Hello PPMA friends and colleagues
Last week our President Karen Grave and Chris Grimes, Sales Director at Matrix-SCM attended the Local Government Staff Commission for Northern Ireland conference in Belfast. Together they launched the Craigavon Compact at the event and below they explain more about it.
“This document is the output of the Brexit Research that PPMA committed to in June 2017. We were delighted that Matrix-SCM as a Platinum Sponsor volunteered to work on this with us. We did a lot of thinking about how we were going to move this piece forward. When we were scoping the work, we knew that we needed it to deliver practical outcomes – we are already inundated with thought leadership papers telling us what we don’t know.
So, we decided to do two things – we would use a Hackathon approach and we would ask our PPMA and Local Government Staff Commission (LGSC) friends in Northern Ireland if they would like to participate. Not only did they say yes – colleagues from the Northern Ireland Housing Association and UHR colleagues from Ulster University and Queen’s University of Belfast also participated.
The history of the troubles is complex and sensitive and in truth we hadn’t anticipated that the timing our of Hackathon and LGSC conference would align so closely with the current negotiations. Ironically, the timing has helped highlight the importance of finding ways to develop solutions that are as inclusive as possible. We were staggered by how little engagement there had been with public service colleagues on this critical subject. We were also humbled by listening to the real fears of colleagues that a hard border may lead to a return to the violence that has blighted a beautiful country. There is a generation of young people in Northern Ireland who have grown up out of the shadow of political violence. And all of us, whatever our views, should hold maintaining that position, as the priority.
The result of the Hackathon is called the Craigavon Compact. It takes its name after the wonderful Craigavon Civic Centre that hosted the event for the day. The Compact identifies very clearly that we see our work as an agreement that is to be proactively worked on during the next months and years. The compact outlines 6 recommendations that are deliverable; and more importantly, which have been developed by voices in the HR & OD community.
We will be back with our colleagues in 6 months’ time to assess progress and our interim work will be engagement with other key stakeholders in the Region and our Hackathon participants. We are hopeful that following our conference session more people will join us.
In the meantime, we encourage you to read this piece of work. It is something we are all very proud of.”
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