David Roots
Despite expectations for overall budget and staff cuts, there is nevertheless a clear 'can do' mindset in Britain's local authorities towards reshaping their activities in order to achieve improved services built around the individual - and to deliver 'more with less'.
This upbeat assessment comes from a survey of 100 senior council managers attending Civica's recent annual conference in Manchester. Despite the current financial and social challenges to local authority services and flexibility, it is clear that there is still plenty of scope for savings for service delivery improvements through greater exploitations of technology.
Nearly 60% of those surveyed indicated IT remains a "key investment area" for 2010 in order to deliver critical service improvements.
Square the circle
Different pressures on local organisations to 'square the circle' are highlighted in the key priorities identified by our delegates. These include sustaining service levels and delivering improvements in service performance and efficiency, as well as protecting local communities through to economic recovery - further evidence that local government managers are doing their utmost to balance targets with meeting their community needs.
While nearly half of managers interviewed (47%) expect spending cuts, councils are adopting a range of operational strategies in response to such pressures. One third of delegates said they were re-engineering workflow processes, which suggests strongly that there is still considerable opportunity to remove duplication and stream line business processes, supported by modern IT systems, The mobilisation of local authorities' workforce continues - nearly a third (31%) said that greater use of mobile and flexible working is a key strategy.
Perhaps most encouraging, authorities appear to be planning to work more closely with their neighbours and other partners. One quarter of those interviewed said use of shared services was a key lever within the current climate.
Senior local authority managers are closely watching the performance of innovations that might support their citizen-centric services in the future. Nearly two thirds of respondents think that the data.gov website will influence community services in some way. One third (33%) believe that it will help councils identify demand for specific services. Almost as many (29%) say it will drive local authorities to improve their service levels.
Organisational change
Perhaps the greatest long-term significance for councils' performance came with the delegates' recognition that organisational change is the most critical factor in local government transformation and cost reduction process. This was recognised by more than 40% of delegates - up from 33% at our 2009 conference. It was significant, too, that only 25% of interviewees believe that the so-called 'easyCouncil' approach to running a local authority would be appropriate. Personnel buy-in is preferred to risky radical change.
The quiet confidence of local government over its ability to deliver continued efficiencies and change is both striking and encouraging. Our council managers still believe that effective change and greater productivity will come from within, by modernising and streamlining the delivery of their local services.
David Roots is managing director, local government & regulated markets, Civica
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