The first term of office of the regional councils began in 2022. The first term has generally been seen as a practice run for the new operating model. This is understandable considering that the current welfare region is quite different from the previous municipality-led model.
In the first term, the regional council operated as simply as possible, and did not use committees, among other things, in its operations. Although this may have been appropriate in the first term, I believe that committees should be introduced in the second term. I do not support unnecessarily complicated administration, but I believe that committees are necessary so that the preparatory work on various issues can be carried out properly. In committees, it is possible to have a much more in-depth discussion of issues compared to a full council meeting.
I think the committees could be established based on themes and functions. For example, committees could be for children and young people, the elderly, and even the economy. I would keep the number of committees as small as possible, but still such that the committees could effectively focus on their own areas of expertise and not deal with everything possible.
In addition to the committees, the regional council's meeting procedures and rules of procedure could also be improved. Currently, speeches are not timed in meetings, which sometimes causes unnecessarily long speeches and slows down the meeting. By timing speeches, it is ensured that the speeches are properly thought out and thus the meeting runs efficiently.
In order to make the regional council's operations better, I would think that these issues should be raised immediately at the organizational meeting. This way, for example, the topics and composition of the committees could be planned immediately and any other changes could be implemented as soon as possible.
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