The Four Threats To Public Service Reform

Here’s a fun, blog post experiment with a pretty audacious goal: let’s all progress the reform of public services.

In this week’s post I want to outline what I think are the four main threats to public service reform and by pooling our collective brain power I think we can come up with some effective suggestions. Then in next week’s post I’ll outline some solutions. At that point we should probably notify the appropriate authorities that we've fixed everything and it will be put right. Sound good? Don’t forget to comment below on the blog, reach me on Twitter, or on my email of matthew.gardiner@traffordhousingtrust.co.uk – otherwise I’m going to have my work cut out!

The current government have delivered a fairly consistent narrative on the subject of public service reform. Their philosophy has been to decentralise and put the power and control in the hands of the communities. The reason for this is that they maintain that it is the people – not the politicians or the professional classes – who are the ones who best know what works. The logic runs that it is only by harnessing consumer forces that reform can be achieved, much as the recent Social Market Foundation report stated.

As an aside the biggest potential threat to achieving real change is that we have a government that is nearly half way through its term of office – and they have many things on their plate. Top of their list has to be the worsening economy – the dreaded double-dip recession is here and no commentators I’ve seen suggest the unemployment figures this month were anything other than a slight pause in the overall increase. The Government says it has started to make the necessary changes needed for public service reform - which is a fair assessment. But, at the very time when their continued promotion of public service reform will be needed more than ever, might they just find that there are more important things to ensure electoral success and quietly retire from the fray leaving a part-done job?

I’m not sure there’s much we can do on this issue, other than hope that they screw their courage to the sticking-place and carry on. Assuming they do, then there are four key problems that must be solved and it's these that I would like your thoughts on:

1) The culture of commissioners who hide behind procurement "rules" and strip out cost at the expense of long-term value. What needs to be done to change that mindset?
 
2) The vested interests of the current cohort of providers whose business models are profoundly threatened by such a change. Is there really appetite for a more market-driven public service sector, where organisations that run out of road no longer get thrown a lifeline?

3) The short-termist goals pursued by the profit driven, private sector organisations who are the new default delivery model. Does the claimed efficiency that they bring really make the profits they take out a fair exchange for the public purse?

4) The asymmetry of information - with the public being handed the purchasing power, but told nothing (other than perhaps the most rudimentary cost data) to enable them to assess the value of alternative choices. How do we make those choices more informed?

These are four supertanker-sized ships, at risk of powering in all the wrong directions. How do we stop them and set them on the right course? How would you address them?