The Pushmi-pullyu approach to social reform

At least both heads are looking in the same direction

 The idea that there can be perfect congruence from the vision and aspirations of an organisation all the way through its various strategies and action plans to an individual employee’s objectives has always struck me as overly simplistic. In practice, the so called ‘golden thread’ tends to be as elusive as the golden medina.

In a similar way, I’ve never really been convinced of the delivery chain view of the world which sees a minister in Whitehall pressing a button and seamlessly through the mechanisms of national public service agreement targets, local area agreements and the rest, the desired outcome materialises on the ground.   Disappointingly, this idea of a simple causal relationship between interventions and outcomes has become hard wired into our regulatory frameworks.

I’m more attracted to models which recognise the complexity of the world in which public service organisations operate. In a fascinating article in Prospect, Left Brain, Right Brain, Matthew Taylor argues that the actions of the state need to combine ‘the push of reform with the pull of social meanings and connections.’

 This seems to me a more realistic way of seeing how the actions of organisations like councils must interplay with the values and social norms of communities.  We are all familiar with the initiatives which seemed eminently sensible on paper and when discussed amongst colleagues which proved to have no resonance when it came to implementation.

Matthew Taylor goes on to suggest that, ‘as the public sector enters a period of austerity, we need to remodel services around the goal of building individual and collective capacity. This means drawing on the best circumstances for the emergence of connectivity, self-control and altruism.’

Brave would be the council that said its three priorities were promoting connectivity, self-control and altruism. But it seems to me that we need to recognise that increasingly our role is about building capacity, embracing ‘the pull’ rather than focusing so much on pushing through our own provider-driven agendas.

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Rebranding the CAA

Rebranding exercises are always suggestive – you only have to think about Windscale’s rebirth as Sellafield.  Along similar lines, the Audit Commission looks to be trying to reposition the Comprehensive Area Assessment as oneplace (oneplace is onelowercaseword for this purpose.)  For sure, oneplace certainly sounds less clunky than Comprehensive Area Assessment which reeks of clipboard and classroom.  And there’s a certain logic in the name as CAA considers the broad spectrum of issues and performance in a locality rather than simply by organisation. 

But then again, isn’t there something rather Orwellian about this piece of rebranding?   The point of CAA is that it uses the same model to assess councils and their partners across the whole of England.  It draws upon the same national indicator set and through the same key lines of enquiry it seeks the same kind of evidence of outcomes.  The CAA is about consistency and uniformity because it is a national assessment tool.  Rather than oneplace, wouldn’t ‘anyplace’ be more to the point?

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Too much of a good thing

In a Work Foundation report, Public Value: The Next Steps in Public Service Reform, David Coats and Eleanor Passmore suggest that our pre-occupation with constant reform of public services may have its downsides.  They argue that,

‘the continued use of the language of reform has convinced the public that something is wrong. After all, ‘reform’ is usually needed to eliminate abuses, reduce inefficiencies or address other sources of inadequate performance. By creating the impression that public services demand a permanent revolution, ministers have lodged in the public mind the belief that public services are poor and that initiative overload has failed to resolve any of these problems.’

Reading Alan Milburn’s speech – Reforming public services – which he made at the start of September to the Eidos Institute in Brisbane, I felt that they may have a point.  In the speech, Alan Milburn talks about the ‘new problems’ politics must confront and then cites improving health, beating crime, regenerating communities and safeguarding the environment.  Of course none of these are remotely new but somehow we’ve become accustomed to the language in the speech, phrases like ‘propelling change’ ‘a different kind of state’ ‘a paradigm shift’ which creates this sense that it is only through constant reform that progress can be achieved.

Of course we need to challenge the status quo and try out new ideas and approaches but I wonder if sometimes we need to give reforms a chance to succeed before the next wave of changes. Has change become too much of a panacea?

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The answer to the question is scrutiny

I went this morning to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers to hear John Denhan, the Secretary of State for Communities, launching a new Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) consultation document, Strengthening local democracy. I gathered that it was a hastily arranged and low key launch and while Chris Leslie of the New Local Government Network which was hosting the event, described the proposals as wide-ranging, John Denham’s speech seemed rather short on new ideas.

The Secretary of State described the measures set out in the consultation document as ‘the biggest shift in power in a generation’. However, when we came to what was actually being proposed, I don’t think I was the only person present to feel somewhat under-whelmed. The consultation document is framed around these five areas:

• giving councils greater scope to scrutinise the spending and decisiosn of local service providers;
• exploring barriers to the use of existing powers and whether there are other powers councils should have;
• ensuring councils have the powers they need to tackle climate change
• ensure accountable leadership in sub-regional structures;
•  better articulating the relationship between central and local government

Scrutiny

John Denham said that scrutiny was the lion that has failed to roar.  His depiction of scrutiny as a lion is something that many local government practitioners might want to challenge (more of a mouse than a lion, perhaps?)  But one thing which is clear from the consultation document is that the Government is placing a lot of emphasis on the scrutiny function. The paper states that, ‘the best way to support councils to take on a stronger role is to increase their powers of scrutiny.’

Strengthening scrutiny may be one way to enhance the role of councils but is it really the best way? Is scrutiny the key to putting local government at the centre of decision-making in the locality? And is a desire to scrutinise really what motivates people to become councillors? Many of us would argue that the jury is still out on the effectiveness of scrutiny within local government. It is a model which has largely been transplanted from Whitehall without the level of resourcing that is a critical factor in the success of some parliamentary select committees.

But put that to one side, the Government wants to hear our views on broadening councils’ scope to scrutinise LAA partners, especially around expenditure. It wants to look at bringing more public services under the local authority scrutiny regime (and will be issuing statutory guidance on health scrutiny this Autumn), make council leaders ensure scrutiny is a core function and that it is adequately resourced.

Barriers and powers

The consultation document sets out how the Government’s approach to public service reform is now switching from a system based on targets and central direction to one where individuals have enforceable entitlements over the service they receive. What does this mean for local government? – a key role in ensuring these entitlements are delivered, the paper suggests. Tangibly government is proposing to introduce a specific power to enable councils to enage in mutual insurance arrangements; encourage local initiatives that foster closer working between primary care trusts and councils; explore reductions in the volume of central prescription and inspection explore how partnership workign could be streamlined

Climate change

 The Government wants to explore the role councils can play in meeting the UK carbon budgets. Ideas put forward include considering the local authority role in co-ordinating funding streams to support low carbon activity, supporting councils offering innovative financing for energy efficiency and perhaps even green mortgages. Sub-regional working Here the emphasis appears to be on sharpening accountability – for example by making sub-regional partnerships subject to scrutiny and exploring options around direct democratic accountability at the sub-regional level.

Central – local government relationships

 The consultation document sets out some proposed principles to articulate the most effective role of local government and asserts that central government complies with these principles already! The key issue around any such statement of principles is how can their impact be secured. The document proposes a joint parliamentary select committee to scrutinise broad adherence to the principles.

Summing up

So, scrutiny at both local and national level, is very much at the heart of this new consultation document. During the discussion after John Denham’s speech, Andy Sawford asked what the next steps would be. Is it a strange time to be launching a consultation, ten months before a general election? John Denham argued that whether parliamentary time could be found to enact any proposals requiring legislation in what will be a truncated parliamentary session would depend to a large extent on the response to the consultation. We’ll see.

Asked by Chris Leslie how the ideas set out in the consultation differentiated the Government’s localist credentials from those of the Conservative Party, John Denham argued that the Government was making a stronger commitment to ensuring national rights of entitlement – that you would get good quality services wherever you are in the country, whereas the Conservative approach would result in greater local variations.

A cynical view would see ‘national rights of entitlement’ which are consistent everywhere as not all that different from national targets and minimum standards of performance but clearly the Government feels there is an important distinction to be made.

Appropriately enough, given that we were at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, a portrait of George Stephenson looked down on us all. As everybody knows, it was Stephenson who built the first public railway line.  The railways revolutionised almost every aspect of nineteenth century, they were a truly transformational change.  I guess if you feel that the scrutiny function is the best way of strengthening local democracy then you might feel that these proposals may also bring about signficant changes.  But I suspect that scrutiny may be more like canals were to the railways.

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World Class Omelettes – the oeufal truth

On my way to and from work I pass a pub which has recently had a make-over and now advertises as one of its main attractions, ‘world class omelettes’.  I’ve had my fair share of omelettes over the years and while some have been better than others, I can’t say that any stick in my memory.  So it’s got me thinking, what makes an omelette world class?

And you might well be thinking what has any of this got to do with the price of eggs.  Well, it’s not just omelettes these days that are world class.  Politicians of all hues talk about creating world class health services, world class schools and world class railways etc.  The Food Standards Agency has even developed a model of a world class regulator.  Perhaps there’s a clue in that – is a world class omelette one which the FSA has so designated?

Whatever, I intend to do some qualitative research.  The main issue will be deciding what filling to go for, once I’ve determined my key lines of omelette enquiry (KLOOE).

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Nutmeg, the local government apprentice

There were always targets for breakfast.  There were always performance indicators for lunch. There were always inspections for supper. 

The civic offices were full of files of data. Nutmeg, the local government apprentice, looked out of the window.  Cllr Nesbit fiddled with bits of things.  Nicodemus, the chief executive, sat in his chair and dozed.

Nutmeg stood up.  ‘I am going for a walk,’ she said.

‘Why?’ said Cllr Nesbit.

‘Whatever for?’ said Nicodemus.

 

‘I don’t know!’ said Nutmeg.  But she went for a walk nevertheless.

Nutmeg walked to the creek and sat and watched the tide come in.  What was that?  There was a bottle at the water’s edge.  There seemed to be a tiny light inside.  Nutmeg opened the bottle.  Outburst a Genie. 

‘I have been trapped for a hundred years, ” said the Genie, for he was the spirit of municipal government past. ‘You have set me free.  In return I shall grant you three wishes.’

‘Three wishes?’ said Nutmeg.  Nutmeg thought and thought and at last she said,

‘I would very much like something different for supper and something different for breakfast and something different for lunch.’

‘There!’ said the Genie, and handed her a magic Spoon.  Then in a flash and a bang he was gone.

Nutmeg hurried back to the civic offices.  The Spoon conjured up all kinds of local ingredients.  The Spoon cooked supper all by itself, without any guidance or recipe books. And that night Nutmeg, Cllr Nesbit and Nicodemus all went to sleep with a smile.

[OK so maybe I changed this a little bit.  For the true and full story of Nutmeg, check out David Lucas’s charming picture book – if you are looking for a bedtime story to read your children, you won’t do much better]

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Beyond the downturn

‘Local government in Britain needs to be less passive and resist the central diktat on policy that has undermined local services and engagement. Authorities need less, rather than more guidance, and they need to be brave enough to drive fundamental change themselves.’

So says Michael Frater, Surrey CC’s interim chief executive in an essay in a new collection called, Beyond the Downturn published last week by Civica. At the moment there seem to be plenty of prophets of doom lining up to tell us about the years of misery that lie ahead for public services. So I found Michael Frater’s article helpful because he sets out some clear ideas on what local government can do to handle the difficult times ahead.

I’ve picked out six key areas he highlights in the essay:

1. Discretionary services like arts, culture, libraries and leisure are unlikely to survive in their current form and re-engineering and outsourcing of both core and discretionary services to the market is likely to happen on a scale much greater than previously imagined.

2. Councils need the power to act and raise funding locally. When difficult choices have to be made about which services to keep and which to cut, local needs and views must be the determinant, not Whitehall.

3. The government should look to reduce spending on regulation

4. Rather than continuing to fund separate governance arrangements for police, primary care, further education colleges, councils should become the commissioners of these services.

5. Councils need to turn their organisations on their heads so that the new generation of workers will want to work for local authorities because they are empowered, trusted and adaptable.

6. Councils need to recruit, harness and exploit the creativity, enthusiasm and energy of a new young generation of employees, many of whom have knowledge of the true potential that technology offers.

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Regulation Regulation Regulation

The increased regulation of public services through inspections and targets over the past twenty years is something with which we are all familiar.  Both Conservative and Labour governments have seen regulation as an important way of driving improvement, given the absence of ‘market pressures’. 

 At the same time that public services have become more tightly regulated, the opposite has happened in the financial services sector.  So one of the things which I think is interesting about the banking crisis is the way in which lax regulation is now being seen as a significant cause of the current mess. 

 Robert Peston in his blog today says that some of the ‘gleaming new rules’ announced by the Financial Services Authority actually represent ‘a return to a framework for limiting risk-taking that prevailed until comparatively recently.’  Given the extent to which public money has now been poured into banks, tighter regulation (or ‘constrained discretion’ as Mervyn King describes it!) would at least be consistent with the broader approach to what are now in effect quasi public services.

 In part the tighter regulation of local government, especially capping, was a reaction to the high spending, so called ‘loony left’ councils of the 1980s.  HBos,  RBS, Northern Rock and co could be seen as their C21st city equivalent, with Sir Fred Goodwin taking the role of Derek Hatton.

 But is regulation the answer?  For some time now in local government, we’ve been making the argument that a disproportionate regulatory regime fosters compliance and stifles creativity – much the same as the argument made to reduce the regulatory burden on the financial sector. 

 The trouble with regulation is that it’s like setting your field for bad bowling. It is founded on an assumption of incompetence rather than competence. And on its own, how effective an instrument is regulation?  Has regulation of electricity, water and gas companies for example, been effective in improving customer service, or ensuring maintenance of our utility infrastructure?  Perhaps it’s about having a proportionate regulatory framework and maybe the historians of the future will say with the benefit of hindsight that there could have been more of a balance in thinking about mitigating risks across both private and public sectors.

 On a different note, was I the only person who felt a bit non-plussed by the LGA urging councils to stop using meaningless jargon.  I thought they were meant to be our advocates?  Councils don’t always get the best of press and it seems to me that this just gave another opportunity for the media to portray local government as bureaucratic and out of touch.

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End of an era?

Today for the last time the Comprehensive Performance Assessment results are published.  I believe that since its introduction in 2002 the CPA has provided a positive source of external challenge and has contributed to improvement.  I think that its greatest impact was in its early years.  Despite regular tweaking and the development of the harder test, my sense is that CPA has become over-engineered and increasingly less effective.  No doubt that has been partly due to the fact that councils have become increasingly skilled in the mechanics of handling assessment models.

I think that most people would agree that CPA never really captured the public imagination.  Originally that was one of the aspirations for the new approach – that the new scorecards would present clear information to residents about how their council was doing and foster a closer connection.

If everything goes to plan, we won’t have long to wait until the next set of council results are published.  The first set of Comprehensive Area Assessment results should be available from November.  Now, my personal view is that the differences between CPA and CAA have been exaggerated.  Having recently been involved in a corporate assessment, my sense was that the assessment looked very much at what the council and its partners were doing.  Looking through the key questions to be asked as part of the area assessment, while they may not make use of the language of ambition, prioritisation and achievement, they do appear to me to be in many cases not dis-similiar to the CPA key lines of enquiry.

Overall, I think it is the continuities between CPA and CAA which are more noticeable than the differences.  When a new performance framework was first being discussed, I think ambitions ran higher – there was talk about re-balancing the relationship, a greater role for citizens, a more proportionate approach, self-regulation.  But we still have an annual process, the same for all authorities regardless of their performance, a process which actually has less rather than more peer involvement, which still makes use of nationally prescribed indicators and perpetuates a preoccupation with internal processes rather than outcomes through the organisational assessment.  So I am not convinced that CAA will reverse the trend of diminishing returns which has perhaps been a feature of CPA over the last few years.

On a related note, Steve Bundred’s article in the Times over the weekend has attracted a fair amount of discussion.  In the article he states that,  ‘any managers of a public service who are not planning now on the basis they will have substantially less money to spend in two years time are living in cloud cuckoo land’.

Responding to the article, Matthew Taylor, Tony Blair’s former head of strategy, identifies three things that we need to be doing:

• exploring the scope for major productivity gains, not just cutting back office staff, but re-engineering services to achieve substantial cuts in costs.
• encouraging an intensified process of innovation in public services, designed to find ways of doing the same, or more, for less.
• having a frank and creative discussion between policy makers, practitioners and the public about the hard choices to be made over the coming years.

Taylor argues that ‘if public services don’t adapt, innovate and engage the public in new ways we face a demoralising and divisive era of cuts which will not only damage people’s lives but could fatally undermine voters’ faith in universal public provision.’

For me a key question, is will CAA be an instrument that helps councils to adapt, innovate and engage the public in new ways, or will it prove a diversion?  Because if CAA isn’t doing these things then it represents a significant overhead.

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Targets and primary education

If, like me, you have children who are currently at primary school, you will probably be famliliar with being handed on laminated cards the individual literacy and numeracy targets the teachers have set for your children.  So I’ve been interested in the coverage of the Cambridge Primary Review’s interim report published last week.  The report which is independent of the Government highlights the ‘excessive pressure’ many children are under form a ‘high-stakes national testing regime and teachers’ anxiety about league tables, inspection and the punitive culture of school accountability.’  In an opinion piece in today’s Times, Libby Purves argues that ‘treating children as tiny workers tied to formulaic targets has failed’.

This week’s Economist also covers the Cambridge report, contrasting it with the Government commissioned Primary Curriculum report being carried out by Sir Jim Rose.  Sir Jim has been asked not to look at standards and testing and his view is that the key problem at the moment is curriculum overload.  The authors of the Cambridge Primary Review point to a narrow diet of literacy and numeracy and argue that a broad, rich and balanced curriculum, far from distracting from the basics, is actually a pre-requisite for high standards in them.

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