Category: Public administration

The NAO casts doubt on Universal Credit

The critical report on Universal Credit from the National Audit Office arrived during the Jewish New Year, so it’s taken me longer than usual to get round to it.  The progress towards UC has been slow.  The IT pilots are too limited to indicate whether they are capable of a national roll-out; the iterative, ‘agile’ approach was untested.  The oversight from the DWP has been inadequate, the process was not transparent and it was not put to the test.  Planning, process and project management were all wanting.

While none of this is unexpected, the report does not go as far as it might.  The key problems in IT are not just the product of poor implementation; they reflect a fundamental failure to understand the nature of the activity they were supposed to address.  When I was first asked about the scheme in the media, nearly three years ago, now, I argued that no computer could possibly do what the government was asking it to do.  More than 45 years ago, Richard Titmuss attacked ‘computermania’ and the folly of ‘expecting the computer to solve the problems which human beings have not yet adequately diagnosed’.  There is hardly a word of his critique that does not apply to Universal Credit.  He pointed to the complexity of family lives, the lack of common characteristics, and the particular difficulties of applying general rules oto the working age population.  He pointed out the problems employers would have in collating information, esepcially on information beyond the workplace, and the difficulty of coordinating benefits and tax.  And he emphasised, above all, that the rules and principles governing benefits called for issues of ‘moral values, incentives and equity’ to be taken into account.  “Computers cannot answer these questions.”  (It’s all in a well-known essay, “Universal and selective social services”, in Commitment to Welfare.)

For the rest, of course, it’s been obvious for some time that the implementation was not going well.  The procedure was never ‘agile’.   The secretive nature of the process  meant that even the most basic mistakes weren’t picked up.    The chaotic movement of civil servants is the predictable outcome of a project that no-one could be happy about.

Charities and charismatic leadership

The announcement, that some chief executives of major charities have high salaries, didn’t come as a great surprise.  Charles Moore, writing in the Daily Telegraph, attacked charity chiefs in general, but he also opined:  “Large charities need professional competence and charismatic leadership.”

The cult of the charismatic CEO does have its place.  Half of the activity undertaken by CEOs, possibly more, is outward facing – negotiations with the government, approaches to funders, speaking to the media and representation of the charity’s case.  ‘Charisma’ can help; for example, there are CEOs who can talk money down from the trees.  That’s a great skill to have, but it’s got nothing to do with ‘leadership’.  Whether leadership is about vision, direction, inspiration or motivation, that’s not what the CEO of a very large organisation generally does.

There are some outstandingly charismatic, competent individuals who work in the third sector, but they are not necessarily senior officers.  There are youth workers who can relate to, motivate and inspire young people who are disheartened, excluded and disengaged.  Community  work relies heavily on people who can inspire and motivate others to work together – in France, the task is sometimes called ‘animation’.   Neither of those professions commands the sort of salary that these rare  talents apparently justify.   I wonder why that is?

Putting money in the wrong bucket

A bequest left by a former nurse has embarrassed senior politicians.  She directed that her money should be used by the government of the day ‘as they see fit’.  Her solicitors misinterpreted the will and sent the bequest to the political parties that were in power.  Following public exposure, the coalition partners have agreed that the money should go to the Treasury, where it will disappear into general funds.

I doubt there is a local authority or a hospital trust anywhere in Britain that would have acted in the same way.  It is a standard principle in British public administration that public bodies can only act in accordance with the powers they hold within the law.  In most circumstances, that means that money can only be spent in ways that have been specified by law,  but there is an important exception.  Where funds become available that are not subject to those constraints, they can be used on a discretionary basis, without direct restraints, subject to the general reservation  that the governing body is acting in trust for the benefit of the public.  Then the money can be used for the kind of thing that normal funding can’t  – prize competitions, pilot projects, public amenities, events, charitable art-works, donations, whatever.  The patterns of accounting vary, but local authorities and pubic trusts will almost always have an ultra vires fund, designated unrestricted funds, a charitable arm or a separate account, distinct from other funding, so that they can manage bequests, donations and the like appropriately.

The current government, by contrast, seems to have been nonplussed by the situation.   The parties’ first reaction was to accept the solicitor’s statement at face value; the second, to drop the embarrassing money, like a hot potato, into the nearest bucket.   It might be, of course, that the UK cabinet considers that they already have unlimited authority to use money in any way they please (if they did, they would be mistaken).  It might be that they couldn’t think of anything better to do with the bequest, which begs the question why anyone should donate money to the government  in the future.  I suspect there is another reason for the misunderstanding.  It rests in the dominance of a new political class , whose preparation for public  office relates entirely to Westminster politics, and who have no previous  background in public service.   If more of them had the relevant experience, they would known what to do with a routine donation.

More benefits to be administered by hand

It seems that the DWP is appointing 112 additional staff to administer the benefit cap, a policy estimated to affect 40,000 people nationally. They will have to process the changes manually. The Independent attributes this to the failure to develop the new IT scheme for Universal Credit, but it’s not clear that if the system had been in place, it could have easily been adapted to do what the government hopes; the decision depends on lots of moving parts, including rent, family circumstances, the assessment of personal needs and income.

The problem is, bluntly, that decisions about the benefit system are being made on the basis that they look like a wizard wheeze that will make for good headlines; but when it comes to the dirty details of how to do things, the politicians can’t be bothered with the practicalities. This has been the pattern of a series of inept policies – the cuts in child benefit, procurement, IT commissioning, the Work Programme, the Universal Credit system itself. Nothing in the benefits system can be made to work on that basis.

"An historic culture of chasing targets"

I’m in the process of updating my textbook on Social Policy. Today I was putting together material on targets and performance indicators, when along came a prime specimen.

The report on Kent Police by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary provides a remarkable insight into the impact of targets on administrative practice. Some crimes are easier to resolve than others, so Kent Police had developed a practice of making sure that the easy crimes got the attention. They put the effort into clearing up cases of shoplifting and cannabis use, and recorded ‘no crime’ for some more difficult problems, including crimes of violence, burglary and rape. The Inspectors attribute this to ‘an historic culture of chasing targets’.

Later this week I’ll be looking at corruption and abuse of power, but of course I can’t expect anything new to happen there.

Leadership

My polemical paper on leadership (and why we shouldn’t be using the idea) has been selected as winner of last year’s ‘Outstanding Paper Award‘ in the International Journal of Public Sector Management. The article is on-line here and the publishers have told me that itis going to be available free for a year.

A typsescript of the paper is also available on the Robert Gordon University‘s open access repository.

The Work Programme hasn't got any better

The Commons Work and Pensions Committee has just published their report about the Work Programme, and I”ve been talking about it on Good Morning Wales.   There are problems in trying to get information about the way the system works, but those problems were entirely predictable.  The government was warned in previous reports, from the Office for Government Commerce and the National Audit Office, that sub-contracting arrangements made by the DWP lead to a basic loss of control and accountability; their response was to encourage a ‘black box’ where they asked for even less information about the process.

The report raises particular concerns about vulnerable groups who are not receiving support, but the evidence they describe is mainly focused on the mainstream groups, and the position is not good.  The prime contractors have failed to meet their targets, and the Committee argues for the bar to be lowered. The strategy followed by the contractors is not, however, one to be encouraged.  There is little indication of effective systems for individual support; caseworkers have 120-180 cases apiece, and the general approach seems to be that they throw anyone to hand at available jobs in the hope that someone will stick.  There is little involvement of sub-contractors – out of 348 organisations, 74 thought they were not part of the Work Programme and 45 had not yet had any referral.

The system is however saving money.  Part of that is money that the Government had made available for the contracts, which will not be paid; part is the effect of penal sanctions on unemployed people.

Public employment as a protection from poverty

Working in preparation for the budget, I’ve been looking at some stats from the OECD.  I was interested to find out to what extent  public sector employment could be thought of as a way of protecting the economy, and that led me to the nearest approximation I could find,  “Employment in general government and public corporations“.  The figures don’t show any clear relationship to economic performance, but I wondered if they might show a different kind of effect.  Here is a table tracking the OECD’s listings of public sector employment and child poverty.

Employment in general government and public corporations Poverty among children, %, late 2000s
Norway 29.3 5.5
Denmark 28.7 3.7
Sweden 26.2 7
Finland 22.9 5.2
France 21.9 9.3
Hungary 19.5 7.3
United Kingdom 17.4 13.2
Belgium 17.1 10
Canada 16.5 14.8
Israel 16.5 18.7
Australia 15.6 14
Ireland 14.8 11
United States 14.6 21.6
Italy 14.3 12.2
Czech Republic 12.8 8.8
Spain 12.3 17.2
Portugal 12.1 18.7
Netherlands 12.0 9.6
Austria 11.4 7.2
Turkey 11.0 23.5
New Zealand 9.8 12.2
Germany 9.6 8.3
Chile 9.1 24
Mexico 8.8 25.8
Greece 7.9 13.2
Japan 6.7 14.2

There are reasons not to trust the figures here – is child poverty in the UK only 13.2%? – and simple statistics can mislead, but a correlation of the two columns comes out on Excel at -0.56, which is unusually high for social data. It does look as though public sector employment and job creation in the public sector are key elements protecting people from poverty.

How not to choose a Chief Executive

Fife, where I live, is advertising for a new Chief Executive for the Council. According to the advertisement:

  • “We are looking for a driven and ambitious leader with a proven record as a strategic thinker and change manager.”
  • “A key early task will be to ensure the smooth introduction of the integrated Social Care and Health model.”
  • “You will deepen the Council’s commitment to the values of Performance, Efficiency, Customer Care and Staff Empowerment …”

The first problem here is a misunderstanding of the role. The work of a Chief Executive is explained in a SOLACE report, Leadership United. Much of the work is about accountability to an elected council in a political environment. The Chief Executive is the key connection between councillors and the administration. The Chief Executive speaks for the council officers, and consequently much of the work of a Chief Executive is outward-facing, including external relations, relationships with other agencies and relationships with the public. Then there is management of the corporate team. Only a very limited part of the task is concerned directly with the internal performance of Council departments, and that is mainly done through established systems of accountability. The Chief Executive is not the main person responsible for integrating health and social services. The specification of this post is hopelessly misconceived.

The second problem is that they are looking for the wrong values. There is nothing here about public service, democratic governance, citizenship or rights. There is no expectation that a Chief Executive should listen to public concerns, or engage with them.

The third problem is a misstatement of the type of person they should be looking for. Driven? Ambitious? Are the Council looking for The Apprentice? I had occasion to comment yesterday about the missplaced emphasis on “leadership” in the NHS; the same pernicious doctrine has infected local authorities (and that would be my main criticism of the SOLACE report). In a democracy, the role of leadership properly belongs to elected authority. A Chief Executive is, first and foremost, a public servant, and anyone who doesn’t understand what that means shouldn’t be allowed within 300 metres of public responsibility.

The Francis Report

Although the situations considered in the Francis report are shocking, the situation they describe is all too familiar. The scandalous ill-treatment of patients was a recurring problem of long-stay institutions – reflected for example in Sans Everything (1967) and a string of scandals in mental institutions, detailed at length in J Martin, Hospitals in Trouble (1984), a book cited in this inquiry report. Nearly thirty five years ago, as a student, I was given an advance copy of the Normansfield report by Brian Abel-Smith; it described how patients were restricted and neglected, and the upper echelons of NHS management did nothing about it. David Ennals explained, in Parliament: “… the report makes clear that there were many people who knew just what the position was. Some of them were in positions of authority with power to act but they failed.” In other words, we have been here before. The main difference is that this time it’s in acute care.

Unfortunately, the Francis report does not point to the way out of the problems. There are some hard-hitting passages – given the findings, there had to be – but there’s an awful lot of words in between. At nearly 1800 pages, the report is rather badly written – indiscriminate, repetitive, with some slushy, mystical twaddle about leadership (the stuff about it being a quality of the ‘spirit’ is in there twice) and an 125-page “Executive Summary” (someone should have taken the learned chairman into a corner and explained what that phrase is supposed to mean). The review of evidence in volume 1 is generally good; Volume 2 spends several hundred pages reviewing what regulatory and supervisory agencies did not do, and is interminable; the review of general issues in volume 3 is long, prescriptive and often preachy. The sheer number of words guarantees however that it won’t be read.

The stuff on leadership presents the most obvious problem. This report uses the word more than 800 times, referring to leadership haphazardly whenever it wants to think about the position of people in charge, senior management, ward management, roles in professional settings, personal qualities, motivation, or relationships with juniors. The poisonous cult of leadership, and the assumption that people in charge should energetically push others to share their values and aims, is part of what’s created this mess in the first place. What the report is really describing is systemic failure, and systemic failure cannot be responded to through on an individualistic basis without gaps being left.