Rising to the challenge of the global recession
The UK Experience by Malcolm Morley*
The global recession has had many impacts as governments have struggled to create confidence in the financial viability of their nations, their industries and the financial sector. Many companies have gone out of business and public sector organisations have seen greatly increased demand for their services.
Huge amounts of public money have been pumped into national economies. Now all political parties in England are forecasting that the financial pressures on the public sector will be severe in the coming years.
The UK press is headlining that there will be thousands of job losses in the public sector. With a changed fiscal environment and a national election within the next
11 months, we will have to see what choices the Central Government will make and which parts of the public sector will bear the greatest amount of cuts.
One thing is clear. Service provision by councils in organisational silos based upon widely varying service specifications as a result of historical evolution (rather than proactive choice) will become a luxury that councils will not be able to afford.
Failing to take advantage of opportunities to improve economy, efficiency and effectiveness from joint working will become increasingly obvious and lead to organisational failure.
It is likely that there will be a spotlight placed upon the standardisation of both front and back office service specifications and performance as never before, with councils having to justify variances to meet local needs. Performance, particularly in respect to economy and efficiency, will become even more the focus of Central Government and public attention.
Local Government is about making local choices to reflect local needs. The ability to make those choices is likely to be constrained by reduced resources. Councils will have to really challenge themselves and their partners about the local choices that they make.
It is foreseeable that there will be pressure for the development of national standardised service specifications as a benchmark to evaluate local choices and performance. The challenge, in the absence of any such standardised specifications of services, will be to produce them and to get them agreed.
Who will produce and agree them? I do not get the sense that Central Government has an appetite for getting involved in this exercise. Will Local Government itself take on this challenge?
The Central Government has reduced significantly the performance indicators with which it evaluates the performance of Local Government as part of the new Central/Local relationship.
Perhaps it is looking for a signal of the maturing Central/Local relationship for Local Government itself to take the initiative?
If service specifications are to be the focus of greater attention it is vital that it is the outputs and outcomes that are specified with greater clarity and consistency and not service inputs. How councils, and their partners, achieve those outputs and outcomes is of less importance than the fact that they achieve them with comparable unit costs.
Councils, and their partners, will have to work smarter together with professional and sector barriers removed if they are to respond to the challenge of maintaining high levels of local choice.
*Malcolm Morley is Chief Executive of Harlow District Council and can be contacted via the Editor, email info@lgfocus.com.au The views expressed in
this article are not necessarily those of
his employer.
