Items 1 - 4 on the agenda are effectively reporting exercises and it is proposed that item number 5 be dealt with in a work shop format as set out hereunder.

Workshops

The following three workshops are proposed. If draft "visions" are produced today a good foundation will be laid to achieve significant progress at the September exercise.

1 - Health Promotion

2 - Social Inclusion & Health Inequalities

3 - Co-ordination of Public Service Information

Questions to be addressed

- what is the vision for this area?
- what are the goals (what is achievable in the local context)?
- who should be involved?
- what are the targets for the end of September?
- what are the targets for the end of December?

Consultation Process

The public consultation process is now being completed and the raw data from this exercise is available. All of this information is being worked on at present and a comprehensive report will be produced over the next numbers of weeks.

Consultation is also taking place with a variety of other groups including disadvantage, the elderly and a meeting with the representative of the business community took place on last Wednesday night.

South Eastern Health Board Submission

You will have received in your notification of the meeting an extensive submission prepared by the South Eastern Health Board to the County Development Board. In the context of the overall objective in preparing the strategy this initiative is very welcome. This document highlights significant areas for co-operation and collaboration. Each of the participating agencies on the County Development Board should consider a similar exercise.

I have had some discussion with my local authority colleagues regarding an initiative to produce a similar submission. A submission of this nature to be produced by the local authority is particularly complex given the wide range of services provided through the local authority system. It has now been agreed that the Corporate Policy Group working with the various Directors of Services at local authority level will be addressing this issue over the next number of weeks with a view to having a submission prepared in early September.

Public Service Information

Over the last while I have had some discussions with my colleagues in the other public service agencies regarding the development of an initiative on better public service provision.

As the public service grows the number of services continues to increase while this brings many benefits to the members of the public it also has the potential to confuse people on what precisely is available. In order to counter this potential for confusion it is necessary to examine ways to dispense this information in a user-friendly manner. This problem is also compounded by the continuous increase in the number of delivery mechanisms.

The overall objective in this instance is to create a system that will provide accurate information on all aspects of public service delivery in the county. Ideally a member of the public should be able to enter a public office and receive information on any service regardless of whether the particular public office is the direct provider or not.

In pursuing the objective of better information provision the following are issues that might be considered.

Two national initiatives that could be looked at are REACH and Oasis. Part of the exercise would be to examine how these particular initiatives could be applied at local level.

Establish a core of personnel across the range of public services who would be identified as information providers. This could involve one or more people in each organisation depending on the size of the organisation. A programme would need to be put in place to help them become proficient at this particular task. A number of issues could be taken such as collective training of this particular group on information provision and arrange for the exchange of these personnel between the various public organisations. This overall initiative would have to be backed up by an effective system for gathering information using the latest technologies. Some organisations may have intranets and it may be possible for these information providers to have access to all or part of these intranets. Where intranets do not exist a collective initiative across the public service at local level could be developed and funding could be sought from organisations such as the Information Society.

The initiative of the Department of the Environment to encourage Local Authorities to provide One Stop Shops should also be examined in the context and if appropriate integrated into the process.

In this context it may be useful to use an independent organisation to facilitate this whole area of information provision. One such body that could be considered in this context are the Citizens Information Centres and Comhairle.

These suggestions will be considered by today's workshop

Intensive Planning Exercise

I have provisionally arranged for the availability of Mr. Ciaran Hayes of Tipperary Institute to assist in this exercise. The proposed dates for this exercise are Thursday 27th and Friday 28th September, 2001. A decision will need to be made on the proposed venue, it is important that the venue selected on the one hand is convenient to members, but also ensures that maximum participation in the exercise will take place.