Sue wanted to Learn more about Japanese Management Theories

Sue wanted to learn more about Japanese Management Theories

A political comment

So, I’m not usually given to ranting about politics – mainly because in my mind I have the political sense of the average Dormouse. Additionally, my current employment is one in which I’m cautious on making statements about what could be considered to be my employer.

However, there is a wider focus to this blog entry. Within the UK, we are now on the verge of a new focus for public services and their delivery. Local councils are being asked to deliver more services than ever before but with a generally massively-reduced budget. The central government are insisting that this is achievable through working in more collaborative, smarter ways.

On the surface, this would seem to make sense. There have been loads of circumstances when the papers are filled with how councils have spent moneys on what was considered to be “non-essential” projects – of course, when the initial conception was raised someone must have thought it was a good idea. However, this is a small speck on the general spend of the average council. So, how should a council make savings?

I think we need to reflect that a council (as a public body) is a non-profit organisation. Consequently, there’s no markup for profit or shares – so this implies effectively that this would be the cheapest solution. So the best way for a council to save money would be to share the responsibility of the service delivery between other neighbourhood councils. A less successful way would be to work with a private organisation – after all, the company is (as part of its existence) to make a profit in some way… so by design this can’t be the cheapest solution.

But the problem with local governments is that they are also political machines – as well as having the “standard” business construction of a Chief executive and a board of Directors, there are also local councillors and Members of Parliament – each representing the citizens of the local area and whichever politcial party their allegiance is to – which may not be the political party in office in central government. Similarly in business, these various senior officials of local government are unlikely to recognise that the cost savings are through partnership (or even – hush the thought – mergers with other local authorities). And yet… for London in particular, we have a London Mayor and a London office which all the London Boroughs have representation on. Like the Greater London Council before it, in theory this should be the single point of control for all local government services and council offices. From this point, it should (in my opinion) be able to merge, direct and control which local authorities (let’s call them branch offices) head up the delivery of individual services, with teams in the other authorities to be the local point for residents. In that way, resources can be managed and controlled to add (or move) services when demands increase (or decrease), costs of services can be properly measured to give a more realistic, balanced view for central government.

Currently though, this is unlikely to happen. Councillors – tied to their political offices – are unlikely to share this with neighbour councils, especially if that council is under another political control. So instead, they are looking to private companies such as Serco, KPMG and Capita to provide services to save the council money. It’s worth noting how those companies are able to deliver that service – by using a central control server location and a few smaller, localised bases where service delivery is more “hands on” (in other words – the very suggestion I just made).

So, it seems the problem to my way of thinking, is not how local services save money – but how a central controlling organisation (London Mayoral office, Central Government) takes effective control of how services are deployed in the more localised areas, to enable a centralised control of decentralised services.

Just my view I know, but local government is always being told to look to private companies to see how to benefit and leverage services – perhaps this is a step that’s just too difficult to make?