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Deciding on the future of CEP: challenge management

Publication date: 21-4-2010

Article:

Of all recurring items on the agenda of a General Assembly (GA), the topic ‘goals for the next three-year term' generally generates the liveliest debates. In order to stimulate the debate at the meeting in Malaga, the CEP Board has developed a model which shows the relation between use of resources and the different goals of CEP. "We will present this model at the GA; I think the delegates at the GA may find it very interesting", announces Marc Ceron, representative of the Spanish Probation System in Catalonia in the current Board. "In order to warm-up for this item on the agenda, I may give suggestions about how CEP could evolve on the basis of its development in the last three years."

The model which will be presented at the GA in Malaga is in fact a ‘logical framework'. In March 2009 this (project) management tool has been presented as a ‘best practice' at the CEP conference on Funding in Cambridge. The tool has it origins in the sector of development cooperation, where it is used to show the relation between ideological goals, the concrete actions to achieve these goals, and the investments in these actions, i.e. costs and time. "We gratefully applied this model to our actions in the year 2009", comments Marc Ceron. "As such it becomes clear how much CEP invests in each of its three core goals of uniting all probation professionals in Europe, of professionalizing the sector of probation and of raising the profile of probation on a national level and a European level. At the GA we will present the outcome. This result can then be the start of a discussion among our member organisations on how to divide our resources over our goals and actions in the next term. Another advantage of this tool is that by updating our logical framework each year, it can be an indicator when the new Board is drawing up its annual working plans, with which we have started to work since last year."

Marc Ceron, one of the three current Board members who are willing to serve another term, is looking forward to the discussion of the future of CEP. "We will encourage our members to be ambitious in their ideas and goals. This will be a stimulus for the new Board to push their ambitions as far as possible in the implementation, even though we have to be realistic about the possibilities and limitations of our budget and staff capacity. I think it is up to the new Board to find a balance, and communicate regularly about successes and failures which we encounter in working towards these goals. One way to do this may be to implement an e-system that allows members to check the level of implementation of the annual plans on a six months basis, including the follow-up of the budgets."  

When asked to give an example of possible goals on which CEP could report regularly, Manager at the Justice Department of the Catalan Autonomous Government is surprisingly resolute. "I think we have to concentrate an important part of our efforts on the extension of the membership to the CEP; after all, our network is the basis of the strength of our organisation", he reacts. "CEP now covers almost the entire area of the EU. Only Slovakia and Cyprus are not yet represented in our network. We should try to obtain their representation within CEP in the next term. I also feel that Germany is still underrepresented in our organisation. Apart from our longstanding member DBH, only one Federal State out of 16 is member of CEP. That definitely does not do justice to the importance of Germany within the constellation of the EU. In addition, with regard to our negotiations with the Council of Europe (CoE), we would gain considerable clout if we would represent more CoE Member States. Here we have much more work to do since 30 CoE Member Countries are represented in CEP, out of the 47 Members States in total. Finally, I think we should try to get a more balanced representation of the academic world in our organisation. Currently all the universities which are member of CEP come from the UK and the Netherlands. I think we should strive to obtain at least 5 more universities which in total represent the academic diversity in the science of probation in Europe."

Another goal that Marc Ceron sees for the future term is to continue the work on the professionalization of CEP as an organisation. "The crucial step in the professionalization is to become an independent organisation. Due to the courtesy of Reclassering Nederland, one of its Directors has been seconded to CEP to act as the Secretary General. This means that his salary costs are not on the CEP budget. As a result, CEP has not made a reservation for his salary in the budget. This puts CEP in a precarious situation. Suppose that our current Secretary General decides to stop his activities at CEP? It would be obvious that his successor will be from another country; then we reasonably cannot expect Reclassering Nederland to pay his salary too. Therefore I think that in the next term it is imperative to work on the sustainability of our organisation and find a way to run a budget without any additional financing from third parties. Yet I want to stress that it is equally important that CEP continues the work to which it is committed: representing the diversity of probation systems in Europe and turning this variety into the benefit of our members, while at the same time identifying what we all share and promote our unity in Europe."