While many UK Chief Executives would have been thinking over Christmas about the challenges of the financial situation that their councils are in, hopefully many will also have been thinking about the opportunities that will arise during 2011.
In the spirit of the optimism that should accompany every new year, I will focus on one such opportunity – self regulation.
Self regulation is a significant move away from Central Government and its inspectorates, continuously overseeing the actions, performance and decisions of councils. It implies that councils have the power to take responsibility for their actions and be held accountable for them, and their performance, by their communities.
This move towards self regulation is not, and will not, become total. There will still be inspectorates looking at key services, such as children’s services, and the Government will still seek to assure itself that statutory duties are being met. It will also, I am sure, seek to satisfy itself that its priorities are being met and that public money is being spent prudently.
An acid test of self regulation is the reduction in the risk profile for the council and its service areas. While events happen that cannot be prevented, the incidence of preventable events should reduce.
If self regulation is to work, Local Government as a whole needs to be in a position where there is a willingness and ability to challenge itself as a sector and as individual organisations. A willingness and ability, however, not only to challenge but to change.
Self regulation requires recognition of reality and the ability to do something about it, recognition of when there is a growing disconnect between community and council priorities, and recognition of a growing risk of failure of council performance. This is an organisational cultural attribute that many organisations, let alone councils, struggle with in practice.
This challenge of recognising reality is illustrated by reference to that ubiquitously used management tool – a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats).
As a management consultant and academic, I used to get senior managers and MBA students to do a SWOT. This inevitably led to long lists under strengths and opportunities and shorter lists under weaknesses and threats. These were consistently produced from a totally internal perspective.
The question is, who’s reality is it we should be addressing?
I believe that a strength is only a strength if the customers/service users believe it to be so.
This illustrates very clearly the challenge of self regulation and the need for the recognition of reality from an external perspective.
Self regulation is likely to require new perspectives, new skills and changes to the dominant organisational cultures in councils. This is particularly so if the evaluation of organisational and service performance acceptability and risk is to be based largely upon qualitative criteria.
Self regulation will require councils to have a willingness and ability to get, evaluate and act upon direct feedback from communities and service users.
It requires Central Government to have the confidence to set councils free to be different, and for councils to have the confidence to be different.
What an opportunity!
*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.
