Service over systems – freeing the bureaucracy in public service

31/01/202031/01/2020 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Dr Philip Whiteman, Lecturer in Public Policy and Administration, University of Birmingham, explains what it takes to become a public servant today, in an environment free from rigid bureaucracy.

From civil servants and contractors to private-sector suppliers and NGO providers, anyone working in public service will know that it takes a different kind of mindset to keep services up and running.

“Gone is the traditional view of the public servant as a bureaucrat, with a tightly defined job description and policy objectives. With organisations being far more organic now, public servants need to be more flexible to deal with the demands of difficult policy and public spending situations.”

Not only do public servants need to be able to adapt and negotiate their responsibilities, they also need to be entrepreneurial in their approach in order to respond to current external challenges.

As well as flexibility, today’s public servants also have to work co-productively with users and the community. The emphasis now is more on customer service and social justice than systems and processes. However, there’s a fine line between this reputable work ethic and the demands of the employer.

“There’s often a difficult balance to strike between serving the community and the demands of the direct employer, particularly if they’re under contract to government.”

Though public services will need to diversify to meet user expectations for more rapidly delivered, open-access services, the job will remain as crucial as ever. The demands of the state are likely to continue to be the same, but for public servants, there is a growing demand for varied skillsets and new ways of thinking.

To keep pace with this changing landscape, while simultaneously improving efficiency, digital tools, such as AI, will be essential components of the public servants’ arsenal.

“As the role of the state increases, spending doesn’t, so the state has to find solutions to meet the growing demand. So, I don’t see a shrinkage of the state, I see a rapid evolution in the way public servants operate within that environment.”

Despite the positive outlook for public servants, the transition to more sophisticated, yet more economical, services presents a number of issues. In environments where policies change rapidly, there’s little time for policy to be embedded in the organisation. Similarly, where leadership and teams constantly change, due to government instability or political interference, public services become more challenging to manage.

This issue can often become compounded through entrenched, inflexible systems and processes, as well as a reliance on consultancies with opaque motives. However, with the right management, these issues can be reversed. For example, bringing in ideas from other areas of public service, other sectors or other countries can often inspire new resolutions.

“Agile and resilient types of organisations are more able to adapt to current and future challenges, especially with the right leadership, culture and entrepreneurial vigour.”

To head off these challenges, tools and strategies are useful, but fundamentally, to succeed, public servants need a sense of responsibility to the community – in other words, a ‘public service ethos’. Other fundamental markers for successful public service include agility, integrity, accountability and a willingness to accept new ideas.

“It’s not just about the tools and techniques, it’s about the cognitive understanding and the culture of the organisation, and the public service community involved. It has to be a feature of people’s thinking, a view that it’s a positive set of themes for the future.”

For public servants keen to break free of bureaucracy and embrace new ideas, further study is essential. Backed by a postgraduate programme in public administration, public servants can begin to think more critically and autonomously about public services, helping them expand their remit beyond their current practices.

“Our Online Masters of Public Administration is geared towards helping the student become more a reflective practitioner, to improve their current practice as well as their career. Because by default, if they become better public servants in their existing career, they will become more attractive to employers in their future career.”

As well as unlocking highly transferable skills, the process of researching and examining new ideas and evidence can help public servants build the flexible, open-minded mindset they need to elevate their careers and make a genuine difference to the populations they promise to serve.

To find out more about the University of Birmingham’s Online Masters of Public Administration, click here. The next student intake: March 2020.

Philip Whiteman is a Lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies. He has research interests in the impact of central government and regulators on the role, service delivery and performance of local government and other local bodies. He is currently looking at developing a case for researching how guidance is an important instrument for steering local government over and above legislative instruments.

Planning and Politics: Opposite Political parties, same local economic development agenda?

27/01/202027/01/2020 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Milagros Gimenez

If you read Argentine newspapers or watch national TV news you might think that the political polarisation (left-right) in Argentina is extreme. Consequently, it is expected that this political polarisation translates to action, and that different types of public policy are designed that are strongly influenced by the ideology of the political party in charge. However, my experience working as a consultant in strategic planning in local governments in the North of Argentina suggests there are more similarities in the type of public policies than the literature suggests. To understand this seeming contradiction, I addressed this relationship in my master dissertation, submitted as part of the MSc Public Management at INLOGOV.

Argentina is a federal country divided into 24 provinces and more than 1300 local governments, and is one of the most decentralised countries in Latin America. After the last constitutional amendment in 1994, local governments have, by law, (defined in each of the provincial constitutions) a wide range of competences regarding not only the usual issues tasked at the local level (such as public street lighting and waste treatment), but also the promotion of the local economic development. Unfortunately, there is an incredible gap in the literature about the role of local governments in Argentina and an even bigger gap in our understanding of the role of local government in promoting local economic development.

My research explores what types of initiatives influence the extent to which local governments in Argentina promote local economic development and if, when an opposing political party is in charge at the local level, similar strategies will be carried out (shaped by the party ideology).

Interestingly, even though local governments have the competence to decide which initiatives they design, local governments are leading the local economic development (LED) area with similar strategic plans and almost identical initiatives. Local governments under comparison in this research have introduced initiatives to improve the employability of the population (labour supply) and for increasing labour demand using the municipal competencies, such as the use of land and creating new local sales channels. Moreover, the LED initiatives are, noticeably, identical; the Mayors‘ speeches communicate using a vocabulary similar to that of the political party to which they belong. These findings challenge the conventional idea that opposing political parties prioritise different public policies, an idea that is particularly prevalent in a country with strong party polarisation like Argentina.

Nevertheless, the next question is why how we can interpret these outcomes.

My research suggests four possible explanations, which can be the basis for future research. First, it could be that there is no political polarisation. Second, the cases may be outliers. Third, this may be a technical agenda rather than a political one. Fourth, and the most likely based on the evidence that I already have, is that local governments do not have `real` autonomy to decide LED strategy. That means LGs in Argentina in LED are not autonomous when it comes to the ‘real‘ distribution of power/competences/budget. With this in mind, LGs have two alternatives. First, they accept the LED initiatives promoted by other levels of governments or other actors. For example, public employment service was promoted at the national level and covers funding for the PES programme. The benefit of this is that these options are comparatively cheaper, as they involve investing only in human management resources. The downside is that local government does not have much influence on the initiative´s design and fewer opportunities to contextualise the programme to local needs (as the local economic development approach suggests). The second alternative is to develop and fund their initiatives. These initiatives are in general based on local strengths, for example close relationships with the local entrepreneurs.

In summary, this research provides evidence and valuable clues for further research about local governments’ room for manoeuvre in designing LED policies in a decentralised country such as Argentina and the relationships between politics and planning in a seeming polarised world.

Milagros Gimenez is an Argentinian economist, Chevening scholar and studying on INLOGOV’s MSc in Public Management.

The national political tremors have settled. Let’s re-focus on local health scrutiny

17/01/202017/01/2020 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Cllr. Ketan Sheth

There was a lot of national media commentary and coverage about the role of the NHS at the recent General Election, which was unsurprising given all the commitments major political parties were making: boosting NHS funding, more doctors and extra GP appointments, rebuilding hospitals, and so on.

However, I think that members of overview and scrutiny committees – of all political parties – know that the NHS in particular and health in general are always a major issue in their areas regardless, not just because of the casework we receive from constituents or because health and the NHS tend to fill up a lot of the space on the work plans of our scrutiny committees.

Firstly, local government is part and parcel of the structure of the NHS in many localities, with Directors of Public Health and Directors of Adult Social Care sitting on the executives of Clinical Commissioning Groups. And, let’s not forget that many elected councillors are involved outside the local authority in the governance structures at a Board level of many of their local NHS providers (I will declare an interest as I am a Lead Governor of Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust). In local government, we have a view of the NHS from the root up and dare I say probably a more detailed picture than those operating at a national level or, to use today’s jargon, a ‘granular’ picture, which shows that every area has its own strengths and weaknesses that may or may not align to the national picture.

So, now we are settling back into the business of ordinary scrutiny committees there are three areas which, drawing on my own experiences, I think many healthy overview and scrutiny committees will be focusing on in 2020. They look a little different to the recent national debate.

Firstly, the quality of services, particularly of primary care, is a growing area of importance alongside access to services. The Care Quality Commission publishes ratings for each of the primary care providers in each area; it’s always worth keeping up to date with the local picture, in particular how ratings change. What you will want to see is an improvement in these ratings, and fewer GP providers being placed in special measures as a result of an inadequate CQC rating. If it’s heading in the opposite direction in your area, it might be time to ask why.

Secondly, working at scale is increasingly the big challenge for the NHS. On the commissioning side in north-west London there are plans to merge eight separate CCGs into one body by April 2021. That will mean a single operating model, and I assume some commissioning arrangements, operating at scale, commissioning services across many different boroughs. That’s something we will be tracking with care.

Finally, workforce is an issue which is frequently raised at health overview and scrutiny meetings. We’ve heard a lot about problems nationally of recruiting to specialist posts, as well as vacancy rates for nurses. But is it time to ask about the local pressures on recruitment and retention in the hospitals for the big provider trusts in your area?

So, now the national political tremors have settled let’s re-focus on local health scrutiny issues for 2020. Who knows, they may be very different to the national picture.

Cllr. Ketan Sheth is a Councillor for Tokyngton, Wembley in the London Borough of Brent. Ketan has been a councillor since 2010 and was appointed as Brent Council’s Chair of the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee in May 2016. Before his current appointment in 2016, he was the Chair of Planning, of Standards, and of the Licensing Committees.

What if December 12th were repeated in the May mayorals?

10/01/202010/01/2020 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Chris Game

I’m not unrealistic. I didn’t expect the Queen in the few hundred words written for her Queen’s Speech to chatter on that much about local government and councils – and she didn’t. I did think, though, they might get some attention in the 150-page Background Briefing Notes. But, no. In the literally brief note on English Devolution (pp.109-10), ‘councils’ per se aren’t mentioned. The search did, however, make me realise how crowded it’s going to be out there, as “each part of the country” gets “to decide its own destiny”.

The Government “remains committed” to the Northern Powerhouse, Midlands Engine, Western Gateway, and, I think, the Oxford-Cambridge Arc. The 38 Local Enterprise Partnerships certainly aren’t going anywhere soon. Indeed, they may well be hoping to get their hands on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund that will replace EU Structural and Investment Funds. And quite possibly too on the PM’s own £3.6 billion Towns Fund, with, for starters, 100 Town Deal Boards, chaired “where appropriate” by someone from the private sector.

Then there are the UK Government agencies that Johnson wants to relocate out of London, with their existing civil servants or any who aren’t “super-talented weirdo” enough to pass the Dominic Cummings test.

The one democratic element of this increasingly crowded world that does receive more than a passing mention in the Briefing Notes are Mayoral Combined Authorities (CAs) and City Region Mayors, with talk of increasing the number of mayors and doing more devo deals. There weren’t many stats in this section, but one did catch my eye: “37 per cent of residents in England, including almost 50 per cent in the North, are now served by city region mayors with powers and money to prioritise local issues.”

With CA mayoral elections coming up in early May, I did a few quick sums. The current party split among the nine elected mayors, including London, is 5-4 to Labour. The population split, though, is close to 3-1, with Mayor Andy Street’s West Midlands contributing over half the Conservative total. And Street’s victory over Labour’s Siôn Simon in May 2017 was knife-edge: by 0.7% of the 523,000 votes cast.

I sense you’re ahead of me. If, in the coming May elections, West Midlands voters were to return a Labour mayor, leaving Conservative mayors governing, say, barely one in eight of that 37% of residents, would a Conservative PM still be as enthusiastic about devolution to mayoral CAs? We know for near-certain that Theresa May wouldn’t have been, but Johnson, as on most things, is less predictable.

Anyway, it seemed worth asking: what would happen in the May mayoral elections, which include London this time, if everyone voted just as they did in December’s General Election? Happily, Centre for Cities’ Simon Jeffrey got there first, so the stats are his, the interpretation mine.

First, though, a quick reminder of the broader context of those 2017 mayoral elections, and what’s happened since. When Andy Street launched his bid for the West Midlands mayoralty, and even when he was officially selected as Conservative candidate, there looked like being only five of these new CA mayors.

Moreover, all five – Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield City Regions, Tees Valley, and West Midlands – might easily, given their borough councils’ political make-ups, have produced Labour ‘metro mayors’. Whereupon, it seems likely that, to say the least, Prime Ministerial enthusiasm for serious devolution to metro mayoral CAs would have waned somewhat.

However, things changed. Sheffield’s election, following a dispute over the inclusion of Derbyshire local authorities, was postponed until 2018, and two far less metropolitan (and more Conservative-inclined) CAs were established – West of England (Bristol) and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough – just in time for the 2017 elections.

With Tees Valley also going Conservative, Prime Minister May saw an initially possible 0-5 redwash turn into a remarkable 4-2 triumph – as reported on this blog. The political merits and possibilities of devolution, particularly to the West Midlands – bearing in mind that Labour overwhelmingly controlled Birmingham Council and formed the largest party group in five of the other six boroughs – suddenly seemed much more obvious.

Since then, though, the pendulum has swung. A reconfigured Sheffield CA and new North of Tyne CA have both elected Labour mayors, evening up the CA party balance at 4-4, but giving a score among the now ‘Big 5’ metros (populations over 1.3 million) of 4-1 to Labour, including Greater London Mayor, Sadiq Khan.

Jeffrey’s sums show that Mayor Khan would be re-elected easily, likewise Labour’s Steve Rotheram in Liverpool. In Greater Manchester, Labour’s Andy Burnham would be re-elected, but with a considerably reduced majority. And the collapsing ‘red wall’ would have more than doubled Conservative Mayor Ben Houchen’s majority in Tees Valley.

And so to the West Midlands, which also saw plenty of “Red wall turning blue”, “No such thing any more as a Labour safe seat” headlines. It felt as if the Conservative vote had to be ahead, and it was … but by under 3,000 out of 1.18 million, or 0.2%!

Yes, even replicating the Conservatives’ most decisive electoral win for a generation, it could be that tight. And, if it were Labour’s eventual candidate who edged it, that would see Labour metro mayors as the elected heads of government in London and all four largest city region CAs, representing nearly a third of the English population. ‘Everything still to play for’ seems an understatement.

Chris Game is a Visiting Lecturer at INLOGOV interested in the politics of local government; local elections, electoral reform and other electoral behaviour; party politics; political leadership and management; member-officer relations; central-local relations; use of consumer and opinion research in local government; the modernisation agenda and the implementation of executive local government.

Christopher Watson

18/12/2019 / inlogov / Leave a comment

John W Raine

It was deeply saddening to learn of the passing of a very dear friend, Chris Watson. I first met Chris in the mid 1970s when I was working in my first job, as a housing and planning researcher at the Government’s Building Research Establishment (an outpost of the then Department of the Environment). Chris used to visit my unit there from the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Urban & Regional Studies to meet with some of my colleagues, who were involved in a joint research project. From my first encounter I found Chris to be one of the very best – so patient and yet decisive, so knowledgeable yet modest, so respectful yet authoritative.

Three years later, when I obtained my next job, at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Local Government Studies, I found myself in the same building as Chris, just one floor apart, and with our respective departments working closely together and sharing a specialist library and other common facilities and space. Indeed, he was one of the members of staff with whom I first struck up a rapport, and although we did not thereafter do much joint work together, I saw a lot of him and always welcomed our interactions in the corridors; appreciated his genuine interest in all that I was doing; and greatly valued his sheer warmth of personality and willingness to share time with me – as with everyone who knew him.

Much later, in the late 1990s, when I had become Director of my Institute at Birmingham, and Chris was leading for the University on International Affairs and directing the newly established Japan Centre, I had the privilege of working more closely with him in arranging a number of study visits at the University for distinguished colleagues from Japan and other parts of Asia.

In summing up, I can say that, without a doubt, I owe a great deal in my career and personal development to Chris Watson – who acted informally as a mentor for me from my start at Birmingham; and whose warmth of personality, generosity of time for others, and exceptional modesty with regard to his many and diverse accomplishments, have been a model to me – and I am sure to all others who have had the good fortune to get to meet and know him. It is also a touching coincidence that my own middle name is Watson – this having been my mother’s maiden name, and of course that of my maternal grandparents!

Chris Watson is greatly missed but my memories and gratitude for his friendship will endure.

John Raine is Professor of Management in Criminal Justice at INLOGOV. He has been involved in criminal justice research, consultancy and teaching at Birmingham for some twenty-five years and has a strong track record of commissions for the Home Office, Lord Chancellor’s Department/Department for Constitutional Affairs/Ministry of Justice on aspects of policy and practice within the criminal (and civil) justice sectors.

The INLOGOV General Election Maxifesto Quiz

11/12/2019 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Chris Game

There were two prompts for this blog. The first was the politest of enquiries from the recently returned INLOGOV Blog Manager, which was easy enough to deflect. Shortly after doing so, however, while reading through one of the parties’ election manifestos – as you do – I came across ‘dibs’, a word I don’t recall crossing either my lips or barely my consciousness for a good half-century or so.

Back in my distant childhood there was much dibbing – and dybbing. On my father’s allotment I would make holes with my own potato dibber. As cub scouts, we would be enjoined every Friday evening by the ‘Old Wolf’ Akela to ‘Dyb, Dyb, Dyb’ (‘Do Your Best’), responding of course that we would indeed ‘Dob, Dob, Dob’. Back home, if there was any scarce desirable to be shared, like recently de-rationed sweeties, my younger sister Jennifer and I would compete for ‘first dibs’ (1).

In the ensuing decades, though, dibbing disappeared completely from my life. Yes, I recall registering the existence of the very top-end-of-the-market 1stdibs fine art dealership, but my INLOGOV salary discouraged closer interest. I remember being intrigued, therefore, by the context in which it did re-enter my personal/public policy world, and was fascinated again to see it an election manifesto.

So much so that I felt an urge to share the news, and decided to sneak it surreptitiously into an INLOGOV Election Maxifesto Worthy Pledge Quiz – not exactly an established tradition, but for which there is a kind of antecedent.

A Worthy Pledge is best explained by what it isn’t. It’s not one of those a major party either wants to, or fears might, create headlines and win or lose it loads of votes – and which are likely to be known to or guessable by readers of this blog anyway. Worthy Pledges are the add-ons. Not exactly window-dressing, because so relatively few wavering voters will even glance at, let alone open, these windows. They’re mostly imprecise pledges, or often just hopes – so loosely phrased that accountability of anyone, ever, is out of the question.

They are, however, the main reason why the average length of the major parties’ 2019 maxifestos – around 25,000 words (without ancillary ‘costings documents’) – is roughly four times the total length of ALL THREE major parties’ manifestos in 1951 (Thackeray and Toye, 2019). Nearly 83% of voters turned out in that election – the last time a General Election turnout topped 80% – and, while we don’t know how many of them had read those minifestos, it’s surely a fair bet that it’s more than will have thumbed through the 60-100 page compilations this time.

Here, then, listed alphabetically, is the 2019 Local Government Maxifesto Worthy Pledge Quiz.

Which party (Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, Green, Brexit) pledges to …?

Abolish both student loan interest and the target to push 50% of young people into Higher Education.
Devolve full control of Right-to-Buy to local councils.
Encourage councils to build more beautiful architecture.
End rough sleeping within five years.
Enshrine a legal right to food in law.
Establish a £150m. Community Ownership Fund to help local people take over civic and community assets under threat, including football clubs and post offices.
Establish a Royal Commission to develop a public health approach to substance misuse, focusing on harm reduction rather than criminalisation.
Explore ways to tackle the problem of grade inflation in higher education courses (sorry, that’s more for us in the UoB!).
Increase central government funding to councils by £10 billion a year.
Introduce a levy on overseas companies buying housing, and give local people ‘first dibs’ on new homes built in their area.
Launch the biggest ever pothole-filling programme.
Legislate to require councils to switch from a Cabinet system to a Committee system.
Provide 35 hours a week of free childcare, from the age of 9 months.
Replace Police and Crime Commissioners with police boards made up of local councillors.
. Stop bank branch closures and ban ATM charges.

Of course, the inherent problem with these kinds of exercises is where to list the answers. It may be that the Blog Manager can come up with something brilliant, but in case he can’t, I’ll witter on for another couple of sentences, then list them at the end – confident that you won’t have cheated and read ahead.

So, how many of you got the ‘first dibs’ pledge? It’s Labour’s, of course – a straight steal from Mayor Sadiq Khan’s attempt to give Londoners the first chance to buy new homes priced up to £350,000 before foreign investors can get their hands on them. A bit like Jennifer, after sweets came off rationing in 1953, except statistically her chances were massively better.

Finally, since you were no doubt wondering, one possible origin of ‘first dibs’ is an ancient children’s game played (by ancient children) with pebbles or sheep’s knucklebones known as ‘dibstones’.

The answers: 1. Brexit Party; 2. LD; 3. Con; 4. Trick question – Con + Lab; 5. LD; 6. Con; 7. Lab; 8. Con; 9. Green; 10. Lab; 11. Con; 12. Green; 13. Green; 14. LD; 15. Lab.

INLOGOV Blog

The Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham

Author: inlogov