Public institutions and governance

It wouldn’t be honest! Will closing the high road lead to congestion on the low road?

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Alan Doig

Only a few weeks after my recent article on addressing fraud, corruption and conflict-of-interest in local government from the enforcement and public ethics perspectives – the low road and high road approaches – the EU produced an overview report on corruption. Drawing on a series of member state country studies, the report unsurprisingly argued that corruption continued to be an issue because although most member states had the necessary laws and institutions in place, they were not entirely effective.

This was apparently because ‘anti-corruption rules are not always vigorously enforced, systemic problems are not tackled effectively enough, and the relevant institutions do not always have sufficient capacity to enforce the rules. Declared intentions are still too distant from concrete results, and genuine political will to eradicate corruption often appears to be missing’.

While the UK report did not cover local government, such conclusions would raise pertinent comments about the abolition of the Standards Board and the Audit Commission in terms of the high road approach. Given the UK study also claimed that, ‘traditionally, the UK promotes high ethical standards in public service’ then it would be worth asking what does the abolition of the two institutions tell us about this ‘tradition’ in terms of capacity, results and will.

While is it often relatively easy to identify why public officials become involved in dishonesty – and my next blog will talk about ‘vigorous enforcement’ – what is of interest to those seeking to develop preventative strategies to guard against the misuse of public office is how to develop and maintain a culture of public service that promotes honesty. The objective of any prevention strategy would therefore seek to reflect a theme raised by the US National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice over a quarter of a century ago in relation to corruption: ‘corruption has three main components that are controllable and one that is not. The three controllable ones are opportunity, incentive, and risk; the uncontrollable one is personal honesty. Many public servants over a long period of time have had the freely available opportunity to be corrupt, a large incentive to do so, and little risk of being found if they did, but have refused because ‘it wouldn’t be honest’ (Zimmerman, 1980).

It was the 1995 report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life that raised the question of the ‘grey area’ of uncertainty of ‘the difference between what is right and what is wrong’ and sought responses that encouraged guidance and education in ethical conduct. Since then the Committee itself has hardly taken the lead in responding to issues of capacity and will following the abolition of the organisations. This has appeared to take place at the same time as its interest in local government waned since it suspended its inquiry into leadership and trust in local government in 2009 in order to rush after the unfolding scandal of MPs’ expenses. This inquiry has not been picked up subsequently. Despite the Committee’s 2012 concerns about ‘the inherent robustness of the new arrangements’ and its Chair’s late 2013 reiteration of 2010 comments on the new regime being ‘stripped back too far’, an inquiry into the regime and arrangements – pencilled into the Committee’s 2012-2015 strategy – yet did not appear as an agenda item on the Committee’s 2014 workplan.

Who will pick up lead responsibility for public ethics at local level is now in limbo as the government also shifts its attention to what it sees as a more immediate and, in savings terms, more tangible results-based focus on preventing and detecting losses from fraud and corruption through the low road route. Even here the prevention aspect is losing ground to investigation and enforcement; the most visible sign of this came with the abolition of the National Fraud Authority, despite its apparent role in ‘successfully’ raising awareness of fraud and improving coordination, in favour of ‘cutting economic crime’ through law enforcement.

Nevertheless this comes after the Committee on Standards in Public Life that in 2013 changed its view about ‘grey areas’ explanations of unacceptable conduct in arguing that those in public life ‘behaved inappropriately not because they were unaware of what was expected but because they did not find it expedient’. In other words, both roads need to be tackled. Failing to discourage dishonesty and promoting honesty by closing the high road is likely to see an increase of both types of misconduct on the low road, leading to a potential congestion for those charged with investigation and enforcement. The next question is thus two-fold; how is the congestion likely to be addressed and how is the high road to be re-opened?

Zimmerman, J. F. (1980), ‘Ethics in the Public Service’, Paper Presented at the Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, July 9, 1980.

Partnerships and service integration – is it all just hot air?

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Axel Kaehne

Since the 1990s, policy makers and academics have had a pet project in public service reform. Over time, they have called it differently but always meant essentially the same: public services collaborating with each other to improve service quality. At some point, it was called partnerships (remember the Partnership Agenda under Tony Blair’s government?), then it was service integration, a term particularly popular amongst health care professionals.

But what drives this collaborative agenda and where should it lead? Have we achieved anything over the last decades or was this all just hot air?

Academics have pointed out for a long time that there is a glaring gap in the partnership and integration project – evidence. We know from studies that working together does make a difference to professionals. This would be good if the main objective was to overcome service fragmentation per se, yet what drives much of the public policy announcements are intentions to improve service quality for users and patients.

Conceptualising service collaboration has been a well tilled field. Personalisation of services, where public services are shaped around the needs of the user is one way of thinking about improving public service delivery. Direct payments are a powerful instrument to re-orientate public services by putting the user in control. Yet, direct payments have been met with fierce resistance from some corners of the professional establishment, whilst the Welsh Government actively discouraged local authorities to use them until recently. Consequently, the take up of direct payments has been low.

In addition, producing evidence of the effects of service collaboration has proved to be the proverbial ‘holy grail’. The main stumbling block to it has been to establish a robust link between organisational changes and service improvements. As services improve their collaborative practices, the interface between users and professionals may often be largely unaffected. Organisational changes may not be noticeable for users. My paper on multi-agency protocols shows that even where the evidential link between changes and outcome is well defined, effects may be marginal and introspective at best.

Another reason is that service improvements are most urgent when users or patients draw on support from many different professionals because of the complexity of their needs. In the field of children’s services it is not uncommon to have families dealing with fifteen different professionals or more at a time.

The complexity of service delivery impacts on how organisational changes are perceived by the users and how they are affected by them. Key working may be a useful example. Potentially, key workers were supposed to reduce the number of professionals working with a service user, yet there is little evidence that they have had this desirable effect. More often than not, key workers joined the long list of professionals without reducing the need to be in contact with others. In other words, they turned into another layer of service delivery on top of the already existing ones.

So, why is it so difficult to improve service delivery in collaborative contexts? The answer lies in the discrepancy between policy objectives and the levers for change we have available. Policy makers constantly profess a desire to improve services by urging professionals to work together. Yet, there is only one player in this game who really knows what would constitute better services: the user. As long as professionals are in the driving seat, users will be a polite afterthought to their practice. Whether you call it partnership or service integration, collaborative practice grows from user demand. Better public services for users with complex needs should not be a product of professional generosity but an outcome of user demand. Until the user is in control of the service they get, service collaboration will remain little more than hot air.

Axel’s article, ‘Multi-Agency Protocols as a Mechanism to Improve Partnerships in Public Services’, is published in Local Government Studies.

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Dr. Axel Kaehne is currently Chair of GORWEL, the Welsh Foundation for Innovation in Public Affairs and a Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty for Health and Social Care, Edge Hill University. He is also Senior Research Fellow at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital NHS Trust in Liverpool.

The Big Society lasted 1000 days. Will we ever see ideas of its like again?

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Stephen Jeffares

The FT’s Chris Giles recently wrote:

“Mark Carney Bank of England governor, has signalled that his policy of linking interest rates to the unemployment rate [Forward Guidance] will be buried less than six months after its birth…his big idea for monetary policy has bitten the dust” (FT, 24 January 2014).

This is not the first time in the last year we have heard reports of “big ideas” “biting the dust”.  The same has been levelled at Cameron’s purported big idea in politics: The Big Society.  How funny that sounds just a few months after thousands of policy actors were deliberately inserting Big Society terminology into their strategies, job descriptions and articles. A friend who recently attended a meeting at CLG told me that the last remnants of the Big Society team have now left their posts; organisationally, at least, the Big Society is dead.

As the title suggests,  and in a new book, I argue that Big Society lasted around a 1,000 days.  That is rather neat, I admit.  Wayne Parsons has argued that you need a sensitive measuring device to understand the death and termination of public policies, but as a starting point you can think about newspaper citations.  Although a crude measure, this reveals the date when a policy idea first entered the public realm, the peak of discussion, and the point after which it is never uttered again.

It reminds me of Frazer’s description of how Saharan Tuareg tribes would up camp when somebody died, and never mention the deceased’s name ever again. Although government actors do not quite up camp, they shuffle around, renaming units and amending job titles, renewing websites and pulping documents.  As for the newspapers, for a while they write of the policy’s death, of u-turns, and discuss hints of decline (as in the article above); more important is to focus on the point where they stop mentioning it – that is when the idea is dead.  It is also a point in time seldom acknowledged.

So where does my 1,000 days come from?  Well, counting citations in British Broadsheet newspapers (see Figure 2.1) you can see that in 2008 there were no mentions of the Big Society, a few hundred in 2009, great excitement by 2011, and just over one mention a day in 2013.

jeffares

My prediction is that at some point in 2014 we will not speak of Big Society again – it will be the end.

But will we see anything on the scale of Big Society ever again? If Forward Guidance is anything to go by, it is quicker and easier than ever to discuss, endorse, but also critique and deride policy ideas. But it is also quicker and easier to coin and foster them too.

Some critics of the Big Society pointed to how many times it was relaunched, but like iPhones or Apps, we are in an age where we can release beta versions, test things out, get feedback and quickly offer updated bug fixes or new versions. We cannot measure the longevity of a policy idea by expectation alone – no, we can speculate about decline but it is not until the tribe up-sticks and moves to a new part of the desert, vowing never to mention its name again, that we can be sure that it is truly dead.

An earlier version of this blog appeared here 27 January 2014.

jeffares-stephen

Stephen Jeffares is a Lecturer based in INLOGOV. His fellowship focuses on the role of ideas in the policy process and implications for methods.  He is a specialist in Q methodology and other innovative methods to inform policy analysis. Stephen’s book, Interpreting Hashtag Politics: policy ideas in an era of social media, will be published by Palgrave in April 2014.  Preorder or follow @srjeffares

Who is in control of the sandbags?

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Philip Whiteman and Ian Briggs

The recent news that the Minister for the Environment, Owen Patterson, has visited flood torn Somerset and the Environment Agency, has had a bit of a tough time in the media. It has started to open up a few interesting questions and issues around who is actually accountable and who is responsible for flood response. Undoubtedly facing persistent flooding problems is deeply distressing for those affected and it is far from unreasonable to expect the response from the State to be swift, appropriate and well managed.

But who should respond and who has a say over what the local priorities are is perhaps a more complex question to answer. On further investigation it would appear that our system of local public administration has a few dark corners that are somewhat enlightening to explore.

One slightly dark corner that the media seems to have paid little attention to is the Local ‘Internal Drainage Board’ (IDB). What may come as a surprise to many, especially if you do not operate in a particularly high risk area, is that these IDBs are actually part of the complex firmament of democratically elected local bodies.

Internal Drainage Boards as local public organisations are specifically charged by legislation to supervise matters of water level management.  Whilst current powers are determined by the Land Drainage Acts of 1991 and its precursor of 1930, the antecedents of these curious bodies can be traced back to Henry II in 1297.   Not surprisingly, their boundaries are not coterminous with principal local authorities, but instead with water courses.

The 121 IDBs are distributed across the low lying areas of England and Wales, such as the Somerset Levels, Fens or Romney Marshes. Board members are elected by the IDB ratepayers and may sit alongside appointees.  Herein lies another oddity: each elector, usually an agricultural land holder, is awarded a number of votes related to the size of land holding or occupation – something rather reminiscent of voting rights pre- the 1832 Great Reform Act!  Whilst local authority members may sit as appointees, it is not remarkable to comment that control of IDBs holds little interest to political parties.

The very existence of the IDBs offers some interesting avenues to explore. One question that presents itself is around Government’s intention to respect that it is often the local community that holds local knowledge and solutions to problems existing within communities. Now, one can see that the Environment Agency itself has a few problems to deal with – it has not escaped media attention that the Agency is facing cuts at a time when the headline news is demonstrating that many local people are living with persistent flooding. Clearly one significant advantage of a large scale Agency is that it learns lessons from previous practice and can then make judgments as to the best way of dealing with problems. It can lay down standard operating processes and procedures and is in a position to balance a wide range of competing issues such as general environmental and ecological sustainability, whilst at the same time responding to social need.

However, if the flooding problems in the Somerset levels are allegedly a direct product of the failure to dredge rivers (and here we are not offering any opinion on that matter), should the decision be one that is taken locally or should it be one that conforms to a standard operating process? We have on one hand a body open to public scrutiny that is made up of local people and elected representatives who are resourced through a local precept taxation system and a national body that is answerable to citizens through national government. In this type of situation, very complex inter relationships develop between the principals and their agents!  This complexity is furthered by the addition of principal councils and DEFRA – who also have an interest in flood prevention policy and measures.

If, as we have seen through the introduction of locally elected Police and Crime Commissioners, government has an appetite for bringing public institutions closer to the people, then it may seem more than a little strange that in some of our most sensitive localities this argument over prioritisation is between Ministers, local people and a government agency. Perhaps we should look to promote a more visible role for the Local Drainage Board.

They are clearly important to local people in high risk areas, but with increasing pressure on local authorities to absorb ever increasing numbers of new houses and reports that new homes are being constructed on flood risk zones, we may need to think more deeply about how we manage this tension between control at a local level and the advantages of having a national response to such emergencies.

whiteman-philip

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.

 

briggsIan Briggs is a Senior Fellow at INLOGOV, and sits on a rural Parish Council in Warwickshire. He has research interests in the development and assessment of leadership, performance coaching, organisational development and change, and the establishment of shared service provision.

Health and wellbeing boards: a new type of partnership?

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Anna Coleman

A great deal rests on Health and Wellbeing Boards (HWBs), a new type of local partnership. These were established under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, to act as a forum in which leaders from the local health and care system could work together to improve the health and wellbeing of their local population and promote integrated services.

Last year, the House of Commons Communities and Local Government (CLG) Committee concluded that HWBs have a pivotal role and their success ‘is crucial to the new arrangements’.  However, it also warned of the danger ‘that the initial optimism surrounding their establishment and first year or two in operation will falter and go the way of previous attempts at partnership working that failed and became no more than expensive talking shops’ (House of Commons CLG Committee, 2013 paragraph 22, 14).  We examine these issues and the early development of HWBs in our recently published article in Local Government Studies.

While partnerships are seen to be a prerequisite for tackling ‘wicked issues’ (those issues so complex that their solution lies with a multi-agency response), historically they seem unable to break free from the ‘silo-based’ structures which govern how many UK public services are organised and delivered.

The official vision for HWBs from the Department of Health emphasises: joint local leadership between Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and local authorities; key roles for elected councillors, clinicians, and directors of public health, adults and children’s services; the enablement of greater local democratic legitimacy of commissioning decisions, and provision for opportunities for challenge, discussion, and the involvement of local representatives (Department of Health 2011 p15). However, HWBs have no formal powers, and their ability to influence others will depend upon their success in building relationships.

Established as sub-committees of local authorities, the exact membership of HWBs is not formally mandated, and locally HWBs can choose how they wish to work. Recent research (Humphries 2013) has suggested several features of HWBs which could potentially set them apart from previous partnership initiatives. These include: involvement and engagement of GPs; better governance and accountability (due to being sub-committee of the LA); encouragement of wider relations between the NHS and broader LA (not just Social Services); and opportunities afforded by the move of Public Health functions to local government. However similar initiatives have historically fallen short of initial expectations.

In the complex new system, resulting from the many changes under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, and characterised by potential fragmentation and confused accountability (see our other recently published paper from research with Clinical Commissioning Groups – Checkland et al 2013), HWBs are the one element within the new system with a specific mandate to encourage integration between local bodies. This has led to potentially unrealistic expectations that they can solve longstanding and intractable problems, such as joined up working between health and social care (Vize 2013), but also provides opportunities for them to work differently and make a difference locally to the health and wellbeing of local populations. Watch this space.

Anna’s article Joining it up? Health and Wellbeing Boards in English Local Governance: Evidence from Clinical Commissioning Groups and Shadow Health and Wellbeing Boards is published in Local Government Studies.

coleman

Anna Coleman is a Research Fellow in the HIPPO team (Health policy, politics and organisation groups), part of the Institute for Population Studies at the University of Manchester. HiPPO also constitutes, jointly with researchers from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Kent, the Department of Health Policy Research Unit in Commissioning and the Healthcare System (PRUComm). PRUComm provides evidence to the Department of Health to inform the development of policy on all aspects of health-related commissioning.

Disclaimer: The research for both referenced papers is funded by the Department of Health. The views expressed are those of the researchers and not necessarily those of the Department of Health.

Babies, bathwater and baths

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Alan Doig

It came as no surprise that the incoming Conservative government was quick to abolish the Standards Board for England after its 2010 election victory. Media comments and party policy briefs made it plain that the government had no time for what it perceived to be an over-zealous, heavy-handed and centralised regulator that added little value to local government.

More of a surprise was the decision to bury the Audit Commission at the same time for, apparently, the same reasons. One can be charitable and assume the government didn’t think through the consequences; the legislative reforms or pronouncements about armchair auditors certainly suggest this. However, it would now appear that at least some in government and Whitehall recognise that throwing out the baby with the bathwater may have won them political brownie points with their local government colleagues and with the private sector, but removing the Commission’s Audit Practice (still District Audit to the rest of us) may have been akin to throwing out the bath as well.

Why Regulation?

In noting some of the episodic scandals that underline the enduring conflict between private or partisan interests and the responsibilities of public office, my recent article in Local Government Studies discusses the long haul of what might be termed the low road of compliance and the high road of ethical standards. The former concerns a control environment – the presence and application of technical and procedural controls that provides reasonable assurance of effective and efficient operations, internal financial control and the proper stewardship of public funds and powers, as well as laws, procedures and resources to scrutinise, detect and punish perpetrators. The latter involves the more recent focus on public ethics and governance arrangements. Together the two roads should combine to achieve an internalisation of norms and standards that in turn promote organisational cultures which protect against specific interests and individuals, and where the control environment can operate more effectively against those seeing to defraud or corrupt local government internally or externally.

Tipping Points in Integrity and Compliance

Unfortunately the dissolution of District Audit, together with its institutional expertise, inter-institutional cooperation, particular powers, and national assessment of patterns of delivery, overview of issues and trends, as well as data dissemination, has come at a time when local government is also undergoing changes, ranging from the implementation of the localism agenda to the declining in-house capacity to underpin the control environment which has drawn on council resources dedicated to fraud against housing benefits.

Externally, there continues to be a decrease in the resources the police are willing to commit to economic crime while the abolition of the National Fraud Authority removes the short-lived attempt to develop a national anti-fraud strategy at local level. Combined they create an unstable and under-resourced environment in which to maintain the direction of travel along both roads in the face of the roadworks thrown up by the various abolitions and wider legislative reforms.

…And a Voice from Beyond the Grave

One consequence of the roadworks has been discussions over government funding for councils’ investigative capacity and about whether other bodies could pick up the high road agenda. While good councils continue holding on to the lessons learned and seeking to maintain the direction of travel, the potential for poorer councils reverting back to those habits that made the roles of the Audit Commission and District Audit, and even the Standards Board, necessary is a risk that government cannot ignore. Nevertheless, having thrown out baby, bathwater and bath, with councils left to their own devices, and with much more pressing issues on council agendas, it will be interesting to see if the Audit Commission’s own warning, over 20 years ago in 1993, may come back to haunt the government when, in arguing for value and relevance of an anti-fraud culture or an ethical environment, the Commission warned of a local government environment which had been ‘rendered more demanding and complex by recent changes to the nature and operation of local government services. Many of these changes, such as the delegation of financial and management responsibilities, while contributing to improved quality of service, have increased the risks of fraud and corruption occurring’.

Alan’s article in Local Government Studies: Roadworks Ahead? Addressing Fraud, Corruption and Conflict of Interest in English Local Government is available online now (or contact the author if you do not have an institutional subscription).

doig

Alan Doig is Hon. Senior Research Fellow at the International Development Department, University of Birmingham; Visiting Professor, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University and Board member, Management Board, North-east Fraud Forum.