In our own unions we all talk about the
importance of democratic accountability. It is at the forefront of
our collective consciousness, and the manifesto promises of many
sabbs to improve how students can hold Officers to account. As
Officers we generally trust that the work NUS Officers are doing is
good, we tend to derive this from the glimpses of their work we catch
from conferences, the work they put online, and NUS events. This is of course dependent on
what NUS Officers choose to present, and if we happen to physically
be at the events they are presenting it at. In other words, for an
officer not elected to a position within the NUS democracy structures
accountability can be a static process, if you are not at something
it is hard to perform effective scrutiny.
The static nature of accountability extends to the democracy structures that are in place. NUS does some truly amazing work, as an Officer I am incredibly proud to be a member, and play an active role in NUS. If I want to hold an Officer to account I can of course email them, or pick up the phone, but again that is providing I know what they are doing. A NUS Officers workplan is often shaped by a mixture of; personal goals, policy passed at conference, work of zone committees, NEC policy and inherited work from previous Officers. On the one hand, it is much to the strength of NUS that there is a real democratic say in how the work of NUS is shaped, the agenda is truly set by Student Officers, and by extension students, in this regard. However, there are also issues with having the place of scrutiny as the place where work is shaped. Individuals in zone committees will no doubt perform excellent scrutiny, however they are also involved in the development of the work, which could be seen as a contradiction. Two, scrutiny comes from individuals elected to these democratic positions, however, the skills required to effectively scrutinise are not the same as those required to win an election, which may exclude some sabbs who would perform scrutiny functions really effectively. Finally, as we saw with NUS Conference, scrutiny is often dictated by political priority, meaning that the work of certain zones (UD this year) is not as discussed as much as it could be.
If there are structural difficulties in effective scrutiny there is also some more work to be done in providing sabbs with skills to scrutinise more effectively. The training we receive both from our Unions and nationally is largely focussed on delivering change and political objectives. Therefore, the way we hold NUS Officers to account is through approximating the way we would have done certain things differently, rather than objectively viewing decisions in terms of their delivery and how we could improve them. For example, the discussion around the Free Education Demo will be a discussion on a values match between people who do or do not agree with the demo, not scrutinising things like its cost, route, timing, value for money etc. Part of the reason is that no Officer joins NUS to approve minutes and scrutinise accounts. The second part, is that we aren't particularly encouraged to learn the skills associated with effective scrutiny; reading accounts, project management, and other such skills that allow the divorce of political direction from the effective running of a large organisation.
Therefore, scrutiny has to come from the bottom up, it is our responsibility as Officers to hold NUS to account. There are steps NUS could take to help us in this process. The various training events we attend could have a more practical element to them. When we are learning how to be a Sabbatical Officer it would be good to learn about how we add to the national movement, as well as work effectively in our own Unions, and to learn some 'hard skills' around scrutiny. This may be quite dry for an introduction to the student movement, it might be good to see more tutorials on things like reading accounts uploaded to NUS' online platform. Students' Unions are by their very nature internally focussed, when we hold trustee training we should build this in to a more city wide event, where sabbs from across the City from the no doubt variety of sized unions learn the skills on trusteeship as well as skills around running relatively large charities. We need to strengthen our alumni networks, former sabbs have a wealth of knowledge but are more divorced from the politcial decision making. Finally, it could be the time to reform the NEC and devolved its function to leave it as an interim politcial decision making body, and devolve its scrutiny function to a different committee entirely.
Finally, for effective scrutiny to take place it is necessary to move away from scrutiny as a static process. Scrutiny should not be about ensuring decisions fit within one political mantra (although political debate is incredibly important), but in providing effective mechanism to ensure that our collective decisions are open to all of our members. In reality, we don't talk to our own members often enough about the work NUS does. We await a backlash from hyperbolic headlines we respond to, or we rightly shout about our collective success. There is little in between, we rarely discuss the everyday stuff. How many of our members know that our General Election policies are inspired by the work of NUS, very few students will know NUS is launching a conversation on the role of students' unions in twenty years. For many NUS is a discount card, or a number they borrow off their mates for a Spotify discount. In our Student Councils and General Meetings we discuss our own work, the challenge for us should to be to discuss the work of NUS more broadly.
The static nature of accountability extends to the democracy structures that are in place. NUS does some truly amazing work, as an Officer I am incredibly proud to be a member, and play an active role in NUS. If I want to hold an Officer to account I can of course email them, or pick up the phone, but again that is providing I know what they are doing. A NUS Officers workplan is often shaped by a mixture of; personal goals, policy passed at conference, work of zone committees, NEC policy and inherited work from previous Officers. On the one hand, it is much to the strength of NUS that there is a real democratic say in how the work of NUS is shaped, the agenda is truly set by Student Officers, and by extension students, in this regard. However, there are also issues with having the place of scrutiny as the place where work is shaped. Individuals in zone committees will no doubt perform excellent scrutiny, however they are also involved in the development of the work, which could be seen as a contradiction. Two, scrutiny comes from individuals elected to these democratic positions, however, the skills required to effectively scrutinise are not the same as those required to win an election, which may exclude some sabbs who would perform scrutiny functions really effectively. Finally, as we saw with NUS Conference, scrutiny is often dictated by political priority, meaning that the work of certain zones (UD this year) is not as discussed as much as it could be.
If there are structural difficulties in effective scrutiny there is also some more work to be done in providing sabbs with skills to scrutinise more effectively. The training we receive both from our Unions and nationally is largely focussed on delivering change and political objectives. Therefore, the way we hold NUS Officers to account is through approximating the way we would have done certain things differently, rather than objectively viewing decisions in terms of their delivery and how we could improve them. For example, the discussion around the Free Education Demo will be a discussion on a values match between people who do or do not agree with the demo, not scrutinising things like its cost, route, timing, value for money etc. Part of the reason is that no Officer joins NUS to approve minutes and scrutinise accounts. The second part, is that we aren't particularly encouraged to learn the skills associated with effective scrutiny; reading accounts, project management, and other such skills that allow the divorce of political direction from the effective running of a large organisation.
Therefore, scrutiny has to come from the bottom up, it is our responsibility as Officers to hold NUS to account. There are steps NUS could take to help us in this process. The various training events we attend could have a more practical element to them. When we are learning how to be a Sabbatical Officer it would be good to learn about how we add to the national movement, as well as work effectively in our own Unions, and to learn some 'hard skills' around scrutiny. This may be quite dry for an introduction to the student movement, it might be good to see more tutorials on things like reading accounts uploaded to NUS' online platform. Students' Unions are by their very nature internally focussed, when we hold trustee training we should build this in to a more city wide event, where sabbs from across the City from the no doubt variety of sized unions learn the skills on trusteeship as well as skills around running relatively large charities. We need to strengthen our alumni networks, former sabbs have a wealth of knowledge but are more divorced from the politcial decision making. Finally, it could be the time to reform the NEC and devolved its function to leave it as an interim politcial decision making body, and devolve its scrutiny function to a different committee entirely.
Finally, for effective scrutiny to take place it is necessary to move away from scrutiny as a static process. Scrutiny should not be about ensuring decisions fit within one political mantra (although political debate is incredibly important), but in providing effective mechanism to ensure that our collective decisions are open to all of our members. In reality, we don't talk to our own members often enough about the work NUS does. We await a backlash from hyperbolic headlines we respond to, or we rightly shout about our collective success. There is little in between, we rarely discuss the everyday stuff. How many of our members know that our General Election policies are inspired by the work of NUS, very few students will know NUS is launching a conversation on the role of students' unions in twenty years. For many NUS is a discount card, or a number they borrow off their mates for a Spotify discount. In our Student Councils and General Meetings we discuss our own work, the challenge for us should to be to discuss the work of NUS more broadly.
Let's add to the 2034 discussion and
find out what our members want from NUS. With the knowledge of what
our members want, we can scrutinise NUS better, and we might just be
generally better for it. The 2034 discussions will hopefully include
work on how we can alter structures to improve democratic
participation, the challenge for students' union will be to equip
ourselves and our members with the skills to work with NUS on their
future, through the effective scrutiny of their function.
