Public: Transformation | Public

Skills Funding Agency could be born under a bad sign

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:50:26 GMT

Replacing the Learning and Skills Council may appear progressive but its replacement could be at risk under a new government

Although the demise of the Learning and Skills Council and its replacement by two smaller agencies may appear progressive, it could inadvertently lead the way for the re-emergence of one of the bodies the council replaced, especially if the Conservatives have their way.

After spending more than £86bn since 2001, the Learning and Skills Council ceased to be on 31 March. Its writ, to improve the nation's learning stock, has passed to the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and the Young Peoples' Learning Agency (YLPA) which came into being on 1 April.

However, a Conservative victory in the upcoming general election, or a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, will cast a shadow over the SFA's future.

The present plan for the agency is that it will annually distribute about £4bn of funds to further education colleges and other approved providers of post-19 education and skills development including Train to Gain. The YPLA will monitor the £7bn budget that local authorities will have to spend on funding the education of 1.6m 16 to 19-year-olds.

It will also be responsible for funding local academies of which there will be 300 by September 2010 and will provide funding to about 750,000 16 to 19-year-olds through education maintenance allowances, currently £30 a week.

The SFA will house the National Employer Services, the National Apprenticeship Service and the Adult Advancement and Careers Advice service. It will also fund Train to Gain, launched by the LSC in 2006 as part of the Government's response to the Leitch Report on the UK's skills needs.

During its nine year life as the UK's biggest quango, the LSC was never far from controversy, most notably in its mismanagement of the government's college building programme.

It encouraged bids from about 144 colleges for funding that it did not have, resulting in the waste of millions of pounds in bidding processes which had almost no hope of success.

The fiasco led to the resignation of LSC chief executive Mark Haysom. Geoff Russell took over in April 2009 and will head the SFA.

So what will change? Well the SFA will be a much smaller beast than the LSC but will still undertake many of the same functions, principally managing the funding of FE colleges. And the same staff will perform those functions as most SFA personnel have transferred from the LSC.

But what will be the SFA's fate if there's a change of government after the upcoming general election? The Conservative's thinking is encapsulated in a recent policy consultation document, The Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) Model and Skills Accounts, which builds on an earlier green paper.

Lead author David Willetts, shadow minister for Skills and Universities, recommends something of a return to the Further Education Funding Council, replaced by the LSC in 2001. However FEFC Mark II would also fund – presumably approved – private training providers as well as FE colleges. Ominously, for the SFA, Willetts et al say there should be a "slimmed down" FEFC to do handle funding of FE colleges and approved training providers.

The consultation document also argues for the abolition of bodies such as the Regional Development Agencies and Employment and Skills Boards. It also recommends the introduction of individual skills accounts, based on the Scottish model, where students are effectively given grants to spend on skills acquisition at FE colleges and private training providers. These accounts would likely be limited in number and amount.

They echo the disastrous individual learning accounts scheme which was launched in September 2000 and closed in November 2001 because of suspected fraud by many training providers.

The Conservative's consultation document acknowledges the risk of fraud but suggests that can be overcome by providing virtual funds to account holders that are only activated when the student "plugs in" to an approved course at an approved provider.

As for the Liberal Democrats, a spokesman said: "We will create a single council for Adult Skills and Higher Education. This would simplify funding in this area and reduce the number of quangos involved in skills and further education funding."

That would result in the SFA merging with the Higher Education Funding Council for England and arming it with a budget of about £9bn.

Clearly how many birthdays the SFA will enjoy remains to be seen, but it will do well to get to the toddler stage should the current government lose the general election.

Skills Funding Agency facts:

· Head office in Coventry plus 20 offices across England

· 1,800 staff, 400 of them at the National Apprenticeship Service

· Budget for colleges and training providers: about £4bn annually

· Staff and admin costs: £81.4m

· Train to Gain budget 2010-11: £983m

· Offender learning budget: £135m

The LSC – a life in numbers:

· Total expenditure since 2001: £86bn

· Spend on under-19s: £47bn

· Spend on adults: £26bn

· Number of employers that have used Train to Gain: 175,000

· Number of employees that have used TtG: 1m

Total Place: give it more time says Bichard

Jane Dudman — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:20:20 GMT

Total Place may not be perfect but should be judged on its potential to transform local services

Today's Total Place report should be seen as "more than just a set of pilots" according to the chief architect of the innovative programme.

Sir Michael Bichard, director of the Institute for Government thinktank and influential former permanent secretary, who has been driving forward the Total Place programme since it was announced in last year's operational efficiency programme final report, says there has been a lot of misunderstanding about Total Place.

"This is not about saying that Total Place will only have succeeded if we have 170 pilots by 2011," comments Bichard. "It's about trying to get people to work and behave differently. That is how it will have to be judged."

This morning the government will release the headline findings from the 13 Total Place pilots alongside the budget and the full report will be published tomorrow. Several issues that are likely to be raised, including whether the pilot schemes have been sufficiently rigorous in identifying potential savings.

On this, Bichard acknowledges that there is more work to do and that not all of the 13 pilot areas have "quite fleshed out" the possible deliverable savings.

Changing public services

But Bichard adds that changing public services in this way cannot happen overnight. "Total Place has been around for less than a year. People having been thinking about this whole problem for 10 years," he comments.

"The Smarter Government report made it clear that the government was going to tackle this and I anticipate something in the Budget about all of this. That's not bad. But it will take much longer than a year to do something meaningful."

Bichard adds that the whole project is in danger of falling foul of what might be called the Monty Python effect, with too many conversations on Total Place getting a bit like asking what the Romans did for us, as in the comedians' film, Life of Brian.

Yesterday, a report from thinktank Public Services Trust 2020 proposed a new government "superdepartment" for devolved government, with one single aim: to move all relevant powers on service delivery and improvement from Whitehall to localities. It also called for a new kind of balance between power and funding, with localities able to ask for lower "single area" funding in exchange for the power to bring together more agencies and public services.

In some areas, this is already happening. "This is a developing story," says Bichard.

Jane Dudman

Time for a change - or is it?

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:58:15 GMT

In today's fluid environment, organisations need to keep transforming.While leaders may like the idea of change, how good are they at introducing it and, more importantly, communicating it to staff, asks Esther Harris

New research shows that leaders in the public sector are failing to achieve benefits through major change initiatives, despite investing millions in the hope of finding more efficient ways of working.

The survey, commissioned by programme and project management advisory specialist Moorhouse, found that less than 20% of respondents believed their departments delivered the planned benefits from change programmes.

It also found that although the public sector was better than the private sector when it came to applying formal techniques to help manage change, public sector middle managers had a poorer view of the sector's capability to deliver change.

The different perceptions of those at the top, the middle managers, and the employees on the ground, are a major reason why change programmes so often fail to produce what they promised, according to Moorhouse.

"The survey showed that while 37% of leaders believed their organisations regularly delivered benefits from change, only 5% of middle management agreed with them," says Bob Hendicott, a director at Moorhouse.

Communicating change programmes

Since professionals in different parts of an organisation have different needs, care and attention needs to be invested in communicating change programmes, to ensure everyone understands.

Typically, leaders think of change in terms of a wider vision and strategy, but it is those on the frontline whose responsibilities are most directly affected by change, and experts say it is important to keep communication about change programmes regular, simple and honest.

"Leaders need to paint a clear picture of their 'vision' so that everyone can relate to it," comments Lindsey Waddell, a senior consultant at consultancy WCI. It is no good pontificating from an ivory tower. "Leaders should be talking to their staff, answering their questions, and using their talents to make change work."

Senior sponsorship of a change programme is essential, but it is also rare. Allan Wood, chairman of healthcare services provider Harmoni, says: "Having a director down as your sponsor is all well and good – but if they just turn up to meetings for a catch-up or delegate the critical issues, things aren't going to happen."

The heart and soul of a head of unit

To succeed, the programme needs to have the heart and soul of a head of unit who is willing to be honest about what is working and what isn't, and can make the necessary tough decisions.

The research also showed an alarming lack of formal approaches and toolkits in use. Half of the survey respondents reported having no established frameworks in place to manage new benefits, and only 16% felt their current methods were effective, with a large number questioning the value and rigour of tools such as the business case and stakeholder management.

Waddell says fear and 'change fatigue' are the other major reasons why change fails. "Constant and ongoing change is unsettling, particularly when employees don't have a real understanding of why it is happening," she comments.

Combined with fears about job security, this can make even the most diligent of staff uncooperative. "People worry about job losses, hidden agendas, loss of identity, and of not being able to do adapt to the new ways of working," says Waddell.

"In the past, too much time and cost has been wasted in making things overly complex, analytical and foolproof," comments Wood. "A simple plan, led from the top, applied fast and hard, with a safety net of employee groups to catch the cock ups, is the way to do it."

Independently working together

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:00:00 GMT

No one solution will fit all and local authorities need to structure services to meet citizens' needs, however shared services can, and does improve efficiency while reducing costs - as long as correct structures are in place

Efficiencies and cost savings are terms that were covered extensively in relation to local government during the past 12 months. And while the media is full of reports discussing the merits (and disadvantages) of approaches such as shared services, Total Place and unitary authorities, the main driver for all these is to deliver the best possible public services and reduce costs.

In 2007, Capita published a white paper discussing how no one solution will fit all and suggested that each local authority needed to develop an approach that met its own requirements, not least due to the local political and citizen context.

From what we see of the political landscape in local government today, things have indeed changed since then. An increasing number of authorities are boldly structuring their services to suit their citizens' needs rather than following a one-size-fits- all approach. Most local authorities are not only more in tune with their citizens' requirements but are also more sophisticated in the way they provide services while reducing costs.

In 2009, Cheshire West and Cheshire council became a unitary authority, bringing together three district councils and half of Cheshire county council. In order to run efficient services for such a wide area, they simplified the complex requirements of revenues collection and benefits administration within this new structure.

Quick and easy access to all revenues and benefits services

Jerry Faulkner, senior manager, revenues and benefits at the council, explains that "being a new unitary authority our overall aim from the outset was to provide residents with quick and easy access to all revenues and benefits services available from the authority through a single application and ensure we remain an approachable and responsive organisation. Providing a top quality service for our many customers and communities is one of our main priorities, along with reducing costs where we can".

South Worcestershire, on the other hand, operates through a shared services set-up, bringing together the revenues and benefits of teams from three district councils to save money and improve efficiency and customer service.

"Developing a shared service, a single site and a common IT platform has been the key to realising our objectives. We have saved £1m in this year alone and will make genuine year-on-year savings of this level on our baseline budget," says Nick Jefferies, head of South Worcestershire Shared Services.

Unitary authorities and shared services operations undoubtedly differ in their concept and operational structure but, from what has been experienced in Cheshire and South Worcestershire, it is plain to see that the reasons behind delivering the services in the way they do are the same.

However, this doesn't hinder authorities wanting to share services with different public sector organisations from working together, which is where Total Place comes in, providing another means of delivering better services at less cost.

What we can conclude from this is that, regardless of the set-up, all local authorities strive to achieve the same outcomes.

Today the necessity to do so is fundamentally tied to achieving a sustainable future model for local government service delivery. We can't deny that many councils are still learning how best to achieve this but there is no doubt that some giant steps have been made in the last few years.

Paul Millard is operations director at Capita Software Services

Don't ringfence me in

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:30:31 GMT

David Parsons, a Leicester councillor and leading Tory light in the Total Place movement, wants to abolish all ringfencing of council funds. He just has to persuade 'sceptical' colleagues, he tells Max Rashbrooke

For someone who has spent so long in local politics, David Parsons has retained a surprising degree of naivety, in the nicest possible sense of the word. A mere two questions into an interview with someone he's never met, he is launching into a no-holds-barred analysis of the Conservative frontbench with a candour that appears to be giving the press officer sitting opposite a heart attack.

"You will be nice to me, won't you?" Parsons says, halfway through this off-the-record assessment – a phrase he repeats at intervals. At another point, he stops in the middle of an impassioned defence of local councils to remark, "You're not actually going to print any of this, are you?" – not aggressively, but with an almost childlike wistfulness.

A solidly built 59-year-old, with tidy grey curls, Parsons has been the Conservative leader of Leicestershire county council, a four-star authority, since 2003. As well as chairing the local government improvement board, he sits on the high-level board overseeing the Total Place pilots.

The government is right behind Total Place, he says, as evidenced by the presence on the high-level group of Liam Byrne, the chief secretary to the Treasury, who in Parsons's phrase "really gives this some oomph".

The Conservatives have, of course, been loudly proclaiming their localism credentials since David Cameron's ascension. But do the Tories really believe in local government?

Off-the-record remarks aside, Parsons says he is "working on" his frontbench colleagues.

There are still sceptics around. But support for the initiative is growing

Some were sceptical of Total Place at the outset, "and there are still sceptics around". But support for the initiative is "growing", he says.

"The more the project has gone on, the more it has picked up the pace, the more it's shown what it could do – [the more] people have seen it could well offer the solution to the dual problem of a lack of joined-up services and the lack of money in the public purse."

His main concern now is that there remain too many Tories who are no more fond of local councils than they are of government in general, and who would like funding to bypass councils and go straight to individuals.

This highlights a fundamental tension within the still unclear Conservative manifesto: how to give more power to individuals, in the time-honoured Tory way, without losing what Parsons calls the "overview of the locality", the ability of councils and other bodies to deliver joined up-services and run them more efficiently.

Parsons fears that giving money directly to individuals will prove "expensive" because it will feed their demands for more money as their expectations of public services rise.

"How do you control the horizon [of public expectations] if you provide services that could be limitless?"

He then raises an interesting point about accountability. Even quangos – which he would, unsurprisingly, like to see abolished – are accountable to Parliament, but how will individuals be held responsible for spending public money? "If you give people money, how do you hold them accountable?"

Taking the flak

Handing power down to councils would have one cynical advantage, Parsons admits: it would help insulate an incoming Conservative government from the unpopularity of budget cuts. "You can make savings nationally, and hand them down to councillors who whine," he says, "or you can make them locally...

"Why the hell would they [the government] make decisions when we can take all the flak?"

Parsons would also like local councils to have total freedom over their budgets. "I'm in favour of abolishing all ringfencing," he says. What, all of it? "Every single bit of it."

When asked why a new administration would break the habit of centuries of central government and cede control over funding, Parsons makes an endearingly naive appeal to his frontbench colleagues to trust their "friends" in local councils.

"Local government has earned its spurs. Why should the worst-performing part of the public sector [Whitehall] insist that the better part of the public sector have ringfenced money?

"You have got to be able to trust your friends ... with a few exceptions, we have a bloody good track record."

Public and politicians alike would have to become more confident with the idea of postcode lotteries, he says.

But wouldn't devolution of funding and power leave poorer areas left to struggle on without the help and money they need? His only answer is that some deprived areas have "superb leadership" and that devolution "need not" lead to more unequal outcomes.

Despite his ardent defence of community autonomy, Parsons believes that local bodies might need to be forced to work together to make Total Place work. The shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Philip Hammond, has already ruled out the idea, describing forced collaboration as "old politics".

But Parsons says a law change might be needed if local bodies refuse to work together to improve services. "I do think if there is a need for primary legislation, it will be in the realm of a duty to co-operate ... you might well have to do that."

There won't, however, be a one size fits all solution, he says – adding, charmingly, "I never thought I'd say that bloody crap, but it is absolutely true."

Foreign Office needs to get its estates in order

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:08:00 GMT

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has come in for criticism in a report from the National Audit Office about how it runs its global estate

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) could do more to achieve value for money in the management of its global estate, claims a report out today from the National Audit Office (NAO).

Although the FCO is taking positive steps to adapt its properties to new global challenge, says the report, it lacks a clear strategy and comprehensive data to manage its overseas portfolio effectively.

The report is critical of the FCO's strategy for managing its estate, claiming it is high-level and the underpinning detail is scant. 'It does not lay out the requirements for the estate, whether the estate meets the requirements and how it will address the gaps. Without a clear framework to assess the estate's performance, it is difficult to evaluate the department's progress'.

To counter this criticism the FCO has recently appointed an estates specialist as director of estates and security who is developing a new strategy, the department responded.

"These steps have the potential to help secure improved value for money in the future," it told the NAO.

Mr Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: "Although the department has begun to remedy some of the shortcomings we identified and has started work on its strategy for managing the estate, it still needs to get the basics right. It needs to lay out the priorities for its overseas estate and work out how to get more robust information. Whilst there are examples of good practice at individual posts, the department needs to spread this across the whole estate if it is to make real efficiencies."

Public Services Summit 2010: Anticipating the challenges ahead

Jane Dudman — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:18:21 GMT

Delegates and speakers at this year's Guardian Public Services Summit agreed on the need for change, as long as any transformation is carried out skillfully, without confrontation was the underlying message, writes Jane Dudman

One thing is for sure: none of the public managers who attended this year's Guardian Public Services Summit could be in any doubt that change is on the way for the sector.

The two-day conference, which took place in Hertfordshire at the end of last week, was notable for looking both backwards and to the future.

Leaders and thinkers summed up many of the of the key aspects of the past 12 and a bit years of running public services under the Labour government, and attempted to anticipate some of the challenges that will face them in the coming years.

Sir Michael Bichard, director of the Institute for Government and a former permanent secretary with considerable influence inside Whitehall, summed up the mood of many when he said, introducing a session looking at resistance to change in the public sector, that there has already been "fantastic change" in the public sector.

Following Bichard to the speakers' podium, Professor Christopher Hood, director of the Economic and Social Research Council's research programme, agreed that what we need now is a grown-up debate, focusing on which kinds of change and innovation different organisations are best at doing.

So far, then, the conference agreed on the need for change, as long as the debate was framed in the right way - and as long as change, particularly cultural change in organisations, was handled skillfully and not in what one speaker described as "an unnecessarily confrontational way".

A strong reminder of why change is still needed in the way public services are delivered came from Craig Dearden-Phillips, chief executive of the charity Speaking Up, who told delegates that despite discussion of more joined up services, from the point of view of the disabled people with whom he works, very little has changed and it is still a struggle to deal with the many different arms of the state, a point reinforced by another speaker at the conference, Charles Leadbeater, founder of the public service design agency Participle.

Describing the work of his organisation with families in need, Leadbeater, too, put forward a view of public services that was far from joined up: "It wasn't that these people weren't getting services," he said, "but that the services came in and out and added to the chaos."

The international and local focus was on budget cuts

Add to this the view from the politicians at the conference, who from both an international and a local focus emphasised the need for budget cuts, and a truly gloomy picture might be thought to have emerged.

In fact, the converse was true. It is clear that public sector leaders and those in the voluntary sector, as well as social entrepreneurs, may not be relishing the crisis, but certainly see the need for real leadership in difficult times and are ready to rise to the challenge. The idea of not wasting a good crisis was heard around the conference floor more than once.

Above all, the summit is a place to exchange and hone ideas. As Stephen Bubb, the chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, says on his blog, this is a place to gain good ideas.

Bubb writes: "The range of top speakers and thinkers on public service is astonishing. The debates are superb and I rarely leave without new ideas for action (my staff just love that!)".

For more coverage see today's Guardian Society

Jane Dudman

Rise of the transformers

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:43:02 GMT

New ways of working, more efficiency and integration, better communication between departments are in the remit of transformation directors, but how useful are they?

Directors for "transformation" and cost-cutting look set to become more high-profile within the public sector over the next few years as organisations try to do more with less money.

One trend among local authorities is to make one person responsible for trimming costs. These managers – often called change or transformation officers or directors – are responsible for cutting costs and improving the quality of services.

The hope is that they will help ensure large and complicated efficiency programmes meet their targets. But the risk is that transformation directors, who first emerged around the middle of the previous decade, simply add another layer of management in councils without improving efficiency significantly.

Derby city council has appointed an interim head of transformation to introduce "new ways of working, technology and accommodation" in a programme that aims to deliver £32m of savings over the next three years, and savings of about £21m from 2014/15. It plans to appoint a permanent head of transformation later this year.

Meanwhile, Leicestershire county council has appointed a "strategic programme manager" to lead a wide-ranging programme whose aims include making procurement more efficient, integrating children's services, and improving communication with the public.

Transformation managers are also likely to be used more widely in the health service, experts say. A government programme to improve the quality and efficiency of services within the NHS, based on the principles of Quality Innovation Productivity and Prevention (QIPP), will increase pressure on senior managers to demonstrate savings and improved performance.

Last year, the government appointed Jim Easton, previously chief executive of the South Central Strategic Health Authority, as NHS National Director for Improvement and Efficiency. The government also set up an NHS National Quality Board to champion good practice and encourage an even quality of services across the health service.

A single person responsible for cost savings is a good idea

Mark Jennings, director of health care improvement at health thinktank the King's Fund, says having a single person responsible for cost savings is a good idea, but could backfire if other managers and staff don't contribute to the efficiency drive.

"I think most organisations will have somebody in charge of co-ordinating [QIPP]," says Jennings. "Of course the danger is that you make it somebody's responsibility then everybody else can abdicate responsibility across the organisation."

Transformation managers may also struggle to prove their value initially. Jennings says that there are few areas in the NHS where big savings can be made quickly. Closing hospitals, or accident and emergency departments; merging parts of hospitals with others; and rationalising property all take time.

Sarah Pickup, honorary secretary of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, and director of adult care services at Hertfordshire county council, is cautious about the potential benefits of transformation officers.

"In some places, having some person responsible for savings might work, but it may not be necessary everywhere," she says. "It depends on the culture of the [council]. If you've got a chief executive they are accountable for that very thing [delivering cost savings]."

But given that council chief executives have numerous projects to oversee, delegating responsibility for cost cutting can be a wise move, according to Mark Lawrie, local government partner at Deloitte Consulting.

"Theoretically the chief executive is the leader that is charged with a cost-reduction strategy, but if you've ever worked in a complex organisation you'll realise that there are forces and politics at play that can slow things down," says Lawrie.

"The need for inter-departmental co-operation is necessary but not always there, so having an individual [charged with cuttings costs] with the authority of the chief executive is a good thing."

But to be effective, transformation directors need to be given a clear mandate and a senior role within a council, Lawrie adds.

"There is a move in a number of places where I've worked where the head of transformation is in a third-tier role, below director level," he says. "I think they struggle to actually effect change within a department of people who are more senior than them."

Total ambition

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:01:00 GMT

After the success of its Total Place initiative, Kent county council has called on the government to give local authorities more control over budgets and organise councils into clusters

Initiatives such as Total Place could have a far greater effect – and lead to much bigger savings – if accompanied by a radical reform of local and regional government, one of the UK's largest councils has claimed.

In a report, Bold Steps for Radical Reform, Kent county council says programmes such as Total Place, though valuable in themselves, could be hamstrung by the fact that local councils control just 5% of spending – equal to around £350 out of every £7,000 spent locally.

The report urges government to "radically" empower councils by slashing undemocratic and "bloated" layers of regional and quango bureaucracy.

This could ultimately save £15-21bn, far greater than the £9bn target for the operational efficiency programme, of which Total Place is one part, it says.

The report does not detail how these savings would be achieved. But it does claim that Britain's 360 local councils cannot expect central government to devolve power to them as they stand, because they are too small to deliver many services efficiently.

Kent therefore proposes that local government organise itself in 46 loose "families" based around the historic boundaries of nine major cities and 37 counties and shires.

These so-called families would come together to organise services in their area, as in Total Place, combining councils'
democratic mandate and local knowledge with a sub-regional efficiency of scale.

Councils would be responsible for helping each other and improve services, and could collectively have 1-4% taken off their annual grants if they failed to hit targets, the report says.

It also says the local government families should sign direct contracts with the Treasury, the one body that could drive a coherent devolution of power.

This would address one of the potential problems for Total Place – but would effectively sideline the Department of Communities and Local Government.

The report praises the Greater London Authority (GLA) as one model of devolution, although it does not explore the many tensions between the GLA and the London boroughs.

The report also does not address how the Treasury might feel about devolving power to a patchwork quilt of voluntary partnerships that could, the report implies, come and go over time.

No longer a standard operating procedure

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:58:00 GMT

The role of modern management in the transformation of GCHQ, by Sir David Pepper, formerly the director of the Government Communications Headquarters

The end of the Cold War, the growth of international terrorism and the arrival and subsequent explosive growth of the internet radically changed the environment in which GCHQ, UK's Signals Intelligence (Signit) agency, had to operate. Recognition of these pressures led GCHQ to begin a wide-ranging change programme in the late 1990s.

It included not only technology but also deep change in business processes, leadership and culture. A critically important feature of these changes has been the adoption, and when necessary adaptation, of a wide range of management techniques taken from the private sector.

The intelligence world, by its very nature, is shrouded in secrecy. Little is said in public about the management of intelligence agencies and of the processes they use.

However, their business is complex and requires careful management if they are to be effective, properly accountable and secure.

Signals intelligence in particular demands sophisticated managerial techniques, because it involves advanced technology, large numbers of people, enormous volumes of data, and large amounts of intelligence output – a combination that cannot be managed casually.

Policy administration has undergone a radical transformation in response to fundamental changes in the geopolitical and technological environment in which it operates.

As a result, it is now well equipped for the challenges of the 21st century. One important feature of the transformation has been the adoption of a wide range of managerial practices and techniques from the private sector – a marked change from its previous approach.

Before the transformation process began, the GCHQ culture was very much a product of the Cold War, and of the Civil Service culture of that period. It was a static organisation, essentially because its main target, the Soviet Union, was static; in 1990 the basic structure had not changed for 30 years, and organisational change was regarded as a major venture.

The organisation was also very inward looking. It made little or no use of external management techniques, but relied upon a long tradition of home-grown methods. This too became a real disadvantage as the pace of change increased.

Drivers of change

At the start of the 1990s, the Cold War was ending and GCHQ's world had begun to change. Not only did the all-embracing intelligence requirements on the Soviet Union disappear, but even requirements for classic military intelligence on the new Russia diminished rapidly.

So large parts of the organisation, and much of the knowledge in people's heads, became redundant.

In place of the USSR, GCHQ faced increasingly volatile requirements on a host of new subjects – such as the proliferation of weapons, both conventional and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the narcotics trade, people smuggling, and eventually international terrorism on a new scale.

There were demands to support military operations in new places, such as the Balkans. These changes posed a major challenge for an organisation that had no experience of radical change, and for managers who had learned their trade in a relatively slowly-changing environment.

Communications structures before the internet can be thought of as fixed networks in which any 'message' (telephone call, fax, or data transmission) travelled over a single identifiable path between two communicators. Internet technology, on the other hand, relies upon a complex and frequently changing global network in which there are many routes between any two points; and it breaks every 'message' (a term which now includes emails and web-browsing sessions) down into a series of small packets, which travel independently over the network, with different packets able to take different routes, before being reassembled by the intended recipient.

This change requires an entirely different technical approach by interceptors, who can no longer rely upon having fixed paths for the messages they seek. It was immediately apparent in the late 1990s that GCHQ would have to embark upon a major redesign of its technology.

But technology was only part of the answer. Careful examination of the way the internet operates, and of the way its users behave, brought about the realisation that what was needed was not just a new technical infrastructure, or even new organogram, but a radically different type of organization.

GCHQ had to be able to cope with the fact that virtually all its targets were now using the same technology, and that techniques developed against one target were likely to be of direct relevance to many others. This insight led to the initiation in late 1997 of a wide-ranging change programme, involving many aspects of culture and business process.

The need was in due course multiplied by the dramatically increasing pace of technology change that the open nature of the internet facilitated, and again by the mobile telephony revolution.

The changes that GCHQ had already achieved, enabled it to respond to these new demands; but this response involved yet further radical rethinking of its business processes – in order, for example, to accelerate its own pace of technology development.

Over the early years of the new millennium there were yet more events and environmental factors that demanded a response: 9/11 and the London bombings, the Iraq and Afghan wars. All these served to produce further destabilisation in GCHQ's environment, and forced more (and more radical) rethinking of the way the agency operated.

The changes needed

The full story of the transformation would require a much longer article. It involved not just a huge technology programme, but also structured work over several years to develop new business processes and a new culture, a new building to enable those changes, and the governance structure and leadership skills to drive them.

It will be helpful to an understanding of the context for the main subject of this article to list some of the internal changes that were identified as necessary. This is a heavily summarized list of my top 10:

• The ability to manage large-scale change – something in which GCHQ had no real track record

• Greater agility and flexibility, to cope with a volatile world instead of a static one

• More knowledge sharing – because most targets were now using the same technology

• Better resource use – because the demands were growing faster than any likely growth in the budget

• Better planning and better delivery – for the same reason

• Better management of the IT infrastructure – because the systems were getting too complex for the current control methods to cope

• Faster and more efficient development of new technology, to keep pace with the pace of change in the IT world

• The ability to manage complex programmes that combined technology and business change

• New approaches to customer service – because in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraqi WMD story, Sigint customers began to expect and need a different relationship with intelligence producers

• Better leadership – to lead the organisation in a world in which dynamic change had become the norm.

Achieving these changes required the use of a wide range of techniques. Key elements of the transformation process have required the adoption of commercial best practice, ranging from corporate governance and HR to high tech-nology.

In no case did we find that this adoption was impossible, although on occasion we decided that benefits would not justify the effort required. In some cases minor adaptations have been required, and in a few cases the adaptations have been deeper, but the process of working them out invariably illuminated the underlying management issues.

GCHQ's non-execs and other external advisers have played a crucial role in the learning process.

Looking back, it is apparent that once the mindset changed, the scope for this approach became enormous. The first reaction to a serious management problem is no longer 'we have to invent a solution' but rather 'someone somewhere must have solved this already' – and our experience has been that these adopted solutions have done more for us than those we invented for ourselves.

Sir David Pepper Formerly the director of GCHQ

• This is an edited extract from: The Business of Sigint, The Role of Modern Management in the Transformation of GCHQ

Dealing in futures

SA Mathieson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:09:00 GMT

Shrinking budgets and increased demand will lead to a crunch in service delivery unless the government can find a way to bridge the gap. Roundtable experts suggest ways to cope with the crisis. SA Mathieson reports

In future, government departments will have to do more with the same resources or less. In the short term, the recession and the vast financial contributions made to the banks have contributed to this. But there are also other longer-term trends which are impacting on government spending.

These include an ageing population demanding more services, the need to adapt infrastructure to cope with climate change and the requirement to improve the skills of Britain's workers.

When faced with a financial crunch, some countries have carried out complete reviews of what central government should, and should not, do. One participant in the Guardian's recent roundtable discussion – sponsored by Capgemini – on the government department of the future said that Canada had used such a review to halve transport spending, while actually increasing budgets in some other areas.

But closing services outright is politically dangerous. One participant, whose organisation had recently cut a significant proportion of its posts and pared back services, had received up to 10 hate mails a day for doing so: "The level of vitriol from the public staggered me." This was for a service it would be hard to describe as vital to people's lives.

The speaker added that sharing data on individuals across government could improve efficiency – but politicians are not brave enough. However, retailers' strategy of researching then segmenting customers into groups, then offering a tailored service based on segment, is an option which the organisation has started to exploit.

Segmentation has been used elsewhere in government. One London borough with a large number of poorly skilled people found that some unemployed women were well educated but could not find childcare – thus suggesting a way to help that group.

Others were recent immigrants from countries where women did not tend to work, and therefore needed different types of assistance.

The technique could also help in avoiding general targets that manage to please almost no one. One speaker said that the requirement that GPs see patients within 48 hours pleased neither the people with urgent conditions who wanted to see a doctor the same day, nor those with chronic complaints who were happy to book days in advance.

However, several participants had severe doubts about segmentation. "The drive to personalised services is right in some cases, but we can't provide it across government," said one. For example, similar standards of education have to be available to all, otherwise voters will rightly complain that their children's education is being neglected at the expense of others.

Highly problematic

Britain's public sector has been built on providing uniform "one-size-fits-all" services for very good reasons, another argued: it is fair. Corrupt countries provide individuals with highly personalised services – based on whether or not they are in favour. The idea that tax collection policies should be based on customer segmentation, rather than purely on how much they earn, is highly problematic: "If you begin to lose that, you begin to lose trust in public services."

Furthermore, companies can place potential customers into segments which they decide they will not serve at all, because it would not be profitable. "I work in the public service for a reason – I want to serve the public, all of them," one speaker said.

If segmentation and personalisation have only limited capacity to improve efficiency, how about devolving power? The United Kingdom is one of the most centralised states in the developed world, speakers agreed.

One participant noted that the United States leaves the profoundly important decision of whether or not to execute criminals up to its constituent states. Another pointed out that Denmark's local authorities collect that nation's taxes, although the rules are set nationally.

Several speakers felt that local authorities sometimes tend to be micromanaged by government departments. One speaker, referring to some national responsibilities that will shortly be transferred to councils, paraphrased ministers' attitude as being "they will do what they are told, won't they?"

But giving local authorities significant responsibilities for the state sector in their areas could make government more manageable. Some central departments employ hundreds of thousands of staff dealing with tens of millions of clients, a scale with which the best companies struggle to deal.

Some speakers argued that councils already tend to be more efficient; both through rate capping and highly visible taxes, many have already made big structural changes to save money, unlike many Whitehall departments.

Furthermore, local authorities can provide a politically acceptable way of tailoring services, by adapting national policies to local conditions. Councils are also a good place for innovation: it is better to experiment with new ideas on a small scale in one locality, allow them to develop for a few years and slowly introduce them more widely if they work, than introduce them quickly across the country before they have matured.

One participant sounded a warning note, saying that some areas have low aspirations which need to be challenged: "They have been used to relying on a lot of local low-skilled jobs," such as a single large industrial employer. That can lead to few people going to university, and disaster if the big employer closes. "There is a level of complacency at the local level," at least at some local authorities.

But one participant argued that keeping local authorities on a tight lead undermines them. "One of the enemies of strong leadership is the partnership soup in which we constantly swim," the speaker said.

"What would be of assistance would be some genuine autonomy for local government."

"There are very few areas, apart from defence, that you could say, 'that has to be done by central government'," observed another participant.

Some progress is being made through the Total Place programme, which sees government departments and councils brokering agreements on local solutions for an area's problems. Four of the current projects focus on reducing crime, and this may include the option of keeping short-stay prisoners in local prisons. Keeping them close to their families and prospective jobs should help greatly with their rehabilitation.

But such innovation, vital though it may be to the future of government, can raise the ire of some newspapers. Anything that seems to involve treating prisoners well, even if it looks likely to reduce recidivism, or sending fewer to prison in the first place, despite the huge cost of accommodation, is likely to generate an attack to which ministers feel obliged to respond.

Others felt the financial crisis will provide a strong justification for changing the way things work. "It's possible to imagine that, given we have got to take 20% out [of budgets] over the next three or four years, that we, politically and managerially, will be a bit bolder," said one speaker.

In general, the participants felt that the government department of the future should be braver in experimenting, may well devolve some responsibilities to local government and will consider private sector techniques such as market segmentation – although it should not introduce these slavishly.

Transparency

Finally, it should be less secretive and more accountable. "We often talk about citizens as people we do things to, or deliver things for," rather than as people who increasingly want to help form policies, complained one participant. Ignoring this trend would be akin to a group of Luddites having a roundtable meeting at the start of the industrial revolution without discussing powered looms.
This secrecy is partly caused by the constitutional convention which says that departments are merely the instruments of ministers. "I thought when I went from local to central government, it would be the same just bigger, but it isn't," said one participant.

"I don't work for parliament in the way I used to work for the council." Working directly for an individual minister, rather than for parliament means civil servants feel they are "completely invisible" and that can lead to poor value for money, because decisions are taken behind closed doors.

Taking civil servants away from secretaries of state and giving them to parliament would be the crucial constitutional step. "Then we would find out whether we really are bold. We think we are bold and we have a tendency to blame politicians for not being bold. But that's because we're never held to account, because we're not constitutionally able to be."

Another speaker added that it made no sense for politicians and the press to threaten civil servants with what they will do to them after the next election. "How crazy is it going to be to attempt the biggest transformation of British public service delivery in 150 years, while effectively driving out half of the people who might want to lead it?"

• For the report on Department of the Future, click here

SA Mathieson

Overlapping interests

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:06:00 GMT

Total Place is a new initiative to examine how cutting out duplication in public service delivery can improve quality and reduce costs. But is this really a 'magic bullet' solution? Mark Smith reports

A Whitehall initiative in 1972 attempted to examine the total resources used in six cities, and to come up with a plan to "transform" them.

The thinking was that only a root and branch review of local government expenditure would have the necessary scope to find innovative solutions to streamlining government services, promote partnership working and, crucially, save money.

Nearly four decades later, on the brink of deep public sector spending cuts, policymakers are again attempting to squeeze efficiency and surplus cash from "the umpteenth weighing of a pig", as Total Place has been called.

The aim is to identify and account for all public resources being deployed in the pilot areas, and then spend an extra £5m to see how they can be better managed.

Each is focusing on one small area of spending, hoping to identify lessons that can be applied more widely.

At the heart of Sir Michael Bichard's brainchild is a drive towards partnership working – finding out where agencies and services overlap, and how they can make early interventions to reduce long-term service costs.

A recent roundtable discussion convened by the Guardian, in collaboration with local strategic partnership Be Birmingham and the Audit Commission, asked whether the Total Place initiative could be the "magic bullet" the public sector needs to dig itself out of a spending black hole, without a collapse in local service provision.

The debate kicked off with the assertion that Total Place must have legs as an idea, because senior public sector managers are already dampening down expectations. The table first heard an account of the Birmingham pilot, where £7.5bn of public sector cash had been mapped out. "The idea was to follow the money, and see where it led us," a participant explained. "Families are facing a range of issues, some not interconnected, but the challenge was to dismiss short-term thinking to analyse the £7.5bn coming into Birmingham every year."

One way in which collaborative thinking is being put into practice in Birmingham is with the approach to drug and alcohol abuse and mental health. By focusing on preventive measures, Birmingham could save £400m over 15 years, according to US research. Hospitals have been trialling specific units for patients with alcohol related problems, where they can be given preventive treatment, with co-ordinated interventions from across a range of agencies.

Figures from the police reveal that a single murder costs around £1.1m in services, from investigation to the legal and social services work, so the scale of preventive cost savings – especially in reducing gang violence, for example – is parallel with the moral gains.

Changing the culture

It was raised, however, that any savings made are hard to quantify. "It's a completely different way of working," said one participant. "The focus needs to be on changing the culture and behaviour within public services, rather than fixating on financial outcomes."

For example, in Britain's many two-tier authorities, which authority should take the lead?

Total Place had failed to provide a satisfactory answer so far, it was agreed, though there was also consensus that Whitehall needed to let go if the initiative was to reach its full potential.

One participant said, perhaps only slightly in jest, that if Total Place had any real ambitions, then the first thing it should do was change its name – which an incoming Tory government would probably do. This opened the debate to the political dimensions of Total Place.

"If it is to happen nationally, it will have to be forced through politically. One thing politicians are good at is passing laws, and civil servants are good at being told what to do. If it was left up to the civil service to make these changes, we'd still be talking about it in four years' time."

This statement was greeted by a mixture of knowing smiles and blank faces around the table.

Kent, one of the other pilot areas for Total Place, was discussed in terms of the progress made and the opportunities still to be taken. Kent, a two-tier authority with a £10bn budget, now has a single phone number and single web portal for all local government services. Getting even this far, however, has proved an uphill struggle, and more challenges lie in wait. An audit was done recently on all county and district council properties, and the result was "embarrassing".

"Ask yourself a simple question: are we using these buildings efficiently? I mean, just think of all the separate reception areas."

A note of caution was struck about the widespread belief that increased efficiency and streamlining of services is the solution to the spending cuts. One participant insisted: "If any of the forecasts of the kind of spending cuts we expect are in the right ballpark, then there's no way it can be done simply through efficiency measures. It might have to come down to who gets it, and who doesn't."

Another participant added: "We've been hearing the phrase 'more for less' an awful lot, but the truth might be 'less for less'."

Evidence base

A key milestone in assessing the impact made by the Total Place trials will come early in December with the publication of the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA).

The CAA is the new Audit Commission framework for the independent assessment of local public services in England, and replaces the Comprehensive Performance Assessment. "The CAA marks a huge culture step forward," said one delegate. "In December we'll be able to review the results of an assessment based on local priorities, focusing on all the public services in an area, rather than just the work of councils. It provides the basic framework for a real assessment of service delivery across the board."

But after all this time, can it be right that the government still wants more research and evidence about how it is spending taxpayers' money?

One participant said: "As a society, we are weak on evidence-based policy-making. Much more serious consequence analysis is needed. Public services fail a lot of people at the moment, in quite serious ways. "An interesting point was raised about the hot-potato issue of risk: can we now have a serious conversation about whether it is worth trying to cut down on risk to the most vulnerable children, if that results in unwanted outcomes for the huge majority?

One participant asked: "How can we measure success or failure in a more intelligent way? What we are unable to do is weigh up the risk to all the other children of putting such tight regulations in place to save that one child. What wider effect is that actually having? Part of the problem is that we can't have that conversation."

There was some concern about using spending figures on individuals and households to inform the debate, for fear that unpalatable truths could throw a spanner in the works of innovation. If we, as citizens, find out how much money our public bodies are spending, will we be horrified? The fact that 80% of social care spending goes to just 3% of families is not widely known. "Will the middle classes hijack spending and demand more?" asked a participant.

"That's the kind of conversation district councils need to have, but there's a danger people might think they're not getting value. It's difficult to create language to engage the public about how we're making tax pounds go further."

Perhaps a more fundamental question for public service reform is where to draw the boundaries – literally, the geographic boundaries. Roads, transport and many other public services go across existing political borders. Delegates spoke of forming relationships that transcend district boundaries, but that still leaves the question of which geographical level innovations are best suited to Total Place's innovations.

"We all assume there are impermeable administrative boundaries, but roads have a terrible habit of carrying on beyond these. At what geographic unit is it most effective to make decisions on transport infrastructure? It's certainly not at a county council level. It has to be at a regional/sub-regional level."

The debate is still raging. As one participant put it, there is a big fear that Total Place is yet another exercise in the public sector talking to itself". But at least it's talking.

• The roundtable report commissioned and controlled by the Guardian. Discussion hosted to a brief agreed with Be Birmingham and the Audit Commission

Viewing information as a strategic asset

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Recognising data as a strategic asset and not a toxic liability requires a step-change in information strategy

There's a plethora of Government-produced papers and media-hype about the importance of information management within the public sector and how data needs to be used and seen as a strategic asset.

Many of these reports risk subverting public sector organisations away from the operational efficiency programme. A rush to cut costs could make these organisations lose sight of their need to be forward-thinking.

Private sector businesses already use business analytics to gain useful customer insight, develop new revenue streams and scrutinise their business models. As these businesses become more agile and innovative, they become more successful.

The same business analytics tools will also enable public sector organisations to implement a proactive approach by using information management as a strategic asset, which will help enable operational efficiency and effectiveness across government – from preventative health and welfare services through to public safety and security.

Most public sector information management strategies are still in the early stages of the 'information evolution' cycle. Organisations that focus only on compliance with legal and regulatory requirements are condemned to a continual cycle of reactive "fail-and-fix". Cultures should change to use existing data for insight and enable the sector to "predict-and-prevent."

Public sector bodies require a step-change in their information management strategies if they are to continue their overall transformational agenda.

There is a mounting pressure for the public sector as a whole to reduce its costs. However, any cost-cutting efforts cannot be made at the expense of public service delivery. These organisations need to work smarter – both more efficiently and effectively.

Identifying good costs and bad costs

The Government's Operational Efficiency report on public spending and reporting in May suggests that too many public sector organisations cannot differentiate between essential 'good costs' and the expendable 'bad costs'.

Good costs can be investments in technologies that address underlying problems, for example, and are the building blocks of a true information management strategy and the foundation of citizen-centric services.

The gap between increased demands and reduced budgets in the public sector is growing, and the only way for organisations to bridge it is to transform the way they manage their most under-utilised asset: information.

Visibility in information management: go beyond efficiency

Visibility of data and processes is essential for any government organisation to successfully transform and is a theme running through the many government reports this year, including:

* Audit Commission - In the Know

* Knowledge Council - Information Matters

* Transformational Government Review – Central Government

* The Cabinet Office - The Power of Information

* National Audit Office - Strategic Procurement / Procurement Capability Review

* Operational Efficiency Report – Central Government

Lessons from best practice

Increasingly, private sector organisations are taking their core data, integrating it across existing silos of information and then analysing it to gain insight into their business and customers. This insight helps them understand past performance and customer behaviour amongst many other trends and will help them communicate the right messages to the right audience. These practices are positive steps towards helping elevate organisations to positions of excellence and leadership.

One example is Vodafone. The company needed a central reporting system, which brings together measurement data from a wide range of sources. Business Analytics makes the necessary information available to the relevant people, on which they can base sound business decisions. Government departments use business analytics to make evidence-based decisions.

Business analytics – the public sector possibilities

There are beginning to be a number of visionary uses of business analytics solutions in the public sector – one of which is the NHS Information Centre (NHS IC), England's authoritative, independent source of health and social care information. Business Analytics is enabling the NHS IC to clean, manage and analyse information held on disparate systems more efficiently.

It also automates information management and sharing across the different trusts around the country, which informs better local decision-making.

London Fire Brigade (LFB) uses business analytics to decrease the number of fire incidents and save the lives of London's residents. Predictive analytics helps the LFB to prioritise the allocation of fire prevention resources because it can predict and pin-point specific households most at risk of fire to prevent fires before they occur.

Business Analytics has allowed the London Fire Brigade to move away from allocating resources based purely on historical data.

Predict-and-prevent is a sustainable method for on-going improvement benefits, but business analytics can also improve best practices for internal compliance in the short-term. It can help report against benchmarks and targets; detect and stop fraud; and comply with a range of regulations that govern public sector operations.

Business analytics provides a quick return on investment – it can provide analysis and insight in a short time frame. In addition, there is no requirement to rip-and-replace, because business analytics works across any application, hardware or operating system.

The need for a cultural shift

A culture that values information as highly as people, property and pounds could have a significant difference: Data Connects estimates that poor customer data quality costs each Local Authority on average more than £1m every year – so fixing this data quality imbalance could have a significant financial benefit, for example more effective debt management, debt collection, and reducing avoidable contact (NI14).

In addition to financial benefits, better information management could help to prevent future social costs, such as Baby P, Victoria Climbie, Soham and Shipman.

A positive cultural transformation will stop information being locked away and not used. Once data is viewed as a strategic asset, not a toxic liability, organisations can finally navigate with 20:20 vision and foresight. The more sustainable approach of valuing information must be embedded into an organisation's strategy and DNA – from the top-down.

To achieve this, the excellent approaches developed by organisations such as the Knowledge Council and the Audit Commission must be widely and rapidly deployed throughout the public sector.

Richard Broad is head of public sector at SAS UK

A Totally new animal

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:07:00 GMT

The latest attempt to improve local services, Total Place, promises 'a whole new animal', claim enthusiasts. But it could be hamstrung unless Whitehall plays ball

Jon Rouse, chief executive of the London borough of Croydon, said recently that many people still viewed the latest local services initiative, Total Place, as nothing more than "the umpteenth weighing of the proverbial pig" [Click here for an account of a previous initiative in the 1970s]. They believed measurement, rather than genuine change, was the order of the day, he admitted.

But Rouse, as the leader of one of the 13 areas piloting Total Place, remains optimistic that bringing together local bodies in an individual area can identify wasteful duplication, and allow services to be delivered more coherently and more cheaply.

Doing so is vital if local bodies are to get more control over public spending, experts say. "Analysis alone doesn't help [devolution]," says Steve Beet, head of local government for accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers, "but it gives confidence at the centre."

And as central government struggles to get the budget deficit under control, it will be looking to local councils to cut costs – and sharply.

"The point is the scale of change [needed]," says John Atkinson, the head of the Leadership Centre for Local Government, which is running the pilots. "The scale of potential financial difference is that strong, that the way to get at it requires looking at things really quite differently."

The pilots have just submitted their interim findings, and will in February next year present full reports to be fed into the budget. Each is focusing on just one small area of spending, hoping to identify lessons that can be applied more widely.

In the Manchester city region pilot, more than a dozen local bodies are looking at how to improve services for the under-fives. Katherine Fairclough, a director at Wigan Council, says "a lot" of different groups deal with very young children – health visitors, social workers, midwives, voluntary groups – and their work must be joined up.

So what does she expect the pilot to identify? "The least you should expect is co-location and joint working," Fairclough says. At the moment, that's limited to health and social services workers, but she wants fire and police officers involved as well.

The pilot could break down professional barriers, she says. "The other end, which is not well tested, is whether you could have generic professionals who could do a whole range of interventions." Outsourcing council services is also "clearly on the agenda", she says, although there is "no blueprint" in mind.

More ambitiously, Fairclough envisages a forum in which the heads of local bodies would jointly take procurement decisions. That doesn't have to go as far as pooling budgets – "but they come together to commission services".

Lost in transmission gaps

Up the M62 in Bradford, the pilot organisations are tackling what could be called 'lost in transmission' gaps – young offenders leaving prison, elderly people coming out of hospital, young people leaving care.

Becky Hellard, Bradford's director of corporate services, would, like Fairclough, be happy to see an overarching body commissioning services – but points out that handing over control of spending "does have implications for individual democratic organisations".

And, she warns: "Local government is used to working in partnership. It is not used to challenging central government.

"The big question in our mind is, when we challenge DWP [the Department for Work and Pensions], will it [the devolution of power] happen? When we challenge the Home Office, will it happen?"

Total Place may create winners and losers, she adds. A new way of delivering services could save the probation service £2m – but cost the local council £1m. "How do you get this real pooling across different agendas?" Hellard asks.

Beet admits such spending decisions are "a real dilemma" for the Treasury.

"There's a really important role here for the Treasury spending teams to say to Department A, 'Actually, we are going to increase your budget by a certain amount,' and at the same time, say to Department B, 'We're going to decrease your budget, because this other department is going to do things that will affect your area.'"

Some central targets will have to be reformed, Atkinson adds – so that, for example, the heads of health trusts can be fired for not collaborating properly with councils on teenage pregnancy, not just for missing their MRSA targets.

Then there's the eternal question of accountability, of how ministers, always in the firing line when things go wrong, can be persuaded to hand over control.

He admits that Whitehall must "play ball" or the pilots will fail, but points to the "active" involvement of a group of senior government officials, chaired by Sir Michael Bichard – and a ministerial group bringing together the Treasury, the Cabinet Office and Communities and Local Government – as proof of high-level support.

Total Place is, says Atkinson, "apolitical", equally important to Labour and Conservatives. "There is no doubt from both of them that this is exactly what we have to do."

Rouse agrees. In a recent newspaper column, he said either party would pursue "an almost identical agenda" at the local level. Pleading for Total Place to be given a chance, he added: "We might start by weighing a pig, but we might end up with a whole new animal."

Less is more in the Total Place world

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:01:00 GMT

Taking an inward view is no longer a viable option, to reduce costs and improve services organisations must collaborate more, as the success of Calling Cumbria shows and the new Total Place initiative

The announcement of Total Place in April this year, following on from the success of Calling Cumbria, was timely and welcome.

However, subsequent reports expressed concerns about the approach, its funding and administration. A fundamental question is why so much effort and attention has been directed at seamless service delivery in recent years, with so little apparent progress or sustained improvement.

There are many factors that discourage organisations from collaborating and inhibit seamless service delivery.

As long as individual organisations have their own diminishing 'pots' from which they are expected to deliver more and meet stringent performance and efficiency targets, they will tend to take an inward and short-term view.

There are exceptions, though, such as the Department of Health and Steria's joint venture, NHS SBS, which provides operational efficiency financial, accounting and payroll services to more than 100 primary care trusts, and has been a proven success. However, as a whole, shared service delivery through a more joined-up approach in the UK public sector has been meagre.

Technology is a key enabler of joint working; but it is not enough on its own. Most public sector organisations have more technology than they need or can manage efficiently. What is really needed is less, more consolidated and integrated technology, deployed effectively to simplify processes, allow more agile working and generate a better return on investment.

The less-is-more argument applies equally to governance and intervention, as the public sector is overwhelmed by frameworks and initiatives to monitor, measure and regulate its every move.

This amount of top-down control tends to inhibit innovation, driving instead an inward-looking culture of compliance in which the objective is just to 'tick the box'. What is needed is a different set of behaviours and a culture more focused on outcomes for citizens across public services, as opposed to the performance of individual silos. Total Place is looking like it may be the answer.

Challenging the prevailing attitudes and behaviours of an organisation or sector is neither quick nor easy, but is a necessary part of breaking through boundaries and joining up services.

Unfortunately, talk of shared vision, engagement and culture has become devalued and devoid of real meaning through over-use; everyone has vision statements, strategies and plans but it's all too easy to hide behind the words and carry on working in the same old way.

Nonetheless, the principles of effective change management still hold good, as people do need to feel involved if they are to be convinced to let go of long-held beliefs and behaviours.

Top-down change, even with strong and charismatic leadership, is rarely successful on its own in the longer term, as people tend to revert to old habits once the pressure is off.

Calling Cumbria appears to have been one of the first local leadership programmes to have really worked and there are a number of success factors that characterise and set it apart form other initiatives aimed at joining up public services.

These are all interrelated, but seem to come down to: fostering the right environment through openness and the opportunity to engage the community about what really matters to them; encouraging people to set aside their organisational identities and the institutionalised assumptions of one group about another; creating a collective identity which harnesses the energy and commitment of people proud of their place and of public services.

Although it's still too early to claim any headline-grabbing outcomes, Calling Cumbria provides a genuinely inspiring glimpse of the possibilities of cross-organisation collaboration reshaping local services to make them more responsive and tailored to local needs.

Such public sector partnership working is at the heart of Total Place, but can an initiative mandated from the top down create the environment, energy or commitment that true collaboration requires?

Initially the programme attracted comment for its apparently heavy-handed, bureaucratic approach and emphasis on spend and value for money, rather than services designed around the citizen and local communities. However, progress since then, as the pilots choose their themes and galvanise themselves into action, suggest that this is not just another Whitehall initiative.

In Calling Cumbria, much effort and energy was put in at a local level in order to understand and reach mutual agreement on issues and priorities, redefining customer interfaces and interactions. Facilitating this work will be key to the success of Total Place and there are encouraging signs that this is happening, as central and local government agencies pitch in together and the energy on the ground matches the political will for change at the top.

Jo Preece is a business consultant at Steria