The Consultative Panel meet four times a year and each meeting is Minuted.
Consultative Panel Minutes, 14 August 2007 - Birmingham
Present
Amita Clements (London), Audrey Macdonald (OL), Charley Rogers (West Midlands), Denise Callister (South West), Gillian Lavery (North East), Janine Pettit (East of England), Jayne Straw (East Midlands), Julie Burrows (North West), Laurence Green (South East), Matthew Lye (OL), Sian Franklin (East of England), Zoe Colburn (OL)
Change Requests
Nine change requests (from May 2007 – July 2007 reports) plus change requests on the Schedule of Development (dated May 2007) were reviewed.
The following change requests from the Schedule of Development were changed to Status Denied: 240, 254, 336, 349, 353, 469, 587, 626.
Change request 128’s priority level changed from 2.5 to 1.5 and 547’s priority changed from 3 to 1.
It was agreed that a forum is to be created on www.chis.biz with ‘How to’ ideas where users can share tips on using iChIS/ChIS. This will be monitored by the users of the system.
iChIS/ChIS v4.7 release
iChIS/ChIS release for Hosted users is due in September 2007.
iChIS/ChIS release for Local users is due in November 2007.
The development of 4.7 was reviewed: this included 91 change requests, 4 bugs and 3 projects (a text editor, Brokerage service and Ofsted changes – Voluntary OfSTED Childcare Register (V OCR)). Information about these changes is being emailed to users in August and September 2007.
AOB
Next Meeting – is to be held in Birmingham on 20 November 2007.
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Consultative Panel Minutes, 15 May 2007 - Birmingham
Present
Ali Omar (London), Amita Clements (London), Audrey Macdonald (OL), Carol Robbs (South West), David Craft (OL), Denise Callister (South West), Fran Ambrose (OL), Jayne Straw (East Midlands), Julie Burrows (North West), Kacey Nunn (OL), Laurence Green (South East), Matthew Lye (OL), Rob Moran (OL), Sarah Scholes (Yorkshire & The Humber), Sian Franklin (East of England), Vicky Bartholomew (West Midlands)
Change Requests
Forty-one change requests were reviewed (from March 2007 – April 2007 reports), plus seven which needed clarification at a detailed level.
Brokerage service – suggestions (in OL’s paper ‘Brokerage Service’) were put to the panel about how to accommodate this requirement which all CISs are required to offer.
Action: Feedback from panel members and their teams was reviewed. Brokerage service will be considered for the next release.
Extended schools – OL’s paper ‘Extended Schools Requirements’ presented options for updating areas of ChIS to accommodate the extended schools requirements for the ‘Core Offer for Extended Services’.
Action: Feedback from panel members and their teams was reviewed; the Extended Schools paper will be updated and requirements considered for future release.
Early years census 2008 – OL is currently working with three CISs on the EYC 2007 pilot in preparation for the 2008 census. The outline of the work that OL is preparing for the EYC 2008 was discussed; this includes a form for data entry and an export option of the required data (per CIS) from ChIS for the DfES.
Action: OL discussed the DfES requirements and the implications for development within ChIS, this is considered to be an important development by the panel and will be considered for future development.
WYSIWYG editor (formatting tool for text) – OL has a free tool which the panel would like implemented in ChIS to enable formatting of text in some fields related to organisation and bulletin board. This will be implemented in the September release.
OfSTED changes - V OCR (voluntary OfSTED Childcare Register) - OL demonstrated the changes that will be taking place with the childcare registers and the implications. The panel agreed this was something required. OL awaiting further clarification from OfSTED.
Positive Leisure Time Activities – this is an area that the panel and OL will be reviewing going forward.
AOB
Next Meeting – is to be held in Birmingham on 14th August 2007.
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Consultative Panel Minutes, 5 March 2007 - Birmingham
Present
Amita Clements (Enfield, London), Audrey Macdonald (OL), Denise Callister (South West), Jayne Straw (East Midlands), Julie Burrows (North West), Kacey Nunn (OL), Laurence Green (South East), Matthew Lye (OL), Sian Franklin (East of England), Vicky Bartholomew (West Midlands), Zoe Colburn (OL)
Change Requests
Fourteen change requests were reviewed (from Dec 2006 – Feb 2007 reports), plus one which needed clarification at a detailed level.
The prioritisations given were:
Priority 2 given to 4 requests
Priority 3 given to 2 requests
Declined status given to 4 requests
OL investigate status given to 1 requests
Cancelled status given to 3 requests
Schedule of Development
Some of the Schedule was reviewed in order to assess if the change requests are still relevant (taking into considering the development that has taken place since the requests were made).
The following twenty-four requests were changed – the updated status is shown in the ‘New Status’ column.
Id: 12
Date: May 2004 02
Area,Form/Section: Childcare, Registration
Request:
Can a field be added to show if a setting is registered under the Charities Act and a place to put the number. Many unregistered settings will have this.
New Status: Cancelled
Id: 15
Date: Nov 2004 01
Area,Form/Section: Childcare, Registration
Request:
In 'CIS Contact' (registration) please could a field be added to indicate the position of the contact in the organisation - playleader, manager, committee chair etc.
New Status: Cancelled
Id: 24
Date:
Area,Form/Section: Childcare, Audit
Request:
Opportunity Links are recommending the removal of the old audit forms (accessible from the search results). We believe this area to now be redundant. Comment: We are trying to find out if and how it’s still used. Please can you respond and say what you use it for.
New Status: Approved
Id: 25
Date: Jan 2005 02
Area,Form/Section: Organisation, Search
Request:
When sending mailouts etc using the people search facility we are able to add actions and contacts against *multiple people* by selecting the required people and right clicking, thereby eliminating the need to mark every record individually. Is it possible that a similar drop down box could be added to an organisation search, as very often it is the organisation we are sending mailouts to rather than the person?
New Status: Approved
Id: 41
Date: Apr 2005 03
Area,Form/Section: Organisation, Organisation
Request:
1. On related people tab on organisation, when a person is added could a new column with job title be added 2. If this new field is added - when people are searched on could this be shown in the results screen?
New Status: OL Investigate
Id: 75
Date: Sep 2005 12
Area,Form/Section: Database General, Actions
Request:
Is there any way that an action could trigger an email to the person being actioned to let them know they have actions? As some users may not log in to chis for a few days but if they knew there were actions they would.
New Status: Cancelled
Id: 85
Date: Sep 2005 18
Area,Form/Section: Recruitment, Vacancy
Request:
Allow the job to indicate if the whole address of the organisation/carescheme should be shown or not, and then display accordingly on ChildcareLink
New Status: Approved. Priority changed to 1.5, from 3
Id: 98
Date: Sep 2005 07
Area,Form/Section: Database General, Queries
Request:
What I wanted to request is to do with the design of queries once you click on execute: Can the columns automatically fit the data within, or at least if you manually change them to fit your data, that you can save it. If you are doing an unusual query, going backwards and forwards between query design and the display of data, it is very annoying to keep changing the column widths.
New Status: Cancelled
Id: 114
Date: Oct 2005 26
Area,Form/Section: Training, Course
Request:
Course - add field on course form to enable course level to be entered. This would be a dropdown list.
New Status: Approved. Priority changed to 2, from 4
Id: 117
Date: Oct 2005 23
New Status: Training, Course
Request:
Request for a new form to be added which will show all evaluations returned and the person who returned it, and allow the rating for each question to be added numerically.
Area,Form/Section: Cancelled
Id: 118
Date: Oct 2005 24
New Status: Training, Course
Request:
Request for a new control on course form which will allow you to manage trainers for all the course units at once.
Area,Form/Section: Cancelled
Id: 120
Date: Oct 2005 05
New Status: People & Contacts, People
Request:
NI Numbers - add in a check so if the NI has already been used, it will show a message box warning.
Area,Form/Section: Cancelled
Id: 128
Date: Oct 2005 08
New Status: Organisation, Search
Request:
Organisations. It would be really useful to have a "Resolve Duplicates" function with organisations. It could work in exactly the same way as the "Resolve Duplicates" function on the Person records.
New Status: Approved. Priority changed to 2.5, from 3
Id: 130
Date: Oct 2005 09
New Status: Database General, Actions
Request:
Within Pegasus, would it be possible to change the 'Actions' function? At the moment, it is possible to send Actions to another member of staff or to a Group. Would it be possible to amend this function so you can send an Action to more than one person, but not necessarily a team?
New Status: Cancelled
Id: 147
Date: Oct 2005 18
Area,Form/Section: Childcare, Search
Request:
It would be useful to be able to search for if the provider has received funding. We use this in order to select those providers who have an obligation to be signed up to CIS (they agree to go onto the CIS database if they receive a grant from us).
New Status: Cancelled
Id: 163
Date: Nov 2005 17
Area,Form/Section: Database General, Qualifications
Request:
Review the qualification level fields - currently stored in 3 places (on the people form in the related carescheme tab, in a people qualification form when a qualification is added into a person, and on the qualifications themselves). Should these all be drop down lists linking to 1 central list of qualification levels to make data entry in these areas more consistent?
New Status: OL Investigate
Id: 183
Date: Nov 2005 13
Area,Form/Section: Bulletin Board, Bulletin Board
Request:
Would it be possible to have a 'Summary' field added to the Details section of a Bulletin Board entry? Would it be possible to have a user defined area for bulletin board entries?
New Status: Cancelled
Id: 184
Date: Nov 2005 18
Area,Form/Section: Childcare, Carescheme
Request:
Could the 'Exempt from Registration' field be on the Carescheme details page. This is so that if we have two careshemes at one location, ie Parent & Toddler and Playgroup, we cannot merge the two careshemes if they have different named contact, and would need to mark the Parent & Toddler group as Exempt from Registration.
New Status: Cancelled
Id: 187
Date: Nov 2005 14
Area,Form/Section: People & Contacts, Contact
Request:
Field: Person Type We would like the selected person type to be specific to the enquiry, not to be changed with every phone call from that person, as it affects our enquiry stats and the standard enquiry reports set up by Opp Links.
New Status: Cancelled
Id: 200
Date: Nov 2005 27
Area,Form/Section: Training, Course
Request:
Would it be possible to make the lunch provided drop down box a refreshments drop down box, with different options rather than Lunch Yes/No. This would be useful as we have many courses that just have drink refreshments and no lunch provided or both.
New Status: Approved. Priority changed to 3, from 4
Id: 205
Date: Nov 2005 04
Area,Form/Section: Childcare, Registration
Request:
QA Accreditation is currently held in the provider’s registration table. Where a provider has more than one caresheme, achievement of QA is specific to the care scheme - I want to promote QA and need to be able to identify the carescheme - not just the setting, any possibility that this field can be moved to the care scheme so that QA achievement is specific to the particular caresheme?
New Status: Approved. Priority changed to 2, from 3
Id: 210
Date: Jul 2005 09
Area,Form/Section: Childcare, Reports
Request:
Would it be possible for a report for enquiries type by village/town by date to be created as we are having a lot of childminders ringing up with vacancies and wanting to know if we have had many enquiries for their village. This would be also helpful for targeting purposes if we find a shortfall of provision etc.
New Status: Cancelled
Id: 216
Date: Jan 2006 36
Area,Form/Section: Recruitment, Vacancy
Request:
In the Job vacancy area, is it possible to have the 'Upload to ChildcareLink' check box automatically ticked? and to have the vacancy removed from the website when the status of the vacancy has changed.
New Status: Cancelled
Id: 219
Date: Jan 2006 15
Area,Form/Section: Childcare, Quick Search
Request:
Add the DfES URN into the list of fields to display in the provider quick search results.
New Status: Approved
www.chis.biz
The website is now driven by a content management system and was demonstrated to the Consultative Panel.
Action: ML to put an example change request on the website to show how to format a request
Reviewed upcoming March 2007 release
The next release of ChIS is due in March 2007 and development that is being undertaken was reviewed as follows:
Concurrency users – how the concurrency user allocation changes will work were discussed. These changes will take effect when the March release occurs
Action: AM to sent contact details to JS re DfES contact regarding concurrency allocation review requests
GIS rewrite – the new functionality was demonstrated to the panel
Consultative Panel change requests – these were demonstrated to the panel
Future
The Consultative Panel and Opportunity Links aim to review potential future functionality requirements of ChIS. The following items were discussed:
Brokerage service – suggestions (in OL’s paper ‘Brokerage Service’) were put to the panel about how to accommodate this requirement which all CISs are required to offer.
Action: OL will contact the Consultative Panel members who will get feedback from their teams; this will be taken forward to the next meeting for review
Extended schools – OL’s paper ‘Extended Schools Requirements’ presented options for updating areas of ChIS to accommodate the extended schools requirements for the ‘Core Offer for Extended Services’.
Action: The Consultative Panel members are to consider the options presented; this will be taken forward to the next meeting for review
Early years census 2008 – OL is currently working with three CISs on the EYC 2007 pilot in preparation for the 2008 census. The outline of the work that OL is preparing for the EYC 2008 was discussed; this includes a form for data entry and an export option of the required data (per CIS) from ChIS for the DfES.
Action: OL will demonstrate/discuss the EYC 2008 development of ChIS at the May 2008 meeting
AOB
Consultative Panel Membership changes and vacancies
Action: Due to shortage of time the list will be sent to the Consultative Panel for review. A vacancy listing will be sent out with the next Consultative Panel monthly report (April 2008)
Review panel meeting dates
The meeting dates have been reviewed and have been brought forward by one month; this allows more time to review what will be input to a ChIS release.
The dates for 2007 are:
15 May 2007
14 August 2007
20 November 2007
These meetings are scheduled to be held in Birmingham
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Present
Vicky Bartholomew, Audrey Macdonald, Denise Callister, Jayne Straw, Julie Burrows, Laurence Green, Sandra Jones, Sian Franklin, Simon Farley, Zoe Colburn
Thanks were given to Sandra Jones who has been an active and valued member of the Consultative Panel: Sandra is handing over to Julie Burrows who was welcomed to the Consultative Panel.
Thanks to Rob Moran who has been running Consultative Panel meetings with Zoe Colburn: Rob will continue to be involved in the development of ChIS. Zoe will continue to be the technical OL representative at the Consultative Panel meetings and Audrey will manage the meetings.
Change Requests - 37
The panel reviewed 29 change requests, from September – November 2006 reports, 7 from the deferred list and 1 from the December list. All requests on the December list will be reviewed at the March 2007 meeting.
The prioritisation of the requests break down as follows:
Priority 1 given to 11 requests
Priority 2 given to 10 requests
Priority 2.5 given to 1 requests
Priority 3 given to 3 requests
Defer status given to 2 requests
Declined status given to 7 requests
OL investigate status given to 2 requests
Cancelled status (repeat request) given to 1 request
GIS Re-write
The GIS proposal was broken down into 7 options which were discussed and the following has been agreed:
Option 1 – has a priority of 1
Option 2 – has a priority of 2
Option 3 – has a priority of 1
Option 4 – has been declined
Option 5 – has been declined
Option 6 – was removed as it is not possible
Option 7 – is already implemented
The panel are aware of the time involved in each option. They feel that this development is important; the GIS system would allow them to meet government criteria for information management required within the Childcare Act for Sufficiency Assessment.
Early Years Census 2007 Pilot
The report was demonstrated to the panel and discussed.
OL are to create a template/report for ChIS users which can be used to gather data for the Census and a How TO document explaining how to use it.
Different locations for CP meetings
The panel discussed the distance and time it takes for members to travel to Consultative Panel meetings and the possibility of moving the meeting to different areas of the country to accommodate this; overall it was felt that Birmingham is the best placed option and that meetings should continue to be held there.
AOB
Auto Vacancy System
No news to report
CCL
A brief overview was given
Reporting dates for CP Change Request reports
Reports to the Consultative Panel will continue to be sent out in the first week of each month
Requirements for accessing data
The Consultative Panel discussed how best to access ChIS data when out of the office eg using PDAs etc. It was felt that laptop access was the preferred option.
New Service Desk number
0845 2572180
Extended Schools
The paper from Harriet Mathie is to be emailed to the Consultative Panel members, for information.
User Licence
Concern was voiced about how many licences will be available to use ChIS and when the communication from the DfES is to be expected.
OL internal Change Request processes
The OL process which has changed since August was explained to the Consultative Panel.
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Consultative Panel Minutes, 12 September 2006 - Birmingham
Present
Ali Omar - North London, Amita Clements - Enfield – London, Ann Glindon - North East, Denise Callister - South West, Jayne Straw - East Midlands, Laurence Green – South East, Sandra Jones - North West, Sarah Scholes - Yorkshire and the Humber, Sian Franklin - East of England, Vicky Bartholomew - West Midlands, Audrey Macdonald – OL, Rob Moran - OL, Simon Farley - OL, Zoe Colburn - OL
Change Requests
The panel reviewed 61 change requests, from May – August 2006 reports. Change requests 431 and 435 will be reviewed after the September 2006 release.
GIS
Simon outlined the possible GIS rewrite to the Panel. This was followed with a discussion about how the system could be used for reporting information as well as the look and feel of the product. It was agreed that ideas/questions should be sent to Audrey. These will be used to help further define the product requirements. This will be presented at the December 2006 Consultative Panel meeting. Funding for this proposed project has not been agreed yet.
Auto Vacancy System
This was not discussed and will be carried forward to the next meeting.
Update on CCL to Direct Gov
This was not discussed and will be carried forward to the next meeting.
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Consultative Panel Minutes, 20 June 2006 - Birmingham
CIS Portal
Prioritised the list of current and new functionality.
GIS
Agreed to pull out GIS requests and look at this more closely in the next meeting. (Rob has already emailed about this and asking for feedback from CISs and putting together possible workflows etc beforehand).
Childcare audits
It was agreed that a set of queries/reports to help with audits would be very useful, instead of trying to cater iChIS to suit everyone. Along with these reports a description of what fields to fill in for the report to work was suggested. Also it was agreed that we would remove the current childcare audit section, and move the fields into registration/carescheme forms as suggested in the document handed out.
Audit
It was agreed that the audit functionality would be reduced to just the childcare tables.
Change requests
I'll post the updated schedule early next week. Basically we got up to March 2006, April 2006 I have made suggested priorities for and asked the panel for their feedback by the end of the week, and May 2006 we will carry forward to the next panel meeting.
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Note: there were two meetings in December 2005 (one in Birmingham and one in Stirling)
Present
Zoë Colburn, Rob Moran, Pauline Evans, June Campbell, Leslie Gillies, Jill Wereszczuk, Wendy Cameron, Linda Stevenson
Change Request Reports - prioritization
Please see the schedule of development for agreed changes.
The Scottish Executive are currently looking at how the childcare search should be broken down and worded. This will be fed back to CHISs and OL. This means that all requests to do with new categories will not currently be put forward to the schedule of development (with the exception of Home based Childcare).
Identifying the requestor of a change request
The panel agreed that, with the requestor's permission, their details should be included on future reports so they can be contacted if any questions arise about the request made.
Other business
The panel made a request that future reports should include the time needed to develop a request, as this can influence feedback about a request.
The panel asked that we bring a copy of the database with us to the next meeting, in case we need to refer to it.
Consultative Panel Minutes, 6 December 2005 - Birmingham
Note: there were two meetings in December 2005 (one in Birmingham and one in Stirling)
Present
Zoë Colburn, Rob Moran, Sian Franklin, Kerry Hurst, David Sutton, Nicola Hughes, Ali Omar, Sandra Jones, Denise Callister, Vicky Bartholemew, Ann Glindon, Jayne Straw, Ghartey Vardon
Change Request Reports - prioritization
Please see the schedule of development for agreed changes.
Ofsted - Sub daycare type
The panel agreed that adding a new drop down for sub daycare type onto the carescheme form would solve this problem. It should be automatically updated through full autoupdate.
Identifying the requestor of a change request
The panel agreed that, with the requestor's permission, their details should be included on future reports so they can be contacted if any questions arise about the request made.
Other business
The panel made a request that future reports should include the time needed to develop a request, as this can influence feedback about a request.
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