By G ToddMeasuring Success is an informal, internal working document developed as a tool for measuring effective partnership working. It was produced as part of the evolving community planning process in Edinburgh. The approach employed in the workbook is loosely based on the European Foundation for Quality Management’s Excellence Model, a framework that enables organisations to assess and diagnose their performance.

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The creation of Finance Director posts in government departments signals the growing importance of finance in the civil service. The Finance Director will have a seat on the Management Board and be at the heart of decision making. Finance Directors will replace the Principal Finance Officer, a role created in the Exchequer And Audit Departments Act 1921. The responsibility of the PFO was essentially to ensure that money voted to the department was spent properly. Most PFOs were not qualified accountants, nor were they members of departmental Boards.Finance Directors will either be qualified accountants themselves, or have qualified accountants of sufficient stature to operate in their own right at the most senior levels of their departments. Their job will be to help their department to make the best use of resources. They will provide guidance on improving financial management and sharpening the departmental finance function. They will also be expected to close departmental accounts more quickly, improve information for management and develop financial skills training.

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Victims and witnesses are stakeholders in the criminal justice system but in order to provide them with a truly user-focused service a cultural change is needed. The Audit Commission has come to this conclusion after talking to victims, witnesses, policymakers and practitioners and analysing the findings of a MORI survey. In order to get an in depth picture the experience of victims and witnesses was tracked from their first contact with the authorities, through the court system and beyond.The crime scene painted by the Commission shows that around one-quarter of the population were victims last year and just under one-third were affected by disorderly or antisocial behaviour. The risk of becoming a victim of crime is 27 per cent for the general population, around the same level as in 1981 and one-third lower than the risk in 1995. Less than half of all crime is currently being reported to the police. Only 9% of crime results in a conviction. This means that very few victims and witnesses actually see their case go to court and of these cases, around one-third will still not result in an offender being brought to justice.

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