Local government: serving citizens now the house is in order
Outcome management needs new management style to overcome major challenges
In the post Gershon, post e-government era, the fundamentals of local government are now fixed. With the unexpected emergence of a new consensus over direction in local government we see an environment relatively stable compared to recent years. For illustration, there are now no major plans for wholesale structural or functional changes.
Recent years have seen local authorities grappling with a raft of different agendas, proposals, and theories of change. There’s no denying that these have led to reforms that have delivered benefits. However, in this new age of stability, service outcomes will be the only real measure of success. They are what the public and national politicians demand in return for stability.
To effectively deliver these outcomes local authorities must move beyond the drive for a change culture, which has been prevalent for so long, and provide real community leadership. The majority of local authorities have solid foundations in place and must build on them to establish a new management model of successful public service delivery. This new ‘place-shaping’ focus is at the heart of the white paper ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities’.
Accountability and Outcome Control
The biggest challenge now facing local authorities is in ensuring that the plethora of agencies at the coalface of delivery, some of which local authorities have limited or no control over, are working in a complementary way towards common goals.
It is possible to succeed. For example in West Lothian, by changing the way services and information are provided regarding elderly social care users, they have been able to save 60% of their budgets and provide better quality services. The use of assistive technologies coupled with outcome driven performance indicators, enables service users to remain in their own homes. This level of service has lead to a greater user satisfaction rating and is considered a model for the future by government and professionals around the globe.
In East Sussex, the introduction of a localised children’s index has enabled the authority to save time and effort in supporting the well being of their young people. By focusing on information sharing instead of hierarchical structures, 44 organisations are able to effectively share information to support the well being of young people. There are numerous options, many of which can save time, money and provide a better front line service.
As these examples illustrate, outcome delivery partners will be a mix of public and third sector organisations or companies from the private sector. They could be strategic partners providing critical elements, or one of a multitude of smaller suppliers delivering components to the various service providers.
Managing these organisations in the quest to achieve a common goal is no mean feat and in order to ensure successful service delivery against this backdrop, effective management of partnerships will become paramount.
To deliver, Chief Executives will need to understand the entire local landscape, asking three key questions: what are our desired priority outcomes; what resources are available, both in-house and outside and what level of control do we have over these resources?
These questions will challenge all local authorities, and answering them is likely to be on ongoing and iterative process. A good first step is creating in depth knowledge and understanding of the environment in which local authorities are operating. Garnering the right knowledge is challenging enough for a single organisation with multiple departments. But it becomes increasingly complex when considering the diversity of third parties that are critical to the delivery of the outcomes a local authority may strive for.
The introduction of processes and systems between the executive management and the various delivery organisations and departments is vital. Chief executives will require the right information, in the right format, at the right time to inform their decisions, which are then passed back to delivery organisations. There is a need for a powerful team culture to ensure all management levels understand, and are bought in to, this new 'organisational asset management' approach.
Only through understanding this supply landscape and adopting an appropriate model, will chief executives be able to improve service delivery and outcome control. Chief officers will have to become ‘outcome owners’ and will spend their time negotiating, influencing and leading, based on knowledge of how organisations are delivering, on a real time basis.
A new mindset for the new reality
This model of management sees information replace a number of direct staff as the key delivery agent. Information, from all the delivery organisations is critical in order for chief executives to be able to manage processes.
Already we see from examples above that focussing on information has not only enabled efficiency gains called for by Gershon, but more importantly, has improved the quality of front line service. It has reduced the stress levels of the staff and service users in a number of cases. And all of this is delivered at a lower cost to the taxpayer. More of these good practice examples will surely solidify a neo stability in the local government arena. The current examples certainly sign post the way forward.
Conclusion
Few authorities can claim that they have perfected successful delivery across partners to date. In order to succeed in this next challenge, all local authorities must focus, not only on implementation of their new delivery programmes, but the new organisation control processes which will keep the ‘fleet’ together, whatever new demands are directed at it. In future those who use instability or too many other priorities as an excuse will simply fail to deliver.