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Attractor recently publsihed an article about Lambeth Council – which had already adopted many approaches which seemed to fit with the new Coalition Government’s rhetoric. The council’s “Co-Operative Council” strategy seemed in tune with current thinking and the organisation apparently aimed to develop a truly “downward and outward” facing culture.

Local Government is experiencing severe financial pressure, with the finance settlement announced on 13th December 2010 – following the Comprehensive Spending Review in October. With the financial squeeze being front-loaded, many are expressing concern the “cuts agenda” for 2011-14 will overtake the potential benefits of concepts underpinning the “Big Society”.

Has the Co-Operative Council made significant progress in changing how it works and adapting to a new environment? How is the council tackling the challenge of austerity?

in July 2010, Lambeth commenced a consultative exercise, like many councils, in relation to its objectives and priorities. This exercise involved a survey of residents, the use of focus groups with older people and parents and a workshop involving a representative sample of the borough’s population.

The exercises were used as opportunities to explore what local residents and community groups thought about the council’s options for reducing expenditure. In addition to these participative exercises, the council created an online budget simulator toll that allowed people to identify areas where there could and should be reductions in expenditure to help balance the budget.

How has this shaped action? Read the rest of this entry →

Photo: Marfis75, Flickr

In May 2010 Lambeth Council published its Co-operative Council White Paper, setting out a vision of how it would need to reconfigure its structures and services. In a timely strategy, it looked forward to a time when the public sector would withdraw from particular services to protect funding for others.

It foresaw the need for citizens, the voluntary sector and community groups to take over the delivery of these services if they chose to do so. Rather than abandoning these services, the role of of local government was to empower the community to take on more responsibilities.

This strategy and vision is clearly in tune with the idea of the Big Society and the austerity measures being taken by central government.

By withdrawing from some services, it would possible (and necessary) to prioritise resources and investment investment particular areas – services which would continue to be provided by the public sector -

• personalised services – those which “maximise life chances” and required professionals to work closely with and provide support for citizens
• community services – those best tackled by large parts of the the community coming together to take decisions on services

What are the implications of this vision and strategy? Read the rest of this entry →

Photo: Siddhu 2020, Flickr

The well-respected Flip Chart Fairy Tales website has recently covered some important themes relating to the challenge of improving efficiency and productivity in the public sector. Rick points out the differences between manufacturing and service sectors and the lessons of systems thinking. The track record of UK industry in productivity improvement has, indeed, been gradual rather than dramatic and public services have to move far faster.

It seems, though, examples of public sector inefficiency are not hard to identify. In September 2010, an anonymously penned article in the the Guardian echoed the feedback from public servants working across the UK, describing a number of examples of waste in public services -

• poor recruitment and appointment decisions,
• poor management handling of lazy and inept staff,
• poor specification, deployment and use of contractors,
• waste, bad design and poor delivery of major IT projects,
• poor economy in travel and expense practice.

While, perhaps, indicative of a culture that values neither productivity nor efficiency, addressing all these issues would be insufficient to tackle the level of savings envisaged by the Coalition Government’s austerity measures.

In other respects however, the observer focuses on a far more important issue -

“… teams tend to blindly follow out-of-date procedures while others create new measures and protocols for the sake of it – and no one stops to question the need for so many reinventions of the wheel. Much of my present role has come about because of the need to redo work that was never completed to a remotely adequate standard.

The same thing happens whenever “efficiency savings” are called for: another big review gets under way, the same problems are discussed, committees are created … and then everyone carries on as before. Instead of waiting like martyrs for the axe to fall, the civil service could act. It could forget about further costly top-down examinations of recurring problems and instead ask everyone to take it upon themselves to do something about wastage.”

While this diagnosis may seem over-simple, it reveals an important truth. It is often within the outdated and ineffective working practices – which have accumulated over many years – that most of the inefficiencies remain deeply locked. To make effective change here, far more radical solutions are required and, in some places, shared services are seen as the answer. However, this response to inefficiency can be worse than the original problem. Read the rest of this entry →

At a time when public services are under pressure to save money, its not surprising more local authorities are considering the potential benefits of creating shared service solutions.

Members of Scotland’s Clyde Valley Community Planning Partnership (CVCPP) – West Dunbartonshire, East Dunbartonshire, Inverclyde, East Renfrewshire, Renfrewshire, Glasgow, North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire – are working together on a programme.

Similarly, the London boroughs of Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Kensington and Chelsea propose merging many of their front-line services. The three councils’ will receive a feasibility report on the possible merger in February 2011.

Statements reported in the press about the CVCPP scheme suggest the programme is looking at savings of arond 20% and the London boroughs have talked about savings of £100m though these both seem likely to be the kind of generalised modelling and targets discussed in the early stages of most shared services projects rather than a carefully worked-up figure using real data on proposed solutions.

In principle, the potential savings from shared front-line services ought to be significantly larger than shared back-office – simply because of the proportion of organisational expenditure in those areas (back-office functions typically costing a small percentage of  total revenue) but the delivery of savings is no more certain.

Read the rest of this entry →

With the Trade Union Congress (TUC) calling for coordinated industrial action to resist cuts by the “demolition government”,  the language used by Andrew Rawnsley in the Guardian begins to look less extreme.

Rawnsley compares the current situation to those implemented after the First World War. From 1921, the “Geddes Axe” saw major reductions in the armed forces, a 35% shrinking of the civil service plus controversial scrapping of education and housing reform which the Labour Party used to effect – forming it’s first government in 1924.

At present, budding signs of increased confidence and nascent recovery in the private sector are being completely overshadowed by fears over spending cuts.

Rawnsley reports the gradual realisation in government that global spending reductions of 25% will mean far more than trimming uneccesary fat through “efficiency savings”.

Reductions on this scale would require a scaling back of government activity which has real meaning and benefit. According to his sources, negotiations inside government, especially between the major spending departments and HM Treasury are very bitter.

The final report of the Commission on 2020 Public Services suggests public services must be more closely shaped around people with departmental silos removed and decision making and commissioning brought much closer to citizens and communities, with political institutions and accountability reshaped to support this. This is absolutely the right prescription for the future.

For around four months, central government departments have been wrapped up with introspective review, working in existing silos to determine where savings can be made. There is real danger that “silo thinking” will prevent government from finding solutions which might actually deliver what they want and need. Read the rest of this entry →

The “informed insider” and informative management commentator ”Rick”, writing on the blog site “Flip Chart Fairy Tales“, suggests complex employment policy hampers public sector business effectiveness.

Rick suggests most public sector organisations have management procedures going far beyond the requirements of employment law.

Rick states management culture is less effective in government departments and agencies than the wider public sector such as local authorities and the NHS.

He says though “all too often, the procedures are used as an excuse by managers who would shy away from conflict anyway”. He notes, however, that effective managers somehow navigate procedures to address problem situations. Read the rest of this entry →

Deloitte have called for new law requiring councils to adopt shared services, making people focus on implementing shared services, stopping debate on whether to do so.

Deloitte states public sector programmes have saved less than the private sector because cost reduction has not always been the main objective.

They recommend legislation as a means to remove the need to build political consensus and address cultural resistance, suggesting the average county would save between £1-2m a year by introducing shared services. Read the rest of this entry →

Last week, People Management reported that Tower Hamlets council and the neighbouring primary care trust had been forced to abandon their joint HR Director role because the workload proved impossible.

From reports in People Management, Deborah Clarke, who held the Joint HR Director role, considers London NHS trusts are in a period of “unprecedented change”, with significant impacts for the workforce. Apparently she believes the NHS needs to devolve more to local management. Read the rest of this entry →

Sutton and Merton councils have agreed to merge their HR services, a programme which will, the councils expect, allow them to save up to £500,000 a year.

The two councils have adopted a “collaborative approach”, where one organisation acts as host for services to another, which is being used for the first time in London by the two councils, though such arrangements have been established outside the capital before.

In this case Sutton will act as the host organisation for the new service, using a collaboration model. The new organisation currently involves around 100 HR staff delivering services fro the two councils and staff transferred to the council on 1st October 2009.

The new shared service arrangements will be a catalyst for cost reduction actions, delivered through a range of changes including structural reviews, use of shared management posts and other economies of scale.

Photo:JoshuaDavisPhotography, Flickr

In August 2009, Hertfordshire County Council transferred human resources transactional team members to the facilities management company SERCO.

This move builds on existing relationships and service privsion by the private sector partner, which has delivered payroll services to the council for more than two years.

The new service together with the introduction of new technology is expected to enable the elimination of paper from the payroll service and removal of existing duplication of effort within the business process.

As new integrated technologies are implemented for human resources and payroll, organisations are gradually taking the opportunity to develop new, more integrated ways of working between these functional teams. This transfer appears to be the latest example of organiations taking steps in this direction.