This morning’s Western Mail reveals that a report commissioned by the Welsh Government and carried out by polling firm Ipsos Mori has found that only a third of organisations and individuals that engage with the Assembly Government believe it is well managed.
Most respondents (70%) also said they found it fairly or very easy to obtain information from officials, while nearly a quarter (23%) said it was fairly or very difficult. But other stakeholders said the Assembly Government needed to be more “proactive” in reaching out to organisations, and that much contact had been one-way:
An NHS organisation said: “I think they are about 20 years behind where most knowledge management organisations are in terms of how you actually go out and engage with those who do the day job, and they’re the ones with the greatest amount of knowledge.”
A third sector organisation said: “There isn’t [any] kind of follow-up… [We are] always wondering [whether] the work that we are developing is in line with what the Assembly thinks we ought to be doing and [whether] they are understanding why we are doing what we are doing. That kind of feedback never really seems to come back.”
Findings also indicated that the Government’s Welsh language engagement was not highly regarded, with most Welsh speakers not always or often able to speak the language when dealing with civil servants.
Among Welsh-speaking respondents, 42% said they were rarely or never able to engage officials in Welsh, 31% said they were sometimes able to and only 28% said they were always or often able to speak it.
The paper says that the research follows findings released from an internal staff survey this week that was commissioned by the Welsh Government, which showed that only 37% of staff gave a “favourable” response when asked to rate their overall confidence in the senior civil service. When asked if they believed that the Assembly Government was well-managed, only 36% gave a favourable response.
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“Welsh Government officials accused of being ‘20 years behind’”
The Technium arm of DET run by Ieuan Wyn Jones is still operating without a brain in charge.
I am the only Welsh person (who grew up on Welsh council estates) who has a law firm close to the largest patent office in the world (USPTO) armed with a PhD/JD combination who practices directly before the USPTO. My knowledge and expertise combined with location means I conduct regular F2F interviews with patent Examiners thereby cutting down on the time it takes to get a patent issued. I explained this both orally and in writing to Technium, but it seems Technium ignore such critical details and make decisions based on their own comfort zone ignoring the needs of Welsh businesses.
This is what I got in an email from a Technium operator/contractor: “… as we had mumerous {sic} applications for the IP sector we had to base our decisions on IP companies that had previous good working relationships with Technium.”