Contents

Enabling Information: A report on improving access and raising standards in information services for disabled people and their carers in Scotland.

4 National Structure

The Working Group agrees that in the interests of:

• improving the quality of local information services;
• improving the consistency of provision across Scotland;
• increasing the reliability of Scottish information;
• avoiding duplication of collection and processing of information;
• improving communications between national information providers, and between national and local groups; and
• maximising the use of existing resources, and ensuring value in the use of public money;

there is a need for the creation of new structures or processes at national level.

In terms of the functions which are needed, the Working Group has identified the following:

• responsibility for taking forward the improvement of information services at both national and local level;
• the development of appropriate national standards;
• a means of monitoring those standards; and
• responsibility for the development and functioning of a Scottish disability information service.

4.1 Advisory body

An advisory body should be set up and given the responsibility for framing policy, overseeing the development and monitoring of national standards, and for the development and functioning of a Scottish disability information service.

The advisory body should be made up of disabled people and their carers, particularly those who represent organisations of and for disabled people and their carers, as well as other people with appropriate expertise. Members should as far as possible represent the range of types of impairment, as well as rural and more isolated parts of Scotland, and ethnic minority groups. The group should be large enough to be a genuinely representative body, but also of a size to be able to conduct its business efficiently. The Working Group recommends around 15 members.

It will be important that such a body is seen as being authoritative, both in terms of having the support of existing organisations, and in terms of recognition by the Scottish Office. The Working Group considers that the chairman of the advisory body should be appointed by the Secretary of State.

The advisory body should have secure funding for at least three years, and should be sufficiently funded to allow it to commission research, for instance in relation to standards, or to audit the quality of provision.

The advisory body should report annually to the Secretary of State, and account for its use of public money.

4.1.1 The way in which this body is established will be determined by the nature of the functions which it is required to perform, and the number of staff it requires. At one end of the scale it could be a purely advisory body with no executive functions, while at the other it could be more actively involved in overseeing the development of information services.

The Working Group sees the main responsibility of the advisory body as being in t