Sexual Violence Survey (SVS) Steering Group

Department of Justice and Equality, 51 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 1

26th June 2019

 Agenda

1. Introduction - CSO chair
2. Agreement of minutes from last meeting
3. Terms of reference
4. Update from CSO on development work to date
   1. Plan for the baseline for the timing of the survey
   2. Stakeholder session
   3. Expert groups
   4. Publication of minutes/agendas
5. Next meeting – last week Sept [24^th or the 25^th]
6. AOB

Minutes 

Attendees:

• Alice Wainwright, Head of Research and Data Analytics, Department of Justice and Equality
• Philip McCormack, Research Officer, Department of Justice and Equality
• Gurchand Singh, Chief Information Officer, Department of Justice and Equality
• Richie McMahon, Assistant Director General, Central Statistics Office (Chair)
• Keith McSweeney, Senior Statistician, Central Statistics Office
• Helen McGrath, Statistician, Central Statistics Office

1. Introduction

The Chair welcomed all  members of Steering Group. Ms. Alice Wainwright was intoduced as the recemtly recruited Head of Research and Data Analytics at the Department of Justice and Equality.

2. Steering Group Terms of Reference

The draft of terms of refernece was discussed, finalised and agreed by all members of the group.

3. Update from CSO on development work to date

A progress report was issued to DJE prior to the meeting and CSO gave a brief summary of the document. Discussion was had on each item including:

• Changes to CSO staff statistician level. Brian Ring has moved to a new project in the office. Keith McSweeney, current head of Social Analysis, who was involved in the initial discussion with DJE on the SVS project, will now take on this work. A change to the frequency of the standard meeting schedule for the local project team (Senior Stat and Stat) has been agrees and it now meets at least fortnightly.
• The continuing enagagement with the CSO internal governance board - draft project documentation, i.e. a project concept and Project Initiation Document (PID) have been submitted as discussed.
• The initiation of the construction of a robust project baseline for cost and time in conjunction with the CSO Project Management Office (See note A below)
• The initial costing and budget for the project. A budget breakdown for 2020 is currently under development.
• An investigation of the need of an ethical advisory committee and the CSO Corporate Affairs directorate leading on the issue.
• The stakeholder town hall/workshop event on 22nd May 2019 (See note B below)
• CSO staff attended two one-day training events in DRCC between May/June.
• The establishment of two expert groups to help refine the data list (See note C below)
• An invitation to discuss the SVS development work at a SATU annual meeting in October 2019.
• The development of a paper on the mode choice for SVS by the Methodology Division in the CSO office examining the current literature/research on the topic.
• The development of a section on the CSO website for accessible links to all SVS project materials including steering group meeting agenda and minutes.

A. Project baseline construction

As noted in the last update, the project has been assigned to the Transformation Programme Governance Board due to its high-profile nature and strategic importance for the CSO. Further to this, the Corporate Affairs division have been appointed the CSO Project Management Office to work directly with the project team to build a robust project baseline. It will involve a series of workshops with all the key internal members of the office determining deliverables, inputs, estimated times and constraints.

B. Stakeholder information session/workshop

The CSO have engaged the external stakeholders in the following ways:

• Initial letter in Feb 2019 explaining who the CSO are and initial steps. It also requested their permission to keep them on a contact list for future updates.
• Met key stakeholders in Mar 2019 at the Monitoring Committee meeting to introduce survey
• Organised a stakeholder information session/workshop to firmly launch the survey in May 2019

Invites were issued to all the contact lists compiled after the initial letter was issued in Feb 2019. The half-day session was organised in two sections:

1. Information on the devlopment of the survey to date

2. Workshop style session where the meeting participants were asked to discuss and report on three topics.

About 40 people were in attendance including groups such as a state agencies and departments like SATU, Tusla and DYCA and NGO's like RCNI, DRCC, CARI and One in Four.

C. Expert Groups

It was noted at the last steering group meeting that the data list form the scoping group report has been analysed by the Questionnaire Design Unit (QDU) and issues have been identified on the definition of the variables.

Two expert groups (i.e. research/data expert group and policy expert group) have been identified and meetings arranged for the start of July.

4. Dates for next meeting

CSO proposed 25th September as the date for the next official Steering Group Meeting in Cork.

5. AOB

No further discussion points identified.