Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority

Intern­al Audit Report ²⁰²²⁄₂₃

Per­form­ance Management

July 2022

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Con­tents

• Exec­ut­ive Summary
• Man­age­ment Action Plan
• Appendix A – Definitions

Audit Spon­sor: Dav­id Camer­on, Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services

Key Con­tacts: Grant Moir, Chief Exec­ut­ive; Gaen­er Rodger, Board Mem­ber; Ian McLar­en, Board Mem­ber; Wil­li­am Mun­ro, Board Mem­ber; Doug McAdam, Board Member

Audit Team: Eliza­beth Young, Engage­ment Lead; Stephanie Hume, Seni­or Man­ager; Lor­na Mun­ro, Intern­al Auditor

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Exec­ut­ive Summary

Con­clu­sion

We have con­firmed that Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity (CNPA) has a defined per­form­ance man­age­ment approach that includes report­ing to the Board and Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee on the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, strategic/​operational object­ives and major projects/​programmes.

We noted how­ever that the major­ity of sup­port­ing key per­form­ance indic­at­ors are activ­ity rather than out­come focused, thus lim­it­ing their use­ful­ness as a per­form­ance meas­ure by not clearly show­ing how their deliv­ery would con­trib­ute towards the achieve­ment of strategic/​operational object­ives and the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.

We also found that staff were not using the most up-to-date work­plans with links to the cor­por­ate plan and that work­plans were not suf­fi­ciently meas­ur­able or time­bound. We note how­ever, that man­age­ment have iden­ti­fied these issues and were tak­ing steps to address these dur­ing fieldwork.

We have also iden­ti­fied oppor­tun­it­ies to improve oper­a­tion­al man­age­ment report­ing, which is cur­rently ad hoc, and we found does not provide seni­or man­agers with suf­fi­cient over­sight of pro­gress, risks and issues. We endorse the ongo­ing work by man­age­ment to devel­op a dash­board to help with report­ing at this and Board/​Committee level.

Back­ground and scope

In order to demon­strate pro­gress against stra­tegic and oper­a­tion­al plan out­comes and pri­or­it­ies, CNPA must have a sound per­form­ance man­age­ment frame­work in place. This frame­work must include accur­ate data col­lec­tion, report­ing and scrutiny.

In accord­ance with the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ Intern­al Audit Plan, we reviewed the per­form­ance man­age­ment frame­work. The review con­sidered the effect­ive­ness of arrange­ments for the mon­it­or­ing of the CNPA Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2017 – 2022 and Cor­por­ate Plan 2018 – 2022, to inform the per­form­ance man­age­ment frame­work in place for the 2022 – 2027 plans.

Con­trol assessment

1. There is a frame­work in place that details the per­form­ance man­age­ment arrange­ments and is linked to the deliv­ery of the organisation’s stra­tegic object­ives. (Yel­low)
2. There is an appro­pri­ate mix of qual­it­at­ive and quant­it­at­ive per­form­ance indic­at­ors for all depart­ments, func­tion­al areas and pro­jects, con­trib­ut­ing to the object­ives. (Yel­low)
3. Per­form­ance man­age­ment reports are pro­duced reg­u­larly for man­age­ment and Board scru­tiny, which provide inform­a­tion on actu­al per­form­ance against tar­gets. (Yel­low)

Improve­ment actions by type and priority

Three improve­ment actions and one advis­ory action have been iden­ti­fied from this review, two of which relate to the design of con­trols in place. See Appendix A for defin­i­tions of col­our coding.

Key find­ings

Good prac­tice

• There is an agreed suite of meas­ures and mile­stones in place for the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan and the CNPA Cor­por­ate Plan, which have some over­lap in per­form­ance measures.
• The meas­ures and mile­stones are repor­ted to and approved by the Board annu­ally as part of the Busi­ness Plan­ning and Per­form­ance Man­age­ment process.
• We con­firmed that the meas­ures in place cov­er all oper­a­tion­al areas with­in the organisation.
• On a six-monthly basis the Board receives reports on pro­gress towards the out­comes, includ­ing an update on all agreed mile­stones and measures.
• Our test­ing con­firmed the Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee receives reg­u­lar reports on all major/​projects and pro­grammes that con­trib­ute to the cor­por­ate plan.

Areas for improvement

We have iden­ti­fied a num­ber of areas for improve­ment which, if addressed, would strengthen CNPA’s con­trol frame­work. These include:

• Ensur­ing the new cor­por­ate plan is sup­por­ted by an appro­pri­ate mix of qual­it­at­ive and quant­it­at­ive key per­form­ance indicators.
• Ensur­ing staff work­plans are of suf­fi­cient qual­ity to sup­port effect­ive deliv­ery of cor­por­ate plan measures.
• Devel­op­ing effect­ive report­ing tools to sup­port effect­ive report­ing on per­form­ance to both seni­or man­age­ment and the Board/​Committee structure.

These are fur­ther dis­cussed in the Man­age­ment Action Plan below.

Impact on risk register

The CNPA cor­por­ate risk register (dated May 2022) included the fol­low­ing risks rel­ev­ant to this review:

• A21: Repu­ta­tion: The Author­ity is not per­ceived to be appro­pri­ately address­ing the poten­tial for con­flict between four stat­utory aims.

The find­ings from this review do not raise sig­ni­fic­ant con­cerns around the effect­ive­ness of con­trols in place to man­age this risk.

Acknow­ledge­ments

We would like to thank all staff con­sul­ted dur­ing this review for their assist­ance and co-operation.

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Man­age­ment Action Plan

Con­trol Object­ive 1: There is a frame­work in place that details the per­form­ance man­age­ment arrange­ments and is linked to the deliv­ery of the organisation’s stra­tegic object­ives. (Yel­low)

1.1 Oper­a­tion­al man­age­ment reporting

At a cor­por­ate level, there is a struc­tured approach to report­ing pro­gress against oper­a­tion­al object­ives and key per­form­ance indic­at­ors to the Board (six-monthly) and Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee (quarterly).

We found how­ever that the approach to oper­a­tion­al report­ing is more ad hoc, with a lack of clar­ity over the fre­quency and expec­ted con­tent. Our dis­cus­sions with seni­or man­age­ment high­lighted that they are aware of this issue and have recog­nised the need to improve report­ing on object­ives oper­a­tion­ally. In par­tic­u­lar man­age­ment has iden­ti­fied the need to have real-time inform­a­tion avail­able on ongo­ing activ­it­ies that impact the deliv­ery of the cor­por­ate objectives.

A report­ing dash­board is cur­rently under devel­op­ment to aid man­age­ment with this (as per MAP 3.1).

Risk: There is a risk that seni­or man­agers are not suf­fi­ciently sighted on pro­gress against stra­tegic object­ives to take timely and rel­ev­ant action, which could res­ult in object­ives and tar­gets not being addressed.

Recom­mend­a­tion: We sup­port management’s approach to devel­op­ing a dash­board to sup­port more fre­quent scru­tiny and chal­lenge by seni­or man­age­ment. This should be imple­men­ted as soon as pos­sible along with an agreed report­ing struc­ture, to ensure man­age­ment receive suf­fi­ciently detailed updates in a timely manner.

Man­age­ment Action: Recom­mend­a­tion agreed. We will seek to devel­op a per­form­ance dash­board com­men­cing with the ini­ti­ation of report­ing on the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2022 to 2027 and Cor­por­ate Plan 2023 to 2027 out­comes. Ini­tial devel­op­ment of this mod­el planned by Decem­ber 2022.

Action own­er: Gov­ernance, Data and Report­ing Man­ager Due date: End Decem­ber 2022 (Grade 2 — Design)

Con­trol Object­ive 2: There is an appro­pri­ate mix of qual­it­at­ive and quant­it­at­ive per­form­ance indic­at­ors for all depart­ments, func­tion­al areas and pro­jects, con­trib­ut­ing to the object­ives. (Yel­low)

2.1 Out­comes

We con­firmed that there are an appro­pri­ate range of object­ives for each of the cor­por­ate out­comes out­lined with­in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan and the Cor­por­ate Plan. These are sup­por­ted by Key Per­form­ance Indic­at­ors (KPIs). In gen­er­al, we found the object­ives, KPIs and asso­ci­ated mile­stones to be suf­fi­ciently well described and assigned to a spe­cif­ic outcome.

How­ever, we iden­ti­fied oppor­tun­it­ies to improve the qual­ity and use­ful­ness of the inform­a­tion thereby sup­port­ing effect­ive decision-mak­ing. We found that out­come mile­stones and meas­ures were almost exclus­ively out­put focused and the link to the out­come was implied in a num­ber of cases rather than expli­citly detailed.

Due to the scale and scope of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan the meas­ures include a num­ber of out­come-focused targets/​indicators, with meas­ure­ment using sur­veys, act­ive par­ti­cip­a­tion etc. There is the oppor­tun­ity to ensure the new Cor­por­ate Plan meas­ures duplic­ate or link to a great­er num­ber of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan meas­ures, stream­lin­ing the intern­al per­form­ance meas­ure­ment and report­ing processes.

Risk: There is a risk that the absence of measures/​key per­form­ance indic­at­ors linked to organ­isa­tion­al and Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan out­comes may impair effi­cient and effect­ive per­form­ance man­age­ment and hamper the achieve­ment of objectives.

Recom­mend­a­tion: Whilst devel­op­ing the new cor­por­ate plan, man­age­ment should ensure that this is sup­por­ted by a suf­fi­cient mix of qual­it­at­ive and quant­it­at­ive meas­ures and indic­at­ors that clearly define the pro­posed out­come of the activ­it­ies being under­taken. In addi­tion, man­age­ment should look to increase the links to the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, stream­lin­ing meas­ure­ment and report­ing processes.

Man­age­ment Action: Agreed. Many of our cur­rent quant­it­at­ive meas­ures have impli­cit out­comes through their dir­ect link­age to the object­ive. For example, with ref­er­ence to the item illus­trated in the report, the quant­it­at­ive meas­ure around deer dens­ity car­ried an impli­cit expect­a­tion that inten­ded out­comes around hab­it­at improve­ment, peat­land res­tor­a­tion and forestry enhance­ment are achieved as deer dens­ity num­bers come closer to tar­get. We will seek to set out more expli­cit link­ages between activ­ity and expec­ted out­come of that activ­ity in future per­form­ance man­age­ment sys­tems, while seek­ing an enhanced bal­ance between quant­it­at­ive and qual­it­at­ive measures.

Action own­er: Gov­ernance, Data and Report­ing Man­ager Due date: End March 2023 (Grade 2 — Design)

2.2 Staff workplans

CNPA staff have work­plans in place that detail the work being under­taken by indi­vidu­als through­out the year and the object­ives they are work­ing towards. A new tem­plate was intro­duced for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ that con­tained a require­ment to include clear links to the deliv­ery of the Cor­por­ate Outcomes.

We tested a sample of sev­en work­plans and found that five of the sev­en work­plans reviewed were not on the new tem­plate, there­fore their work­plans did not include an expli­cit link to the Cor­por­ate Out­comes, mile­stones and meas­ures (as is included with­in the new tem­plate). We also noted that in five of the sev­en work­plans, staff mem­bers’ object­ives were not con­sist­ently spe­cif­ic, meas­ur­able and timebound.

Man­age­ment noted that work­ing from home cre­ated tech­no­lo­gic­al chal­lenges and this had led to some staff using exist­ing rather than new tem­plates and planned to address this as staff returned to full or par­tial office working.

Risk: There is a risk that per­form­ance is not adequately linked to the cor­por­ate plan thereby impact­ing on the effect­ive­ness of delivery.

Recom­mend­a­tion: In addi­tion to management’s planned action to address the tem­plate issues, we recom­mend that fur­ther guid­ance is provided to staff to ensure that staff and line man­agers are aware of their role in provid­ing suf­fi­ciently spe­cif­ic, meas­ur­able and time­bound objectives.

Man­age­ment Action: Agreed. We will reit­er­ate the require­ment for spe­cif­ic, meas­ur­able and time­bound object­ives in staff work­plans as part of our ongo­ing emphas­is on the deploy­ment of the Per­form­ance Devel­op­ment Con­ver­sa­tion process.

Action own­er: Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Due date: End Decem­ber 2022 (Grade 2 — Operation)

Con­trol Object­ive 3: Per­form­ance man­age­ment reports are pro­duced reg­u­larly for man­age­ment and Board scru­tiny, which provide inform­a­tion on actu­al per­form­ance against tar­gets. (Yel­low)

3.1 Dash­board

As high­lighted in MAP 1.1 there are iden­ti­fied issues in the over­sight, report­ing and scru­tiny of oper­a­tion­al object­ives and out­comes, which could be bet­ter sup­por­ted by a ​‘real-time’ approach to report­ing. A dash­board is cur­rently under devel­op­ment to provide more real-time inform­a­tion for man­age­ment on per­form­ance with the aim of identifying/​investigating and tak­ing mit­ig­at­ing actions earli­er and in between peri­ods of report­ing to the Gov­ernance struc­ture. These reports will also be used to sup­port more stream­lined report­ing to the Board and Committees.

We have assessed this con­trol object­ive as yel­low to high­light the link to the risk as iden­ti­fied in MAP 1.1.

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Appendix A – Definitions

Con­trol assessments

• R: Fun­da­ment­al absence or fail­ure of key controls.
• A: Con­trol object­ive not achieved — con­trols are inad­equate or ineffective.
• Y: Con­trol object­ive achieved — no major weak­nesses but scope for improvement.
• G: Con­trol object­ive achieved — con­trols are adequate, effect­ive and efficient.

Man­age­ment action grades

• 4: Very high risk expos­ure — major con­cerns requir­ing imme­di­ate seni­or atten­tion that cre­ate fun­da­ment­al risks with­in the organisation.
• 3: High risk expos­ure — absence / fail­ure of key con­trols that cre­ate sig­ni­fic­ant risks with­in the organisation.
• 2: Mod­er­ate risk expos­ure — con­trols are not work­ing effect­ively and effi­ciently and may cre­ate mod­er­ate risks with­in the organisation.
• 1: Lim­ited risk expos­ure — con­trols are work­ing effect­ively, but could be strengthened to pre­vent the cre­ation of minor risks or address gen­er­al house­keep­ing issues.

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