Archive for December, 2009

Smarter Government

Posted December 14, 2009 * Comments(0)

Now we are getting down to anticipating the timing of the next election in terms of weeks rather than months its difficult to know how seriously to take the recent Smarter Government White Paper.  It is however interesting, if nothing else, as a measure of where the debate has moved to on a range of key issues and this could be important irrespective of the outcome of the election.  A number of elements of the debate are of particular significance to the IDeA.

The first one is confirmation that despite the terrible forward look on public spending in the PBR the “Tell Us Once” project is going ahead.  This is brilliant news and a credit to all those in central and local government who have worked to get us to this point.  I had a small role on the Steering Group and, as discussed in an earlier blog,  witnessed the problems it faced as it tried to secure spending across tiers of government, across government departments and across spending rounds.  The fact that a commitment has been made reflects the basic strength of the proposition which I’m sure will only be built upon.  The IDeA and the Local Government Delivery Council will I know continue to be activity involved in the implementation of the programme.

The next one relates to opening data.  Again this has been the subject of an earlier blog but the White Paper will add further impetus to the work on a new integrated approach to national addressing which the IDeA and its partners across local government, through the National Land and Property Gazetteer, are central players.

The White Paper also makes a number of helpful references to reduced inspection and reduced top down performance management.  In the context of Freedom to Lead, the discussion about a reduced number of top down priorities in the context of a defined number of entitlements, is helpful and may go someway to addressing the post-code lottery issue. 

The issue of comparative data, benchmarking data, is an interesting one.  The White Paper refers to work Capital Ambition and the IDeA are doing around the London Efficiency Challenge (another earlier blog) and even advocates the wider use of local government’s peer challenge approach to other parts of public sector.  More contentiously, and perhaps less well thought through, is the use of the same data to improve accountability to the public.  This makes sense to a point (and there are echoes of opposition party statements) but councils learning and challenging each other on performance will not necessarily work in the hard glare of public scrutiny.

Total Place (and now Total Capital) sets the tone and direction of the White Paper.  Despite its publication so close to the general election I thought it was an interesting read and significant in terms of a lot of the work the IDeA does.

Freedom to Lead

Posted December 2, 2009 * Comments(0)

Opening the recent LGA Group Improvement and Improvement conference Cllr David Parsons evidenced the cost to the local public sector of reporting to central government.  In Leicestershire, the county which David leads, 92 staff spend their time keeping government up to date on 3,000 performance indicators at a cost of £7 million a year.  The need to reduce these costs, and shift the emphasis of performance reporting from central government to local people, sit at the heart of the LGA campaign Freedom to Lead.

 

Directly or indirectly, much of the discussion at the conference connected with the Freedom to Lead debate, a debate made more immediate by the imminence of the general election. 

 

At one end of the spectrum was Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh, the Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham.  In his contribution he argued for removal of central government performance indicators with locally determined priorities agreed with the local population taking absolute priority.  If a council broke the contract with the local population it would be judged accordingly at the election.

 

At the other end of the spectrum, and nearer the status quo, were Christine Gilbert, OFsted’s Chief Inspector, and Gareth Davies, Managing Director of Local Government for the Audit Commission, who positioned their organisations as champions of public service consumers.

 

While the cost of the existing performance industry is hideously high there are strong reasons to suggest that some elements of a national framework need to be sustained.

 

The first is that any government will have national policy priorities which it will want implement using the local public sector.  These priorities for various reasons are not necessarily shared by every council and any government will use direct and indirect policy levers to see them implemented. 

 

The second is funding.  While there is general agreement that it would be better for local accountability if more income was raised locally it is inconceivable that the heavy lifting associated with funding local service delivery will not continue to be managed by central government as part of a national framework. Perversely, for those of us who want greater devolution, the more you devolve function the greater the need for a national funding framework.  

 

The third is a combination of the “post-code lottery” and the fear of failure.  With national funding comes a degree of minimum standards set by the national funders and with funding comes a degree of national responsibility for the success of the service provided.  The combination means that central government of which ever colour will not be able to step completely out of the picture when it comes to failing councils.

 

Finally, and this is a difficult one for those of us who advocate greater localism, councils have thrived on a degree of like for like comparison and while there is a diminishing return from star ratings and league tables, they have been significant factor in local government’s strong record of improvement. 

 

So Freedom to Lead feels like a re-invention of the national performance framework rather than its abolition.  There is a huge amount which can be achieved to reduce the costs in Leicestershire by simplification, realignment and delegation.  As important we need to build a system that directly contributes to the longer term outcomes we are trying to achieve, in particular the sharing of problems, innovative solutions developed across service delivery partners, and partnership working.