I've spent a few evenings reading through the Total Place pilot evaluation reports, and will write more about them over the next few days.
But to begin with, here's a list of the main problems they identify, most of which are cited time and again in the reports. Some arise from local failures and some from problems in central government.
Reading them, it's almost hard to imagine how anything works at all – and not at all hard to imagine how much waste and inefficiency there currently is.
Structural
- Organisations failing to share information and work together.
- Buck-passing between organisations.
- Targets pulling organisations in different directions.
- Different data collection methodologies, even when two agencies are working to the same target.
- The burden of inspection, evaluation and compliance regimes.
- Complexity in systems causing problems for the public and staff.
- Lack of co-ordination mechanisms at sub-council level.
Service delivery
- Limited flexibility to meet needs.
- Failure to fully analyse problems.
- Lack of prototyping in service design.
- Citizens forced to become experts to make the system work for them.
- Failure to fully and effectively evaluate services.
- Too many unsatisfactory contacts with the public.
- A focus on administering a service rather than problem solving.
- Lack of continuity in relationships between citizens and public sector employees.
- Poor at dealing with complaints.
- Slow to notice problems and understand the issues facing citizens.
- Systems that are built to meet rules and requirements rather than serve people.
- Services only available in inconvenient locations.
Communication
- Citizens unaware of the services available.
- Lack of information about available services.
- Too many sources of information about the services available.
- Poor communication between agencies as citizens are transferred between them.
Engagement
- Not seeing the public as a resource/active participants.
- Lack of public involvement in service design.
- Lack of awareness of the people and communities that services are designed for.
Personnel
- Lack of familiarity with the roles and responsibilities of other agencies.
- Problems with staff training.
- Poor motivation and a lack of initiative-taking caused by assumed constraints on what can be done.
Legal
- Data ownership, storage, confidentiality and sharing protocols.
- Restrictions on property transfers, for example into a single local property vehicle.
- Restrictions on staff transfers, for example into a single team dealing with a given issue.
- Existing out-sourced contracts which lack flexibility.
Technological
- IT systems which don't communicate with each other.
- Different data formats.
Financial
- Ring-fenced budgets forcing money to be spent in areas where it is less cost-effective.
- Payment tariffs which focus on symptoms rather than causes.
- Money provided for services rather than outcomes/solutions.
- Difficulties with pooling/aligning budgets.
- Disincentives to spend money when the benefits accrue to another agency.
On the basis of this list, the question I'll be considering in the next post will be: Is the British state unfit for purpose?
I think you have made a great list and thank you for distilling the report, but here's some more problem-drivers which you may feel you have already covered or then again perhaps the report has not identified them?
Both antipathy and hostility towards the adoption of standards (in LG this can be motivated by self-preservation "then nobody can merge this service with our neighbours", or politics "who are they to tell us what to to, lets do the opposite").
Ditto for systems too. ("System A clearly supplies the best CRM, but we simply cannot adopt it because 2 out of 3 neighbours have got it, too tempting for government to merge us, then I'd lose my job, maybe.")
I've heard these excuses used several times in local government.
As far as Personnel goes though the list is looking a little light.
My experiences turned up chronic levels of poor man management and communication break-downs and just about every management malaise I could ever dream up, perhaps I just had a bad experience?
Thanks for the feedback - I wouldn't claim the list is exhaustive, it's just what I picked out of the evaluation reports.
Your examples, and the reference to some of the things that could be added in Personnel, I think suggest there is a whole other class of failings which cannot be put in an official report.
As you say, these might cover things like gaming the system, self-preservation, political battles, egotism, criticism of staff, etc.
Thankyou Richard for this really helpful starter on what deficiencies have been highlighted in the Total Place Pilot evaluation report. I guess what I find surprising for a survey which was delivered by national Govt only last year is the paucity on information surrounding the deployment and uptake of new social media type solutions - any update on this?
Carrie Pemberton Ford Ibix Insight
Good point - apart from the things you can find with some random Googling and from the usual sources, I don't know of any really useful sources of information on this.
Perhaps the absence of social media from Total Place is related to one of the issues I addressed in this post - that public participation does not seem to be that high a priority, for now at least.