The Director of Operations, Edmond McClean, is responsible for ensuring the provision of comprehensive operational and corporate services for the PHA to the Chief Executive and PHA board. This includes overseeing the operational areas of Planning and Corporate Services and Communications and Knowledge Management, and taking lead responsibility for driving partnership arrangements with local government and ensuring proper governance and probity arrangements are in place and maintained.
Planning and Corporate Services
The Planning and Corporate Services function includes:
- Development of corporate performance management systems to enable the organisation to effectively monitor progress in meeting Ministerial and corporate targets and objectives;
- Securing support and services from the HSC’s Business Services Organisation (BSO) including Information Technology, legal, Human Resources, procurement and equality; and corporate support including administrative staff, accommodation etc.
- Governance issues including implementation of controls assurance standards, risk management processes and standing orders.
Communications and Knowledge Management
The Communications function includes:
- Leading the PHA’s internal and external communications functions and overseeing the multidisciplinary team that works to meet the communications requirements of the PHA;
- The team includes specialists in publications development, design and electronic communications, public information campaigns and public and corporate affairs that includes public relations, event management and corporate communications.
Health intelligence includes:
- involving analysis and interpretation of information; survey design and analysis; critical appraisal; evaluation techniques; and research eg evidence reviews of smoking interventions and teenage pregnancy, evaluations of suicide training programmes etc;
- supporting public information campaigns and evaluating their impact;
- Preparing briefings on a range of topics including Traveller health, life expectancy and road traffic accidents, and provided the core tables for the Director of Public Health Annual Report;
- Working with partners inside and outside the PHA to develop and make available knowledge or information about public health issues.
These are responsible for the good communication, knowledge management, processes, people and resources that the organisation needs to function effectively on an ongoing basis. Only by getting the right mix of these essential ingredients can the organisation fulfil its role, responsibilities and objectives as laid out in its Corporate strategy and Business plan.
To ensure ongoing development and improvement, achievable and realistic objectives and performance management systems have been put in place. These will help nurture the key aim of developing an environment that also facilitates learning, growth and success.
