Introduction

Supporting Effective Governance

The Governors' Virtual Office (GVO) is a specially designed Application for governors and trustees. It is structured to reflect the organization of our Governing Board in a single school, a MAT, a college, a charity or a club. It draws on experience in the formation and management of effective teams and in how committee processes can be enhanced by technology. By creating an Application where governors/trustees can share information and by implementing effective communication behaviours, governors can dramatically improve their effectiveness:

  • Spend less time in meetings
  • Spend more of the meeting time discussing important issues
  • Have better access to relevant information
  • Enjoy better communication between committee members - improved collaboration
  • Reduce the workload associated with organising meetings
  • Extensive reporting of Governor Records and Meeting Attendance
  • Skills Audit & Training Records
  • A complete Policy management module including approvals and publishing on school/college websites 

Site Layout

It may help if you think of the application  as the Governors' Virtual Office. Inside the office building the Head Teacher, Clerk, Full Governing Board and the Sub Committees each have their offices. There is also an area for holding Discussions, and another where the Governors' Policies are maintained. Inside each office, space is set aside for the functions needed. The GVO can be locally configured to match the organisation of your Governing Board.

Each "office" has space for:

  • Meetings (including meeting attendance recording and reporting)
  • Keeping files, known as the library
  • Keeping track of progress on actions, known as Tasks
  • Managing School Policies
  • Discussions
  • A record of 'Skills' and 'Training'

Information

The application is designed to contain the following types of information

  • Reference information held in libraries, organised to reflect the structure of our Governing Body and its sub committees.
  • A calendar, with dates of the various meetings and events in the life of the school.
  • Meeting Packs which  the Clerk has prepared, including agendas and meeting papers
  • Our Policies. A function called "Policy Management" enables the Clerk to record the dates when review and ratification of policies is due. The system will notify the policy owner(s) when action needs to be taken to meet these due dates. A full prolicy approval workflow is available.

Finding the information you want

As well as laying out the information in a manner designed to make it easy to find what you want, there are also powerful search tools which allow arguments such as words, authors, dates etc to be used to search parts or the whole of the web site. The system is designed to enable you to view information in context at a time of your choosing. In other words it is a system from which you can pull the information that you want when you want. Contrast this to the email world where information is pushed at you, out of context, at a time of someone else's choosing.

Managing Change

Whatever the technology underlying it, a system like this can only be successful if it is effectively deployed. Governors will need to make some changes to the way they work for the system to become effectively embedded. Here are 5 steps that we suggest you try.

How to get the most out of our Governors web site

Treat the space like a virtual Governors' office:

  1. Visit the site at least once a week to see what is new and especially anything that requires your input. (The GVO will keep you notified on a weekly basis of what's new in the site via the newsletter)
  2. Respond promptly to any email notifications you receive advising of actions required from you, particularly where your input to discussion has been requested
  3. Check the calendar to see when the meetings are scheduled (you will be notified about meetings you should attend by emails which will contain a link to the agenda and related papers)
  4. Read widely in the application so that you are as well informed as possible when you attend meetings
  5. Use the comment function to ask questions and to confirm that you have read/approved any documents
  6. If you wish the application to update your Outlook calendar be sure to update your user profile appropriately

 

​