time, the Board was an effective body only intermittently. Hopefully it can be made more consistently effective; the University needs it more than ever.
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