The McKinsey NHS story might be an illustration of what a surprisingly tin ear many very smart people have when it comes to basic politics. Or it could just show how very simplistic political debate has become. Cutting 10% of NHS staff maybe an intellectually brilliant way of dealing with a funding problem in the health service (personally I don’t think it is, but let’s give McKinsey’s bright young things the benefit of the doubt). However it would be so politically damaging, so completely devastating to any governing party’s claims to be trustworthy custodians of a public health service, as to be impossible to enact. The press coverage I’ve seen is all focused on this element of the report and the condemnation is pretty universal. However, if you look at the Health Service Journal’s summary of the story, McKinsey recommend much more than just taking an axe to staff numbers. A lot of what is being floated seems unpalatable but possibly unavoidable if the NHS is to survive – we should at least be talking about the options honestly. Instead the government have instantly disowned the document , the opposition are scoring cheap political points, and everyone gets to vent some rage about the use of consultants in the public sector. Thanks chaps.
Category: Government and Public Sector
Press officers in an age of twitter
Great post here about whether (and if so, how) press officers within government should respond to stories/debates circulating among digital communities on blogs and via Twitter. Inevitably there is real frustration about how slow press officers can be to react to the head of steam which can build up around key issues online before they hit the mainstream. The argument that online inactivity damages departmental reputation must be right. But it does misunderstand, I think, the key reality of a press officer’s life, which is that they must please their Minister. On the whole Ministers still don’t get this stuff and don’t believe that their constituents do either. Some of them blog, a couple are on Twitter (Ben Bradshaw and Harriet Harman, take a bow) But generally their key concern is tomorrow’s front page – in particular the front page of the Mail – or Newsnight, which is why so much activity is short term and reactive rather than designed to build relationships and alliances and deliver a long-term strategy. Many press officers find this frustrating – although a frighteningly large number still don’t get it either. There’s a serious job to be done in some departments to educate press teams as well as policy leads on the possibilities.
Burn baby, burn
The bonfire of the qangos might not be such a popular rallying cry if the quangos themselves could point to some hard evidence of their own achievement. As David Cameron gets his matches ready, there’s a desperate need for NDPBs (and grant-funded voluntary sector bodies too) to be able to demonstrate that they represent value for money. Sadly, in my experience, staff in bodies like this are happiest when they’re talking about the (undoubted) social need for their services and the benefits they were set up to deliver. Mention of evaluation, demonstrating value for money, even – heaven forbid – the need to become self-supporting by selling commercial services, makes them come over giddy as a Victorian vicar accidentally catching sight of an uncovered table leg. They should all be in a tearing hurry to get measures in place which demonstrate hard evidence of their usefulness. If they can’t it’ll be hard to grieve too much when they start to smoulder.
Stakeholder Management – Lesson One, Not Like This
Government comms isn’t what it was in its Campbell prime; but even accepting that the control freakery of yesteryear is out of place now, the performance over the Iraq inquiry has been even more dismal than usual.
Even if they don’t care about the democratic principles at stake (depressing enough in itself), have these people not learned anything about dealing with their stakeholders? Do they not realise that making a major announcement without (seemingly) discussing it with anyone who might have an opinion on it is insane? Having promised to increase openness to restore public faith in politics, did no-one think that announcing a secret inquiry with a hand-picked chair into the most controversial political decision of the past decade was risky? Didn’t they think to line up some allies to come out in support? (And if they tried and couldn’t find any, shouldn’t that have set some alarm bells ringing?) Isn’t rigging it so it won’t report until after the election a little, well, rubbish, presentationally? Especially as it now looks as though they are rowing back on what they’ve announced – another nail in the coffin of basic government competence.
When even the Lib Dems are credibly pointing out that the government is “weak and pathetic” things look pretty bleak. I now support the Labour Party the way my Dad supports West Brom – he’s been doing it a long time, it’s a habit and a reliable family joke; but he didn’t really care when they were relegated. At the moment I could seriously use some good reasons to get enthusiastic about Labour.
Eulalie
There is no point throwing eggs at Nick Griffin. Just crack jokes over him. He’s a ridiculous little man who should be allowed to prove how stupid he is in debate.
I’ve been wondering who he reminded me of and it suddenly dawned – he’s Roderick Spode minus the ladies underwear (I assume, although I suppose you never know…)
The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?”
Running the whelk stall
Yesterday was the last day of the government contract I’ve been working on since last year. Coincidentally the day I left my civil service job to go freelance was the day Tony Blair stood down. In a very different way yesterday also felt like the end of an era for Labour, even though the fall out this time round will be messier, more rancourous and (almost certainly) fatal for the party.
The permanent replacement in my role has just come into the civil service from a job in the private sector and evidently couldn’t believe the Looking Glass world I was briefing him about. (‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ said Alice. ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat. ‘We’re all mad here.‘ )
It’s not at all impossible that everything I’ve been doing for the past six months will be torn up and thrown away by an incoming Minister after the reshuffle, not because it’s bad or wrong, but because the points have changed and we’re all off on another track as of Monday. In the meantime, at least in our case yesterday, we carry on as though nothing at all had changed – making arrangements for a Ministerial visit next month, even though there is no Minister, no agreed policy, no diary to fix a date in and no idea of whether or not the policy will survive the week. Or as Lewis Carroll would have it – I can’t go back to yesterday – because I was a different person then.
Bless you
While every one else in the country is absorbed in MPs’ expenses and Joanna Lumley, there is one corner of a Whitehall comms office that is still fighting the battle against swine flu. You can’t open a paper these days without seeing that revolting picture of that man sneezing all over you.
This seems to me to be a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” situation for government. If there isn’t a pandemic then they will eventually be roasted for wasting public money. If there is they will be roasted for not doing enough to warn us. But is it really necessary for DH to have to spend money on a leaflet telling people, with diagrams, how to wash their hands? And do you think they’re downhearted that no-one else in the country seems to care?
Parental choice
At 7am tomorrow we will find out which secondary school our daughter will go to next year. The closer the moment gets the more I am convinced that the whole concept of parental choice in schools is a callous joke. I don’t feel I have any choice in which school R goes to and it’s an illusion to suggest that I do. I can express a preference, but I can’t make a choice for the obvious reason that not everyone can go to the one local school which is regularly lauded by OfSTED as one of the best in the country and which is consequently first choice for every parent in the area. (This isn’t leafy Surrey, by the way, it’s gritty east London which somehow makes the achievement even more remarkable) As a friend of mine said yesterday, the only way you can be sure your child will go to Morpeth is if you gave birth in the playground and never moved outside it.
Schools Ministers have for years been arguing that parents want yet more choice in education. The theory seems to be that if schools are pitted against each other in some kind of Darwinian fight for survival, with parents’ votes as the mark of survival, then they will pull their fingers out and standards will rise. This is evidently not true and runs contrary to another strand of government policy which is about getting schools to collaborate to share resources and expertise.
The continued stress on choice and competition also flies in the face of all of the research, which repeatedly says that parents just want government to make every school good, so that every parent feels happy to send their child to whichever is nearest. Make every school a Morpeth and all parents will have their choice. Make it illegal to discriminate against children on the grounds of their parents’ religion (or lack of it) and at least everyone is in with a chance of going to a school they live close to. As Deborah Orr said in a recent article about schools lotteries: The worst schools are not compelled to improve because of parental choice. They just end up populated by the children of the parents whose choices are fewest. The choice is illusory – and I’ll go on believing that it’s a poor way to go about allocating places even if we do get into our first choice.
If you build it, will they come?
Interesting to see on Emma Mulqueeny’s blog a post about Directgov’s attempts to set up a news site about school closures during the great freeze. I salute the fact they even tried to do it (so fast, and without a Submission to Ministers first, too!) The technical problems they had are laid out in the comments to Emma’s original post, but at least it’s there and it works after a fashion, and it will get better.
Problem is, even though I’ve worked with Directgov in the past – in fact am linked to a project with them right now – it never crossed my mind to go there for news on Monday. (I went straight to Tower Hamlets’ website and found not very much of use – although it did tell me the library was closed.) Is it just a matter of time before Directgov seeps into people’s consciousness as the place to go for information – or are we always likely to think locally first about issues which affect us on a local basis?
When I was at DfES some years ago, there were ideas floating around to get schools to set up mass text message services for parents to let them know about school closures. Anyone know if this is happening? That kind of very local solution to problems like this instinctively feels better to me than trying to do it on a national network.
Square pegs in square holes – please
Here’s another way the press influences politics – see posts passim… I’ve been trying since November to bring in some additional support for a project I’m currently working on. This is an entirely new, very large, public sector project. It is adding massively to the output of the department and generating a lot of additional work which needs people; experienced and highly skilled people; to do properly. If we want to get it right, first time, without causing the additional expense or delay which comes when you have to rub along with the second rate, we have to spend a bit of money. We don’t have exactly the right set of skills in-house, and the people we do have are already stretched to breaking point. The fear of the press and the dreaded FOI request (and the shame of having to own up to hiring consultants (boo, hiss)) means that we have to jump through hoops of fire to even get close to justifying having extra people on board. Even if I finally get the go-ahead today it will be 4 – 6 weeks before we can get anyone on board if we go through the proper procurement procedures (which of course we will). By then it will be getting on for six months since the need was identified. When the project finally limps into public view, will it be lack of professional support at the right time, or incompetent civil servants who couldn’t run a whelk stall who will be blamed for it not being everything it could be – first time?
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