CoP BlogConsolidator: Efficiency Exchange

Blogsum

Roger White — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:14:34 GMT

Is there such a word? I wrote last month that I was trying to square the circle of running two blogs by providing a monthly summary here of my main blog at http://helpgov.wordpress.com/. So here’s my August update.

During August I blogged about a report claiming that local government could shed 500,000 workers and still maintain services (The curious case of local government productivity – 24 August). Because I thought there were some significant issues about the claims made I exceptionally copied the post to my LGID blog and, lo and behold, so far it has provoked 28 comments. OK one was mine but the rest are all kosher.

A wide range of views are expressed in the comments but one thing united everyone – frustration that the research on which the 500,000 claim is based has yet to be published. The company concerned (previously unknown to me) has said the full report will be on their web site by the end of August (no sign of it with about an hour to go) and when it does appear I will be returning to it and all the great comments that fellow communities of practice for public service members have made.

On a similar theme but with a different motive I asked (ironically) whether it was Time to sack public sector employees (6 August). I came across an American author who said companies should do seven things before they considered sacking people in hard times. It struck me that most of these are never used in the public sector but should always be considered before redundancies.

Taking my life and what remains of my career in my hands I’ve also had a gentle go at the craft of audit in Auditors – don’t you love them? (30 August) and commented more seriously on the demise of the Audit Commission (16 August).

Central government has exercised me as the Treasury sought public views on budget cuts (Government spending challenge – watch this space, 3 August and various other dates). The Treasury could learn from the wealth of consultation experience and good practice in local government. For all sorts of reasons I describe the exercise as seriously flawed.

13 August saw me giving two cheers for reality TV – and three for the Undercover Boss series which featured Tower Hamlets CE in one of its recent episodes.

Finally on 24 August I set a less serious challenge to readers in my end of summer quiz. Only my partner has guessed the answer so far for which any prize is strictly virtual. She did accompany her correct guess with the word “sad” (me) but I’m used to domestic slings and arrows. Time’s running out for my loyal readers to come up with the answer.

Thanks for reading.

The Future of Work

Paul Allsopp — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:54:07 GMT

The one thing I have learnt over the last few decades is that the future is actually here now. The trends and threads of what happens in the future start in the past. It is the pace of dissemination of trends and the twists and turns in their development that determines whether or when they become widespread and what they actually look like in the future. One thing is a constant in the history of work and that is change – sometimes rapid, sometimes imperceptible.

For me the network is the place of work and this is has been happening over the last couple of decades, moving work into the virtual world – and agile working is a stepping stone into this world.

I came across an interesting slide presentation about The Future Of Work . I will leave you to draw your own conclusions about whether you think this is the future you see. But the clues are all around us. Let me know your thoughts.

Paul Allsopp
The Agile Organisation
www.agile.org.uk

Online services and local libraries

Bob Kamall — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:06:16 GMT

Recently released data by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport highlights the continuing decline in the number of adults using libraries. Last year only 12.8% of adults regularly visited a library and only 40% of adults managed to visit a library at all. The figures show a continuing decline in the number of library users in recent years. This fall in user numbers, at a time of budgetary cuts, has led some to speculate about the future of library services – one commentator suggesting that up to 1,000 Libraries could close in the next eighteen months.

Libraries have long since stopped being just about borrowing books, they offer much more to their local communities – it is a shame that 60% of adults do not know just what is on offer at their local library. It is therefore good news that the Museums, Libraries, & Archive Council and the Local Government Association Group have launched a joint-initiative called the Future Libraries programme, which aims to radically rethink the delivery of quality library services.

When the programme was announced Ed Vaizey, the Culture Minister, noted that:

“[The] economic challenge means people need library services more than ever ... [and] reduced public spending means fresh thinking on how services are delivered”.

We will have to wait to see how radical the first Ten Pilots prove to be; or to what extent learning from the pilots can be replicated across Local Government and their delivery partners. However, with cuts already being made, and more to come in the autumn, these pilots may prove to be too little too late! If libraries do close; their customers, who probably access many local services at the library, will have to go elsewhere – will they switch to telephone or online services or are they more likely to go to other front offices? My guess is that they will go alternative local front offices, increasing demand and adding many ‘avoidable contacts’ in busy offices.

From the perspective of Digital Delivery; libraries have a key role to play in helping to get people online – many libraries offer free or low cost access to the internet. They are also often the nearest UK Online Centre offering training and other support for those who need a helping hand to get online. The last administration provided £30m Funding for UK Online Centres to get an extra one million people online. Closing libraries will make it harder to meet that target as the number of UK Online Centres, and access to their services, declines.

Of course there are some who believe that it is possible to get 10 Million Britons online by 2012 with no funding! In reality, for public service providers to deliver the potential efficiency savings offered by digital services they must encourage service users to get online and use digital services. Potential efficiencies will only become real savings if service users move away from more expensive delivery channels and take-up digital services. Enabling this channel shift will require both providing service users with access to, and helping them to use, digital services.

The recommendations in the Manifesto for a Networked Nation include:

1.3 “All public sector employees should be positively encouraged to us the web”

5.4 “Government should place a high value on the internet skills of its frontline workers and encourage them to pass these skills on to colleagues and service users, so that all frontline workers can get online by the end of 2012”.

Whatever the future of local libraries, they are part o f the frontline of local services; library staff like other frontline workers should be encouraged to use the web and enabled to help colleagues or service users to access digital services. More also needs to be done to train, encourage, and enable other frontline staff (one-stop-shops, home visits, outreach workers, contact centre staff) to help service users to access online digital services.

Bob Kamall is Senior Policy Adviser in the Cabinet Office working in the Digital Delivery Team, where he leads on Local Government Engagement and also works on Digital Inclusion. The comments made in this blog, although informed by his work, are his personal opinions and interpretations of events.

UK Councils – Customer Access Index June 2010

Nic Streatfeild — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:31:14 GMT

With many people away in August we have a much slimmer issue this month and will focus on some of the monthly base data from the group.

The first chart shows the Channel Mix trend (the percentage of interactions over the primary channels) – As discussed in earlier blogs this has become very stable and suggests little improvement in overall channel shift.

When it comes to Service Satisfaction we see the following variation across the higher volume services.

And when we look at the reasons for dissatisfaction we see the following.

Waiting times continues to be an issue with Benefits and Council Tax and to a certain extent Housing.

Resolving queries is clearly a frustration in Streets & Parking and Waste & Recycling.

Anyway – that’s enough for now – we said we’d keep it brief. I am looking forward to catching up at the events and conferences over the next couple of months. For those of you in Scotland interested in Customer Insight make sure you book a place at the Experian Mind the Gap Conference at Murrayfield on 8^th September.

Notes

Data is sourced from www.govmetric.com. GovMetric is a customer experience measurement service that enables you to listen to the Voice of the Customer across all contact channels, to prioritise which areas to improve and to measure improvements through near real-time reporting.

For a demo of how GovMetric works please click here. Make sure you have volume turned on!

Collaborating online: A round up all things Knowledge Hub and Social media related…

Charlotte Hayes — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:32:51 GMT

Read all about it!! The latest approaches to data sharing and engagement are now available from the LG Improvement and Development website. A new resource, 'Collaborating online', signposts to key social media and open data resources to help local public services work more closely with citizens.

More great examples and can you help?

Some great examples of social media and online collaboration on the CoP this week… Surrey and Portsmouth councils have developed 23 Things Home, a course aimed at raising staff awareness of social media and how to handle public enquiry about it. Looks like it will be a real success with up to 80 people a week already visiting the site before it's even been launched. Check it out on the CoP now!!

As more councils start to adopt social media into their daily lives, many have started to develop their own social media approaches and strategies. Members of the CoP thought it would be helpful to share examples of their own social media strategies to help others just about embark on this task. Check out the latest from Preston City Council. You can also see more examples and add your own on the Social media strategies and policies wiki here.

Cornwall council is looking for examples of staff training packages centered on the use of social media. If you have any examples, please leave your suggestions on the forum or add to the wiki that has been created here.

New in the libraries

Knowledge hub newsletter – a round up of this months key developments from the Khub team
A useful introduction to social media

From the forums

Social Media and Childrens Centres: Northumberland Council are looking to use social networking to engage with families, particularly young parents in their community, that they find difficult to reach. If you have any examples of how this might or has been done, please leave them on the CoP.

Are you a "necromancer"? - Achievements and system cred on the Knowledge hub.

The Knowledge Hub

Last week the Khub team endured 5 days of sitting in a meeting room with faulty air conditioning, working out with the supplier Pfiks what the 'user stories' would be. These will be the basis for the agile development process, which starts in earnest next month. Read more about user stories here.

Question Time!! Do you have any questions about the Khub, the development, aims or what colour it might be? Then leave your comments in the Q&A forum strand that's just been set up on the CoP. There is also a Notice Board for any comments, idea's or useful hints and tips that you might want to share!

If you would like to be more involved in Khub, you can nominate to join or be kept informed of one the working groups, more details can be found on the CoP here….

From the blogs

Ingrid has just published her 100th example of social media and open data use in local government. To see where she found them check out the blogs…

Events

CityCamp London Friday 8-10October London

Building and Exploiting Taxonomies Friday 22 October Manchester

2010 Public Sector SOCIAL MEDIA FORUM Friday 26 November Manchester

Efficencey Exchange Round-Up

James Atkins — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:43:43 GMT

Good afternoon

I hope you are all well. Please find below the most updates within the Efficiency Exchange CoP:

In the News

Efficiency Exchange membership has now increased to 1522 since Feb 2010

A new sub-CoP has been created from the Efficiency Exchange. The NIEP for the Built Environment - Asset Management Community, which is designed tobe a single central repository of best practice/ sign posting tool to share best practice for asset management within Local Government. If you have any queries, please contact Craig Egglestone on Craig.Egglestone@local.gov.uk.

We have had over 1,000 delegates (from x10 countries) for the joint Efficiency Exchange/Strategic Commissioning and Third Sector on-line conference 'Getting More with Less' introduced by LGID MD Rob Whiteman and speakers included Cabinet Minister Nick Hurd and RBWM CX Ian Trenholm. Conference delegate Gordon Lynn from Brisbane Australia commented...."Well done! Although the time difference did make things challenging here I did watch the conference unfold, very impressive! Congratulations and thanks to everyone involved."

Following the Efficiency Exchange's online conference, the Local Government Channel brings together key speakers Ceri Jones, Head of Policy and Research at the Social Enterprise Coalition, Sharon Cuff, Head of Procurement Lincolnshire and Roger Britton, Head of Organisational Development for Worcestershire County Council to discuss key issues surrounding the Efficiency Agenda.

Among the main challenges facing those trying to make sense of the cuts: finding new and smarter ways to procure goods and services, different methods of working and forming alternative partnerships, plus how to navigate Big Society.

From this link you can see highlights of the discussion, the more detailed discussion and also our plans for the Efficiency Exchange: http://www.localgovernmentchannel.com/news/v/the_efficiency_agenda_driving_value_for_money/to/latest_news/

In the Library

We have attached the draft formal report on the impact and outputs of the 'Getting More with Less' Conference in the EFFX library for your comments. Let us know if this is accurate and representative and we will do our best to ensure that your views are captured: http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/436525/doclib/document-display.do?backlink=ref&id=7275730&themeId=3385280

In the Blogs

Paul Allsopp from the The Agile Organisation comments on the need for Internal Property Charging in Government for their office space/usage. You can read further here

Roger White’s blog on the Curious case of Council Productivity discusses the reliability in data from the media around the public sector. It has created a high response form other members. To find out some further information please follow the link here

Future Events

This year's Public Administration Committee (PAC) Conference, will be held at the Nottingham Conference Centre, Nottingham Trent University between 6–8 September. The 2010 PAC annual conference will explore the theme of Public administration in an era of austerity and will include papers on all aspects of public service organization and delivery. Please follow the link here for further information.

From early September 2010 there will be a series of international events, starting with a televised round table interview with Rob Whiteman, Michael Burton and Stefan Ackerby from the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR), this will then become a hotseat with Stefan discussing the Swedish experience from the 1990's and the current situation, to take place in late September.

To be followed (hopefully in mid-October) by a hotseat session with our Dutch counterparts, including Hidde Boonstra from Kwaliteitsinstituut Nederlandse Gemeenten (KING).

Then hopefully in mid to late November the 'Canadian Experience' with Warren Allmand a city councillor in Montreal and a previous Attorney General for Canada

If you have any further queries please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards

James

Format follows function: publishing council expenditure data

Ingrid Koehler — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:42:54 GMT

January is only a heart beat away and with the rapidly advancing requirement to publish expenditure data (and contracts) online. Many councils are already making a start at publishing the information. You can see the Openly Local data scoreboard, CLG is also keeping track and the LG Group is in the process of identifying all the expenditure data leads at every council and surveying them on their plans to publish and progress to date (So if you’re the lead and we haven’t been in touch, or you’re leading on another open data aspect – please let us know. You can find out more about the Transparency support work in the offing in the Local Open Data Community of Practice.)

All this is showing that a number of councils are already taking great strides in publishing expenditure data. But not all efforts are equal. Some councils are sharing the data in a CSV file format and some in PDF and some in both. CSV is better, but both is even better and meets the criteria of data not just being published, but done so in a reusable format.

And reusable really means machine readable. As this cut from Armchair Auditor’s scoreboard shows. (Apologies in advance as this is out of date and shown here for illustration purposes). If you’re only publishing in PDF, then it’s not machine readable.

Updated to add: And there’s now a Google Spreadsheet as well – which is being maintained in cooperation between the LG Group, CLG and Openly Local, which clearly indicates where data is located and if it’s machine readable. This is a brilliant little addition to the scene which avoids duplication of work.

What is CSV and why it is important.

CSV stands for comma separated values, because the values in the output file are separated by commas (I bet you could see that coming). It’s an old and widely accepted file format and often used for sharing database contents between different types of software. Most databases and spreadsheets can import and export data in CSV – it’s a kind of lingua franca of the databases.

If you were only going to have a look at a council expenditure file once and then just pass on by, there wouldn’t be any reason for CSV. But by publishing in CSV, and importing into something as common as Excel, you can start to see a picture building around expenditure, over time, across different suppliers and different services. And even a casual viewer of council expenditure may wish to sort fields or add up types of expenditure which is only possible if they can manipulate the data.

OK, so that’s just for one council. Now just imagine that we have some voluntary standards about how the data is published (here’s a possible up for consultation – discussing what you should publish rather than just how – in the Local Open Data Community) Then we can start to build a bigger picture of council expenditure which is useful not just for transparency but for the sector itself, as an efficiency and benchmarking tool. For example, we could find out how much was spent on services e.g. grittting or park maintenance or school maintenance between different local authorities.

PDF is not evil

I won’t point to the original post, but there was a bit of kerfuffle recently when a councillor asked a question in a blog’s comment section about why data couldn’t just be published in a PDF. It was genuine question which was handled very sensibly by some and others laughed up their sleeve a little. There’s no getting around it, data activists can view PDF as inappropriate at best and obstructionist at worst.

But PDF has its place. It stands for portable document format. And basically this means you can kinda freeze your document and when you send it to another computer or printer everything still looks nice – the pages break in the same place and all your bolds are still bold. It easier to read for some and is a breeze to print, too. But it’s not machine readable, and that’s really important if we’re to get more use of the data as citizens or as the local government sector.

If the data is “locked down” in a PDF, then it can’t be used for wider comparison or to build up an overall picture – and that’s not really transparent.

And, of course, putting information in a PDF doesn’t mean it’s really locked down. PDF won’t stop people from trying to export your data into a more machine readable format. But the process of doing that isn’t perfect and can lead to the introduction of error. If you’re going to be hanged (or lauded) over your expenditure, it may as well be the correct data.

How you can publish it on your website

The GLA publish their expenditure data, for example, as both CSV and PDF and publish the two file types side by side. Others are following suit. Kensington and Chelsea haven’t been at it as long (so there’s only one month of data right now), but as well as sharing expenditure data, they’re placing the data in context with a visualisation of their overall budgets.

More about expenditure data

There’s a lot more to consider than just file format. Which is why the LG Group and key partners, LeGSB, CIPFA and SOCITM are working together to help councils publish expenditure data simply and easily and so that we can get the most out of it together.

Jonathan Evans has a starter for ten on the standard fields: “Expenditure Data: What Should I publish” including how it can be presented in CSV file.
Gesche Schmid has added some draft guidance on open data (licenses) which has already engendered some debate.
Ian Carbutt has shared an overview of the LG transparency programme, including what else is to come.

And there’s more to come.

Flexible Retirement Policy and Procedure

Jo Evans — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:58:00 GMT

We are currently looking at our Flexible Retirement Policy/Procedure and would be interested in hearing from other public sector organisations on what their criteria is to undertake flexible retirement. Dudley MBC's policy is currently to reduce either by going into a lower graded post or reduce by 1 hour in their current substantive post.

We're all going on a summer holiday

Michael Keating — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:21:47 GMT

August often feels like a melancholy month. As the streets are quieter and people are on holiday it is both the height of summer as well as its dying days. This sense of melancholy has not been helped this year by the endless cloudy days. To add to the general anxiety is concern about what the autumn will bring for the public sector. Last week's publication by the Government Equalities Office of the consultation on the draft regulations for the specific duties of the public sector equality duty did not really lighten the mood but adds to the challenge already discussed extensively this year, namely of the need to strengthen our capacity and confidence as equality practitioners to do the right thing.

Any of you expecting absolute clarity from the consultation document will be disappointed. Its focus is on locally driven outcomes rather than those dictated from the centre. The message is about ensuring transparency and the ability of councils to demonstrate to their residents how information about equality is gathered, analysed and used. The new concept of a 'right to data' is outlined so that communities are able to question slow progress in eliminating discrimination, advancing equality and fostering good relations. The strength of the message lies in creating local solutions – a further development of what excellent local authorities are already doing, although many still grapple with how to get it right. However, in the difficult areas like the "sensitive personnel issues" [sic] of sexual orientation and religious belief or procurement, I think a stronger central message would help many councils shape their local response better.

The consultation lasts until 10th November and Local Government Improvement and Development will submit comments. These can only be strengthened by the views of the wider sector. During September and October a busy schedule of events and conferences will provide plenty of space for debate but please keep letting us know what you think. We are also keen to set up a meeting with the GEO and equality officers to discuss the duty. Let us know what you think by the Equality CoP’s forum thread.

The consultation document does however help answer the questions many of you have been asking about the future of the Equality Framework when it describes the Government's vision as being about putting in place:

"the right framework which empowers citizens to scrutinise the data and evidence on how their public services perform. We will do this by bringing data into the daylight – letting people see for themselves the information public bodies are using to make decisions and the data on their performance. Citizens will then be able to judge, challenge, applaud and hold to account the public bodies they ultimately pay for."

This is exactly one of the areas where the Framework comes into its own. Therefore we should continue to be confident that it is the relevant tool to help councils self-regulate and improve their performance, as evidenced by its continuing widespread use. By the way, last week we sent out invitations to our national Equality Framework Sounding Board which will meet for the first time in early October. Chaired by Cllr Edward Lord, the lead member for equality at the LGA, and consisting of senior councillors, chief executives and partners the Board is designed to provide a strategic lead for good national diversity and equality practice which will be crucial in the current climate.

One of the other key themes of the consultation document is understanding impact. No doubt you will have seen coverage in the press about the High Court challenge to the Budget from the Fawcett Society and the letters from Theresa May and Eric Pickles. Being clear about how an understanding of local diverse communities feeds into decisions is going to become more and more important – and harder when reducing funding. Currently we are reviewing the popular z-cards which were one of the products of the national EqIA Peer Support Initiative in 2008. These will be available early October. Getting the language right – to reflect local circumstances, and importantly, hitting the appropriate political tone – is an area often highlighted, so any successful examples you have would be extremely welcome.

To overcome my August angst I'm off for the next couple for weeks in search of sunshine. Whatever you're up to enjoy the last few weeks of the summer!

As I have already mentioned in the autumn there are a range of events planned including:

14 September – Peer development day

21st September – Leeds EFLG day

21st October in Hereford – the second in our series to develop the business and moral case for excellent practice, focusing particularly on leadership.

I look forward to seeing many of you at these and others but in the meantime please keep feeding your thoughts and ideas onto the Equality CoP.

Michael

The need for Internal Property Charging in Government

Paul Allsopp — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:52:21 GMT

The government should aim to vacate 10% of government office space within one year, according to Martin Read, the author of the Operational Efficiency Programme and a member of the Conservatives’ Public Sector Productivity Panel.

Reported in PublicSectorUK.com, Read confirmed that Central Government uses 30% more office space per head than dictated by best practice. He said: “This inefficiency needs to be addressed much more urgently. Property assets should be managed separately and user departments charged for the space they use. This would focus minds on the efficient use of resources”.

My own experience confirms that the principle of corporate management of property assets for large organisations combined with an “internal property charging” regime based on use of space which appears on P&L accounts of Departments is definitely the right direction to take.

It will not only help focus Departmental silos on their corporate cost base, helping with de-duplication, TotalPlace and shared service, but it will also ensure that management at all levels across the Organisation will understand the value of property/ space to their business or service offering. It will therefore better inform business cases and decision-making in terms of needs, utilisation, costs in use, and investment. This cost awareness will also provide impetus and benefits clarity to occupiers and teams implementing workstyle, agile working and property related change initiatives.

Although internal rent or accommodation charging regimes are not always straightforward to set up, once established they will provide an indispensible strategic tool to control the direction, focus and encouragement to the organisation to create the major property cost savings that are required in the immediate future and for longer term.

Paul Allsopp has recent experience in managing the internal charging regime of one of the largest building portfolios in the UK. For more information contact:

Paul Allsopp
The Agile Organisation
www.agileproperty.com

Discussing data and what you can do with it - events, links and resources

Ingrid Koehler — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 10:21:41 GMT

The LG Group recently wrote to heads of comms, policy/performance and finance to explain a little bit about the LG Transparency programme and to identify local authority leads for open data. So if you’re the lead (or know someone who is), be sure to get in touch. You can see the full text of the letter in the Local Open Data CoP.

Another OpenGov and data event – not quite free (only £10) 18-19 November in London – it talks about localgov data, but there are no localgov types on the organiser list. Hmmm. Anyway, I’ve bought a ticket.

Find out about Open Data and the Knowledge Hub and get involved.

Other data links…

Open Data Principles Discussion Draft – OpenCongress Wiki

(tags: data data.gov US opendata)
Surrey Heath’s spending data online soon « Lightwater

Councillor Tim Dodds blogs on open expenditure data for his council. He’s been blogging on this issue for a while, only just picked this up. Cool.
What You Need To Know About Data Portability
Local government expenditure over £500 – Local government – Communities and Local Government

listing of councils and links to a DirectGov search function to see if your council has done it
How data will improve health care
No more crime blogging - one of my councillors has been blogging and mapping crime data – now he’s been asked to stop.

The curious case of council productivity

Roger White — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:11:34 GMT

[I have by and large transferred my blogging to my own separate blog at http://helpgov.wordpress.com/ but I thought the news today about the alleged poor productivity of local government so flawed that I thought I would also share on the LGID platform...]

“The UK's councils could do the same amount of work with 500,000 fewer staff if they matched the productivity of private firms, a report has claimed.”

This is the first sentence of an item on the BBC news web site today. Their You and Yours programme on Radio 4 also carried an interview with the report’s author, consultant Paul Weekes of a company called Knox d’Arcy.

This is a great topic worthy of serious examination.

The first thing to say is that it’s difficult because although the research has been widely publicised in the UK media this last week, none of the references actually provide a link to the report itself. The BBC is usually meticulous about this.

An obvious place to find the report would be the Knox D’Arcy web site. Unfortunately, it does not have a “News” section or make any reference to the report anywhere.

So my less than enthusiastic (as you will discover) look at this has to be based on media reports. The first three thrown up by Google were the BBC, the Belfast Telegraph and the Conservative Home web site. Others were listed but added little by way of more information.

The central claim in the report is that

"junior staff in local authorities were, on average, productive only 32% of their time during working hours…compared with an average of 44% in the private sector – BBC web site"

This conclusion seems to be based on 1,855 what the BBC call “workers’ surveys”. The Belfast Telegraph more helpfully explains that the 1,855 surveys were of managers and supervisors, including 173 from local government officers.

There is no information available of how Knox D’Arcy defined a local government officer, which councils or even sorts of council they came from, or when the surveys were carried out.

There is no information about what sorts of organisations the other 1,682 managers and supervisors came from, or again when. Knox D’Arcy claim an international clientele, almost exclusively private sector, so the comparators could be in the UK or elsewhere. They could be manufacturers or service providers.

There is no definition of what Knox D’Arcy regard as “productive time”.

Although it may be the BBC’s choice of phrase (if Knox D’Arcy choose not to publish their full research how can we know?) we do not know what they mean by “junior staff”.

All this makes it extremely difficult to judge whether these claims are valid but two thoughts come to mind.

173 “surveys” is a painfully low number to draw any conclusions from for a sector that employs 2,900,000 (Report on the Triennial Review of the Quarterly Public Sector Employment Survey, Office of National Statistics 2008). On the arbitrary assumption that 1 in 10 might be a manager or supervisor that is a sample of 0.6%. We do not know if they were chosen randomly, which would be the only sure way some statistical confidence could be assigned to the sample’s characteristics
the difference in productive use of time between private sector and local government is said to be 12% (44% - 32%). If 2,900,000 people could be made 12% more productive that would mean, crudely and all other things being equal, that their work could be done by 2,550,000 people, 350,000 fewer people not 500,000

Finally, we do not know if the report was commissioned by a client or whether Knox d’Arcy carried it out on their own behalf.

None of these points individually invalidates the report. But taken together the best you could say about it is that pending further information, the jury has to be out on its conclusions.

The sadness, as so often, is that the media have taken up what is presumably a press release and reported it almost completely uncritically.

Are you the lead? (open data in local gov)

Ingrid Koehler — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 06:47:52 GMT

The LG Group has recently written to Heads of Finance, Policy and Performance and Communications to create a list of leads on the transparency and open data agenda, and in particular the publishing of expenditure data.

If we missed you, please get in touch.

The full text of the letter is below and it can also be downloaded from the Local Open Data Community of Practice:

________

Dear _______

The Local Government Group is putting together a list of individuals from local authorities who will have the responsibility for collating and publishing council spending and contracts over £500. If you will be leading on this for your authority please email transparency@local.gov.uk with your contact details; if you have already published the data we would be grateful if you could include a link too.

Local Government Group Support to Councils in Achieving Transparency

Working with authorities and the Local eGovernment Standards Body (LeGSBE), the Society of Information and Technology Management (Socitm), and the Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), the Local Government Group is developing an offer to help councils in sharing data assets via the web. In summary, this will include:

- Guidance on the best ways to rapidly present financial data in what is known as an open format (i.e. in a flexible format for ease of use by others)

- A service hosted by the Local Government Group to convert your data into full linked data format, i.e. a format that will satisfy the widest range of external users, but which also offers the most potential for councils to exploit their data usefully.

- Following from the above, help in finding ways to maximize the value of opening up data.

- Guidance on issues such as data protection requirements in relation to personal data, and how to tackle data licensing which has concerned some councils.

Further information on this project together with the tools and guidance will be published on the Local Open Data Community of Practice in the coming weeks (http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/3916997/home.do) and we hope that you will find this a useful resource in helping you publish your data.

Kind regards

Local Government Group

August 2010

Knowledge hub - the story so far...

Charlotte Hayes — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:06:22 GMT

Since I started in my new role as online communications officer on the Knowledge hub programme I’ve been introduced to a lot of new people. Many pleased to meet a new face (or so I’d like to think) and many after some cold, hard facts about what the Knowledge Hub actually is and will do.

If you would like to understand a bit more about the Khub, a new document has just been published in the library that you might find of interest. This briefing note outlines, in plain English, some of the main aims and scope of the Khub and what this might mean for local government.

All this week the Khub team have been in development meetings trying to describe what the experience will be like for the user and how this can inform the agile development process. You can read more about this in the blog User stories for the knowledge hub…

Anyone interested in the ‘techie’ side of things, or what was involved in finding the technical supplier for the Khub can also check out these documents.

If you'd like to get more involved with the Khub, get yourself signed up to one (or more) of the virtual working groups, or simply leave a comment or question or start a conversation on the Knowledge hub CoP.

Hope to see you there soon….

Sir Philip Green to lead Government Efficiency Review

Neil Rimmer — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:49:12 GMT

Sir Philip Green to lead Government Efficiency Review

Sector: Central Government

Date: Fri 13th Aug 2010, 09:19:47

URL: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Source: Cabinet Office

Sir Philip Green, who runs the UK’s largest privately family owned clothing retailer Arcadia Group, has been asked by the Prime Minister to lead an external Efficiency Review into government spending.

Sir Philip, who will report to the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, and Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, will be supported by a team of officials from the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. The remit is to scrutinise government spending in the last three years to identify inefficiencies and potential savings, and to look at where lessons can be learned for the future. He will then report back before the end of the Spending Review.

The remit of Sir Philip’s review will include:
•Reviewing the progress with the recommendations of the Operational Efficiency Programme (OEP); and
•Assessing whether government leases and contracts entered into since 2007 offer value for money.

Francis Maude said:
“This Government is doing its utmost to ensure we make savings at the centre, not the front line, and to show that we are ready and willing to open up the Government’s books for real external scrutiny.
“There is a pressing need to push forward with both the efficiency and transparency agendas and the best businesses have always understood that to save money you have to keep looking for ways of doing things differently. We are extremely fortunate to have Sir Philip, with his immense commercial experience and of course his fantastic track record at managing large organisations, on board. Sir Philip has made clear to the Government the importance of his business remit which has always been
that efficient operating is different from cost cutting and removing jobs.”

Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said:
“The Spending Review is about promoting growth, rebalancing the economy and completely re-evaluating the Government's role in providing public services. Sir Philip Green's Efficiency Review will play an important role as we totally re-think how the Government spends taxpayers’ money.
"Tough decisions need to be taken in order to ensure that Britain lives within its means. By being prepared to do things differently, we can ensure that this process will enable us to get more for less, and support our front line services."

Sir Philip Green said:
“I have discussed this project fully with my Group CEO Ian Grabiner who is supportive, excited and engaged in aiming to make a difference.
“I believe that our shared experience in the procurement of many goods and services, across a broad geographical area of the UK, will enable us to have important benchmarked information which will be extremely useful.

“I will give this efficiency review my very best effort knowing how hugely important it is to the recovery of the country. I want to help focus, motivate and energize to achieve these efficiency savings. It is these actions that will re-start growth in the UK.”

In defence of Total Place

Tim Hughes — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:50:28 GMT

In defence of Total Place

What I consider to be one of the biggest strengths of Total Place is that – though it has benefitted from the leadership of a number of key individuals – it belongs to no one person or group. The result is that there is not a definitive version of Total Place, and so my perspective and understanding of it is just one of many.

But I feel that John Seddon’s recent criticism of the initiative misses the point of Total Place. This paragraph sums up his position:

“As people become obsessed with costs, more of the wrong-thinking dominates action. Total Place initiatives that count the cost of activities but say nothing about value will cause people to leap to the wrong conclusion – that economy will follow from scale. By contrast, studying value – the nature of demand from the citizens' point of view – shows how and where resources are wasted, duplicated, or being spent on things that are of little value to the service user.”

I do not disagree with Seddon over systems thinking – we do indeed need to understand services from the perspective of citizens and their wants and needs – but I do challenge the implication in his article that Total Place is the antithesis of this. I believe that Total Place is fundamentally about viewing public services as a system from the perspective of citizens; not, as has been the case in the past, from the top of siloed delivery chains.

I would suggest that the apparent focus on cost through the counting exercise and deep dives is a bit of a red herring. The starting point to achieve systemic change must be to understand the current system, as this shapes the culture and perspectives of those who operate within it. And like it or not, the current system is concerned with money and cost. Total Place therefore started from the pragmatic position of demonstrating just how much the current system is costing us in financial terms, and just how ineffective it is at tackling complex social problems.

While I agree with Seddon that this counting exercise offers little real practical benefit, what it has done is much more powerful. It has started a conversation in localities and between local and central government about the consequences of the current system of public services and the opportunities presented by a new paradigm. The value of this should not be underestimated; it has provided a catalyst for public servants in localities to understand exactly what Seddon says we must: “demands from citizens in their terms and the flow of activity that ensues whenever the demands occur.”

Total Place has demonstrated that public services managed centrally along siloed chains are both ineffective and costly, as they consider citizens as a series of separate problems to be dealt with in isolation by fragmented services. The system has meant that:

The needs of citizens are not holistically met;
They are often pushed from one service to another;
There is little incentive for public services to tackle the root causes of social problems or to prevent them in the first place;
They therefore focus on dealing with the consequences (fire-fighting);
This has massive human, social and financial costs for individuals, families and wider society.

With this in mind, the Total Place pilots have started to go about reorientating services around the needs of citizens, families and communities, rather than the structures of government institutions. This is encapsulated by Croydon’s assertion: “We believe that thinking in systems not services is the key to shifting public service outcomes.”

Pilots spent time engaging with citizens, mapping customer journeys and conducting ethnographic research in order to understand the citizens they serve. They’ve considered how services can be more integrated at the front-end to meet their needs holistically, how they can provide intensive support to those who need it, how they can prevent problems or intervene early before they worsen, and how citizens can interact with public agencies on their terms.

As Seddon argues, it is by organising services in this way and avoiding failure demand that costs can be removed from the whole system. There is much evidence that the Total Place pilots understand this and as a result they are estimating some significant savings.

Therefore, in short, my perspective on Total Place is that it is not about economies of scale, but it is entirely about studying “the nature of demand from citizen’s point of view” and then ensuring that services are integrated to meet these demands in a holistic fashion.

The success of Total Place must be judged on the extent to which the ambitious and sometimes radical intentions of the pilots are seen through and implemented. There is a big risk that public sector cuts draw us back into a narrow conception of value for money, to the detriment of public value. This must be resisted, as Total Place has shown us, the only way to achieve better outcomes for less cost will be to make public services more citizen, family and place focused.

3 current opportunties for exploring the benefits of open data

Ingrid Koehler — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:31:43 GMT

The Transparency Programme is focused first on helping local authorities to release expenditure data and other required sets by January. Getting the data out there, open, re-usable and done as easily as possible – addressing redaction, licensing and the impacts of releasing expenditure data.

It’s also focused on making this data useful to local authorities themselves, supporting standards which will help comparability. Helping us to move toward linked data which can help us combine and share information more cheaply and effectively.

Right now, open data, particularly expenditure data, can feel like just a big stick to beat councils with. A source for journalists to pick through and find the most embarrassingly labeled bits of spend. (And yes, I’m sorry to say I did have to snicker a bit at the CLG spend on Indian Head Massage). But open data and linked data are actually huge opportunities for public bodies and citizens. And we need to do more to present the wider opportunities and the possibilities of sharing public data in re-usable formats with open licenses, some of the things that are presented in the San Francisco and London showcases.

Some great current opportunities:

1. NESTA currently has funding available to councils to begin working with open data and contact information is available in the social media community of practice. But hurry, application deadline is 20 August 2010.

2. CityCamp London is coming to a London near you – 8-10 October. This is a three day event for practitioners, academics, data folk and developers to work collaboratively to explore the possibilities of open data and the web. Day 1 is an exploration, presenting the possibilities, Day 2 is a participative unconference/ barcamp and Day 3 is a hands on collaborative development and planning day for those who’d like to take the ideas further. Tickets aren’t available YET (except for event sponsors) – but go and register your interest NOW – you’ll be emailed when FREE tickets become available – you do not have to attend the whole thing. And you don’t have to be from London either, but the context will be mainly London – which is just as well – as that’s where most of the open data is right now.

3. In a more focused way, the Knowledge Hub (the replacement the Communities of Practice space and more) is establishing working groups on various aspects of the platform – and one of them is a data group. This will look at both data architecture within the Knowledge Hub, sources of data and innovative uses of open data. Find out more in the Knowledge Hub Community of Practice.

Digital Delivery –the return of online service delivery

Bob Kamall — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:30:50 GMT

I have been somewhat quiet on the COP since the demise of NI14 and the general election; but not because things are quiet or that I have had nothing to say. No, my absence (a sort of self-imposed extended purdah) is more a need to seek clarity about where the Service Transformation agenda was going. I have taken time and space to step aside to watch developments as Efficiency Savings and Digital Delivery have emerged as the new priorities for public service reform. Ideas are being developed, changes are taking place, and momentum is building; with some limited support from Local Government – but I now want to share these ongoing developments with a wider Local Government audience.

Many of you, like me, who remember working on the e-Gov agenda (BVPI 157 & the 2005 e-service delivery targets), will see several similarities between e-Gov and Digital Delivery – especially the references to online services. Others will remember Transformational Government (although never officially called t-Gov – e-Gov effectively became t-Gov after 2005) and the related Service Transformation agenda, to which NI14 was linked. It now appears that the Service Transformation agenda is giving way to Digital Delivery (should we call it d-Gov?) and once again the focus is shifting towards online services and Digital Delivery.

This is perhaps not that surprising; from the perspective of the coalition government the emphasis is clearly that of efficiency and the need to cut the budget deficit. The mantra of doing more for less has led to the re-emergence of digital online service delivery once again being seen as both a cheaper and a better solution!

There are, however, differences between the emerging digital agenda and that of the old e-Gov targets. The most obvious difference being the generous funding provided for e-Gov! In today’s climate of austerity and cuts, there is no money for large scale projects or numerous piloting of ideas. Perhaps a more significant difference, is the greater emphasis being put on partnership working and that of more being done outside of government or the public sector.

One example of this is the appointment of Martha Lane Fox as the Digital Champion and the work being done by her Race Online 2012 team. Here we see the marshalling of partners – drawn from public, private, and third sector organisations – to work together, by making pledges, to help tackle Digital Inclusion. Looking at the 650 plus partners who have made pledges to date, it is good to see some Local Authorities and many local or community groups leading the way. I think there is a real role for Local Authorities to play in this agenda – which links to the Localism, Total Place, and Big Society agendas – in pulling together, supporting, and publicising what is being done in their locality.

Wherever we look across the public sector, the expectation is for large scale budget cuts and an increased demand for efficiency savings. Delivering these efficiencies makes it necessary to move services away from the more expensive or less efficient channels and make a success of online Digital Delivery. However, we cannot do this without tackling the problem of Digital Inclusion and Digital Inclusion is one of those problems that cannot be solved by working isolation. Race Online 2012 is pulling together organisations, and gaining momentum, to help tackle digital inclusion; I think that Local Authorities should be part of that solution.

Round up of new content from the Social media and online collaboration CoP

Charlotte Hayes — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:27:07 GMT

Have you noticed the Cop platform now has a new name; Communities of Practice for Public Service. We think the name better reflects the fact that this platform brings together people across the public service including those who are working for their communities on a voluntary basis. Everyone loves a sharer!

Can you help?

Networked neighborhoods - get key findings and free guidance just by completing this short survey on the impact of citizen-led neighborhood websites and the implications for councils….

To protect the Council's reputation given all the cuts they are likely to be facing, Wakefield Council are looking into compiling a customer expectation management campaign. Do you have any thoughts on how this can be done?

Central Beds Council has come across a few ICT and security issues as they develop their use of social media. If you have any comments or suggestions about how they can approach this please leave them in the forum…

Ingrid Koehler has over 88 case studies and examples of social media and open data use in local public services on her blog and would like some suggestions on good ways in which this content can be compiled, stored and shared.

Dumfries and Galloway Council would like some help from anyone that has included the use of social media into their Major Emergency Scheme.

From the forums

Make It Local - An opportunity to pitch for £30,000 to spend with a local digital media developer to create a new web-service or mobile application using open data.
Some examples of Social Media Guidance and policy
A lively conversation about the social media tool Foursquare has been reignited in the forums…
Get connected – provide details of your social media profiles to connect with fellow members.
The good the bad and the ugly - examples please! Any public service social media applications you’ve come across…
Some great suggestions on using social media to engage with hard to reach groups. If you have any more please leave them on the CoP
Social Media for internal communications
Recent social media mindmap presentation
UK Councils Social Media Reputation Index July 2010
Like to know how to make Twitter work for your Council? Leave a comment or question on the CoP.

From the blogs

ScotGovCamp and life as a film star...
Linked and open data in local government - an informal discussion paper
Alex Stobart blogs about learning from the open source and linked data community to help Local Authorities save money

The Knowledge Hub

As the Knowledge Hub development is now in full swing, there are various opportunities for you to become more involved. Anyone with an interest, desire or the expertise to contribute to the success of this project is invited to nominate themselves to take part in one, or more of the working groups (Technology, Data, Knowledge Ecology, Communications & Stakeholder Management).

Information about the aim of these groups plus how to self nominate is available on the Knowledge hub CoP

Events

Building and Exploiting Taxonomies Friday 22^nd October Manchester

That's all for now, thanks for sharing!

5 reasons why the ‘people finder’ tool is essential to the CoP and essential to your work [Video]

Jamie Kirk — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:07:18 GMT

1. Follow up and to reconnect with contacts made in your day-to-day work
2. Find people by expertise with the single click of a button using the tag cloud on the right-hand column (the bigger the text the more people that are in the field)
3. ‘People finder’ is also a ‘research finder’ - enables you to see who else is working on similar project to your own across the country and so creates potential for greater collaboration
4. Searches can be customised by region, local authority or organisation to created tailor list of experts related to a project
5. The CoP is the biggest central hub of local government expertise across the UK

Maintain connections and find lost contacts

The chances are that you have been at an event, conference or meeting and made a valuable contact but were unable, or forgot, to ask for their contact details. Not all is lost, however, as the Communities of Practice (CoP) is the largest national directory of local government expertise in the UK. The ‘people finder’ tool, enables you to enter whatever sparse info you have on your ‘lost’ contact and more often than not locate them amongst the 57,000 members on the platform.

Mobile phone number change, jobs change, email addresses change but your CoP profile is accessible and permanent. Using ‘people finder’ to add people to your contacts list offers you the ability to maintain your contacts even if they have changed occupations. This expands and reiterates a point made in my last blog about the importance of maintaining and updating your CoP profile.

The ‘people finder’ is also a ‘research finder’

The ‘people finder’ function does more than find people. It can be used as a good starting point for a research project. For instance if you have been tasked to investigate how your council could implement a flexible working initiative, then a quick hover over the tag cloud on the right hand side of the people finder and you observe the tag ‘mobile working’. By clicking on that tag, you are taken to a compiled list of 34 experts in that field (this list can be edited by region, organisation or local authority).

Finding contactable expert opinion is one mouse click away…and offers a great chance of collaboration across local authorities.

Conclusion

What is clear is whether you use ‘people finder’ to maintain contacts or as a research aid, it requires that all users have full and up-to-date profiles. People finder is often underestimated but its potential collaborative uses are beneficial to all. As a member of the CoP you must bear in mind that outside of your communities there is a whole world out there on the platform – use it to its full potential.

UK Councils Social Media Reputation Index July 2010

Nic Streatfeild — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:20:10 GMT

Welcome to July’s Monthly Social Media Reputation Index – powered by CouncilMonitor.

As a quick reminder CouncilMonitor trawls the Internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week, searching through news, blogs, forums and social media sites. It reads through all of this information and summarises what’s being said about UK councils, and assesses whether the sentiment is positive or negative.

On a monthly basis we monitor and report on a number of metrics, as well as discussing current #socialmedia issues and observations.

This month we’ve revised the monthly snapshot of Councils in each category (District, Unitary, County). Whereas previously we listed the top 5 in each category by volume, this month we have aggregated them all and listed the top and bottom 20 by sentiment – subject to them attaining a minimum number of references during the month. (Districts = 100 mentions, Counties and Unitaries = 300)

The top 20 UK Councils are:

The bottom 20 are:

So what’s going on in the highest scoring councils then? Being just down the road from us we thought we’d have a look at Leicestershire. The dashboard below shows the overall activity levels, the sources of references, the breakdown of media etc.

Drilling through the data there are a good mix of subjects – ranging from recycling centre workers rescuing kittens to the Library service launching a new guide to trace family’s war history!

In our control group (see previous blog entries for make up), one of the headline metrics we have been measuring is the mix of media sources referring to any of the 400+ UK councils. Last month we discussed the significant jump in ‘News’ sources as a result of some of the News media syndicating their content across multiple titles. A practical example was an article on Westminster parking being carried in titles as far away as Scotland. The question we left you with was whether duplicate references should be left in or stripped out? Having spoken to a number of people on this the consensus seems to be to leave them in – the argument being that people outside of your area are still being exposed to news about you and therefore these references should not be discounted. Feel free to leave a comment if you feel strongly one way or another on this.

The chart below therefore shows traditional News sources continue to dominate, Twitter has dropped off a little, whereas Blogs have strengthened.

Last month we referenced the LGA’s New Reputation Guide – Continuing with the Reputation Management theme please take a look at Michael Douglas’s blog on IdeA Communities of Practice COP (its also published here in case you don’t have an IDeA log in) – discussing the potential impact of the ‘Community Pages’ facility in Facebook – and the opportunities and threats it poses to UK Councils.

Useful # Tags – if you’re new to twitter you may find some of the following useful to track – #localgov , #totalplace , #opendata , #cipr , #localgovweb etc. I also recall TweetyHall were also proposing a list of #tags identifying Councils – Guys, has this progressed any further?

Finally, a date for your diaries – 23^rd September 2010 – The LGC Public Sector Communications Forum in London has a packed programme discussing the challenges of managing comms in an environment of service cuts and reorganisation.

Notes.

Images and chart data may be used provided CouncilMonitor are credited accordingly.

For a more comprehensive service description please look at www.councilmonitor.com/about

Monthly Buzz Index methodology – Details can be found here

About CouncilMonitor – CouncilMonitor trawls the Internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week, searching through news, blogs, forums and social media sites. It reads through all of this information and summarises what’s being said about UK councils, and can even tell you whether the sentiment is positive or negative (similar to the election worm we have seen at #leadersdebate). The service was launched in December 2009 so is still quite early on, but by measuring a benchmark group of councils on a consistent basis we hope to be able to provide some national trend information relating to what people are saying about their councils – and how they choose to say it.

Why Cambridge City Council might help Scotland save money

Alex Stobart — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:58:20 GMT

All over England councils are moving fast so that they can publish all items of expenditure over £ 500 by January 2011. This is a requirement brought in by the new Coalition government.

In Cambridge local developer Lisa from Open Knowledge Foundation has been working to get the council to release spend information and she blogged about it here.

The Cambridge council has given her a great deal of data, and this can then be turned into useful information using Chris Taggart's open data standards.

There are reports that the Scottish government has signed a deal with Hyperion to publish its internal cost centre reports.

Would it not be easier for government, local authorities and other public sector bodies in Scotland to learn from the open source, linked data community and advance the provision of management information in a more co-ordinated way ?

Comments welcome.

New title: for public service

Jon Harvey — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:03:03 GMT

“Communities of Practice for local government” re-brands today to “Communities of Practice for Public Service”. This name better reflects the fact that this platform brings together people across the public service including those who are working for their communities on a voluntary basis"

This is great news! Undoubtedly true, visionary in these austere times and therefore being some very nifty strategic footwork!!

It is great to be part of this enterprise.

Learning from International Development Programmes

Iqbal Husain — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 22:09:39 GMT

Participatory methods

A public agency commissioned a programme to help the long term unemployed back into employment. The programme is at risk of not delivering. I was made aware of the issues recently and it made me return to some audio material we had on our Open University B822 course on approaches to development work using less traditional management styles and more participatory methods.

The audio programme interviewed a number of people engaged in development work in developing countries. It particularly focused on the work of Action Aid and juxtaposed this with the work of the World Bank.

The programme made the point that the often overly bureaucratic and hierarchical approaches of institutions such as the World Bank were as much to blame for the failure of programmes to bring about change as the perceived weaknesses of providers and staff on the ground.

As if to suggest an alternative, the audio programme made much of the participatory action approach (for example the work of Robert Chambers at Sussex University) that is increasingly being used by agencies such as Action Aid. The point was that using such an approach helped unlock local capabilities. It appeared a longer and more drawn out process but the results appeared far more satisfying.

The audio programme went on to reveal the results of a survey at the World Bank which showed that the culture was more often attuned to focusing on larger projects with quicker turn around and that this was seen as key to promotion within the organisation.

Does this story hint at what maybe wrong with what has been happening closer to home. It strikes me that public bodies can seek quick wins as opposed to doing the necessary development work. One likely result of this approach is that local areas can miss out.

Problems without simple solutions
Maybe it is better commissioning that is needed? Is the argument that it is the providers fault, a false argument?

A Trust folds or a commissioned service does not deliver to expectations so a public body can take a decision not to go down this route again. Is that right?

Surely some form of ‘competition’ between providers is needed particularly on problems without any simple solutions, for example working with young people outside of school. Traditionally a role covered by the youth service is it fair to leave this to just one agency?

Recently it’s been interesting to read about what appears a mushrooming of initiatives trying to provide new solutions to public service challenges. For example Croydon and Brighton councils commissioned Participle to develop a youth programme called Loops. Loops aims to engage young people beyond their usual peer groups getting them to experience their wider community in new ways, for example from being shown how a large hotel works, to helping to organise a music festival to meeting a novelist.

Maybe we need to appreciate that unless we let the market mature in terms of providers (and commissioners) we are not really allowing real public sector reform to take place. Do we need to braver?

Maybe in many service areas we need to prepare in house services to deliver as external services and then when appropriate ask them to be ready to compete in an open market? At the same time maybe we need more commissioners to emerge and not rely on the few large public body commissioners?

Maybe all this is part of a wider shift in focus that is needed, a shift from aid to self sufficiency. Maybe there are lessons from international aid and development, for example the work that has been done on developing micro finance through programmes such as those pioneered by the Grameen bank?

It has been suggested that micro finance schemes have been a better way to make development happen as opposed to traditional ‘hand outs’. As we now tackle our own challenging finances approaches from elsewhere may be far more appropriate and acceptable here in the UK than before?

Leadership at all levels: Leading public sector organisations in an age of austerity

Gordon Murray — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:47:03 GMT

Who should lead in an age of austerity? Answer: us.

Fifty senior civil servants and local government officers, mainly from the UK, were interviewed by Leslie and Canwell (‘Leadership at all levels: Leading public sector organisations in an age of austerity’ in European Management, 2010, Vol 28, pp 297-305). Input also obtained from Sweden and Canada on how they successfully achieved a financial turnaround in the 1990s. (Perhaps I can forewarn you that you will have an opportunity to personally probe Swedish, Canadian and Dutch local government experts over the coming months on their experience of successfully addressing previous financial crisis in a series of Efficiency Exchange Hotseats planned over the coming months – get you questions ready!)

Disappointingly the paper makes no mention of the role of councillors who surely have a critical leadership role in an age of austerity! To me that’s an area worth exploring further.

However, the authors argue leadership is not just required from senior management; it’s required at all levels of those involved in leading. Core capabilities are required though to address the current challenges:

Insights into change,
Cognitive skills to lead through complexity,
Emotional intelligence, and
Building leadership at all levels.

The authors acknowledge that very few public sector leaders have experience of leading through a sustained decline in resources and the debunking of some disabling myths is required. So, what do they identify as the three ‘disabling myths?

Traditional productivity thinking cannot be applied to public sector work,
The public sector cannot be expected to demonstrate commercial skills to private sector standards,
It is clear what needs to be done but the system will not let it happen.

The myths need to be dispelled and the authors highlight emerging realities:

High-productivity organisation:

Fewer priorities; low-priority activities stopped by the board as part of explicit portfolio management (Paul Tonk’s recent Efficiency Exchange Hotseat on this may be of interest here)
High-performing people moved as needed to new priorities
Managers deal with under-performers to deliver their own performance goals, supported by top management and clear human resources (HR) policies (more about this later in the blog)
Clear signle-point accountabilities.

Demanding and skilled organisation:

Commercial skills applied routinely, not just in commercial activities but also in testing policy implementation and delivery
Extensive secondment and exposure of high-performing policy-makers in delivery networks
Default to standardisation and delegation
Deploy commissioning skills to deliver policy.

Exercising leadership at all levels:

Current resource pressures enable effective leaders to make difficult decisions
Redesign of malfunctioning systems
Default to standardisation and delegation
Challenge and delivery across organisational boundaries
Leaders encourage leadership behaviours among their team and at lower levels in the organisation.

The authors argue that improved performance management processes are not what is required but consistent leadership and HR support that starts by removing the bottom-ranked 15% under-performers to send a clear message to all staff.

There must be clear demonstration of commitment, and that’s why cutting a long-protected project is so effective in communications strategy.

If a process continues to reinforce unwanted behaviour, leadership capability should be focussed on choosing the time and place to break the cycle.

One finding which surprised me was that many UK public sector leaders felt isolated – the Efficiency Exchange provides a panacea through a forum for discussing issues and understanding you are not alone and have allies in navigating the age of austerity.

Stories needed of local projects achieving better outcomes for less

Tim Hughes — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:31:15 GMT

I need your stories of local projects achieving better outcomes for less through citizen, family or place focused work.

The Institute for Government and National School of Government are partners in an international project to develop a New Synthesis of Public Administration. A central aspect of the thinking behind the New Synthesis project so far has been the need for government to rebalance its approach to governing, from using the authority of the state to using collective power to achieve public policy and civic results. Connected to this is the need to build resilience within communities and develop the capacity to respond quickly to emerging problems and exploit emerging solutions.

So we're contributing a case study of citizen, family and place focused initiatives - which of course includes Total Place - as we think these are some really exciting and potentially transformational ways of tackling complex social problems that fit well with the thinking behind the New Synthesis.

But we need your examples and stories of local projects achieving better outcomes for less to bring the case study alive and help to demonstrate the benefits of these new approaches. The more compelling the story the better. How are individuals, families and/or communities benefitting, and is it saving the taxpayer money (either now, or in the future)?

The case study will be presented by Lord Bichard to an international audience in November, so this is a chance for you to spread your stories of success far and wide. So if you could post your examples or send them to tim.hughes@instituteforgovernment.org.uk, I will follow up on any we are interested in using.

Download and read the attached report for more information on the New Synthesis. Thanks in advance for your help.

Tim

Updating Performance Management resource through social media

Adrian Barker — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:08:15 GMT

Do you ever get irritated with websites that don't get it quite right? Well, with a new resource on performance management, you can do something about it. We are using a wiki to update our performance materials so you can comment or even make changes to the material itself.

The original materials were produced as part of the PMMI joint project between the IDeA and the Audit Commission. This has continued to be a very popular resource, getting a lot of hits, but is now in need of updating.

Through the past year we have been working with local authority practitioners to update and develop our understanding of performance management. We have done this through an External Advisory Group of high performing councils, an action research group and the Policy and Performance community of practice. We have also commissioned six case studies of authorities that manage performance well.

We are now updating our web materials using a wiki, to encourage participation and contributions from practitioners. The previous web content has been transferred to the wiki and is gradually being updated and new material added. The final stage of this will be through August after which we will start the process of editing and transferring it back to the web site. Updating advice and information in this way is a relatively new way of working and parts of the site will have a feeling of being ‘under construction’ during this period, but it is also quite exciting and potentially a powerful way of mobilising the sector’s expertise. This sort of approach will become more common with the Knowledge Hub.

There is already new material on such things as social media, performance management in commissioning and procurement, integrating PM with other data and intelligence and a self-assessment checklist of your PM arrangements, with more to come on areas like involving the public in PM and PM in partnerships.

Please do feel free to have a look and even contribute (you can view with Internet Explorer 6, but will need to use Firefox or IE8 to edit pages) and to let others know about it. The wiki can be found at: http://ideamlp.wetpaint.com.

We will be providing weekly updates through August on progress, using the Performance Management community of practice as the starting point for a mailing list. If you would like to be added to, or taken off, the list, please email me at adrian.barker@local.gov.uk

Adrian Barker,
LG Improvement and Development (formerly IDeA)

Peak State

Iqbal Husain — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:41:29 GMT

Steven Toft writing in the Guardian refers to the work of blogger Adil Abrar who makes the point that similar to arguments that we have reached a point of peak oil production a similar argument could also be made about the state. In this case the argument runs that it’s not that the resources of the state have run dry but rather it’s just not efficient any more.

According to Anatole Kaletesky in his new book ‘Capitalism 4.0: The birth of a new economy', government has run out of money. He argues that what has been revealed is that states can no longer satisfy advanced society’s complex demands for healthcare, education and personalised retirement planning. Figures quoted from the IMF of the cost of ageing to the British government are calculated as 335 per cent of GDP.

Kaletsky argues that quite a lot of current state spending on healthcare in the UK is consumed by the relatively affluent elderly and that this basically represents a transfer from poor to rich. He believes that a reduction in spending on those on middle incomes would not necessarily damage the quality of life as long as there was high quality acute care available for all.

Kaletsky's key argument appears to be that Britain (and others) commitment to government funded health, pensions and long term care cannot be honoured. If Britain continues down this policy line many public employees will lose their jobs and more households will sink into poverty all to ensure that the NHS can keep growing (NHS spending was 6.6% in 2001 and is not almost 10% of GDP in 2010). If the new coalition wants to provide a wider safety net and serve the interests of other sectors apart from health than NHS reform is inevitable including its partial privatisation. The suggestion is that a more mixed model of public and private provision should be further developed.

Steven Toft points to the poor prognosis for UK public finances where it is predicted that paying off the government’s debt will take decades and future liabilities for pensions (£770 bn) and Private Finance Initiatives (£200 bn) look particularly grim. He suggests that the challenge for the public sector will be to find clever ways (e.g. through social innovation and total place type initiatives) to deliver services for much less money whilst at the same time managing the expectations of the many who do not realise that the state has peaked.

The new challenge in what Kaletsky terms capitalism 4.0 will be to demand that government must expand and contract at the same time. The point seems to be that where the ‘market’ can be found to deliver better this needs to be pursued, whilst at the same time ensuring that the state can intervene for example in education to provide pupils from poorer backgrounds with pupil premiums, means testing, needs blind admission and scholarships.

Linked and open data in local government - an informal discussion paper

Ingrid Koehler — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:19:39 GMT

Two months ago I published 10 key points about linked and open data. Here’s the rest of the paper. It’s a high-level, informal discussion piece about the possibilities of linked data and some of the realities of open data. When I first wrote the paper, it had limited circulation and we didn’t have a formal programme of support. Now we do have a programme. The LGA group will be soon writing to councils formally explaining about the programme and inviting your participation and support.

But we’re also aware of a lot of activity that’s going on right now, so we wanted to let you know what we’re thinking (more or less).

If you can’t access SlideShare, you can also download this paper in the Local Open Data Community of Practice.

An intro to linked and open local gov data

View more documents from Ingrid Koehler.

The importance of the human aspect in the supply function: Stages for developing PSM proficiency

Gordon Murray — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 09:23:47 GMT

A cursory glance at the efficiency agenda flags up that procurement is a critcal part of strategy. Yet many have asked are existing procurement professionals 'up to the challenge?' Procurement professionals may find such a statement offensive, but can take solace in that the same question is being asked in other sectors too. This paper by Feisel, Hartmann and Giunipero (in Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management (in press)) reports on a case study in one muliti-national company with four separate procurement organisations. While not in the public sector, the 'human aspects' explored, I think are of interest to those in the public sector in trying to ensure the rights skills are present to deliver the efficiecny agenda.

The paper recognises that even within the private sector new skills are required from those traditionally sought in procurement professionals a few years ago. The paper discusses the skills needed but the real focus is on how the skills were developed.

The core skills which are considered necessary are:

team building
strategic planning
communication
technical, and
financial skills.

Tehcnical skills, including computer literacy to drive e-procurement and category management, provide the foundation on which the more strategic skills are built - technical competence is needed by every procurement professional.

On that foundation interpersoanl skills are built:

communication
conflict resolution
influencing and persuasion skills
problem-solving

Generic managerial skills are acknowledged as neecessary.

Internal enterprise skills comprise:

relationship management
change management, and
organisational skills.

While external enterprise skills comprise:

cross-functional and
team building.

Within the four case studies, to me, the key findings were that professional competency is a pre-requisite to a strategic orientation. Another major finding for me was that the external enterpise and strategic business skills, at individual level was only achieved by recruitment of external highly qualified professionals! This is interesting as I can think of a number of occassions when procurement posts have been filled by 'managers' as opposed to procurement techicians - it wiould be interesting to test the effectiveness of those appointments. The case study conclusions were that investing in the development of technical procurement skills did not appear to influence the development of strategic business skills. Also standard job descriptions wre usefully employed to ease job rotation.

Some time ago IDeA development a procurement skills framework. I don't think anything in the framework has been undermined by this research but those considering procurement's contribution to the efficiency agenda may find the summary skills profile above of use in auditing capability and investing in skills development.

To distribute or to re-distribute, that is the question?

Iqbal Husain — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:30:12 GMT

Thanks to a recent Community of Practice email update I was able to catch the Moral Maze on the Big Society. The Moral Maze discussion between the panel and witnesses appeared to focus on a division between the distribution of power and wealth and the re-distribution with those on the political right arguing for the former and those on the left the latter. In some ways it was an argument between those arguing that the state had played a key role under New Labour in re-distributing wealth and resources to the poor against those who felt that the state both under Labour and before had a ‘paralysing’ effect especially on the poorest.

Matthew Taylor (RSA) was agreeing that the Big Society as an idea could have a key role in positively changing the ‘culture’ of the country but was very concerned at the speed at which this experiment was being carried out. Michael Portillo made a point he has made before that without addressing the culture of dependency all aspirations would come to nothing.

Philip Blond (ResPublica) was keen to highlight a new role for the state as facilitator (not as provider), however, there was concern from around the table that getting councils and civil servants to pilot Big Society initiatives would do little to break the top down stranglehold that the coalition has said it wants to change.

Nick Pearce (former head of No 10 Policy Unit) made much of the progress New Labour had made on education whilst Melanie Philips was keen to point out that schools had been left in a very poor state. Nick’s argument was that where the state was strong and active, such as Scandanivan countries, there was evidence that there was greater fairness. However there was more debate about whether the culture in the UK could be compared to that in Scandinavian countries and whether it was the absence of a strong religious driver here that was contributing to break down in our communities and not how much or how little the state contributed per se.

Arguably the most interesting and inspiring contribution was from Silla Carron (Chair of the tenants association at Clarence Way Estate) who had helped transform her estate so that people were encouraged to speak out; children were involved in decisions and the estate had become a place where tenants were proud to live and no longer felt it was a ‘no-go’ area. As she said to the Moral Maze panel it’s not enough to sit in an office and work with a community, you need to go and spend time living and working in the community to really bring about the changes that are needed. Maybe Cilla is right?

Are you short circuiting?

Michael Keating — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:48:15 GMT

My last blog talked about how visiting Germany to discuss representative bureaucracy reminded me of the dangers of limiting our thinking to the local – or perhaps what I mean is remembering the importance of the relationship with the national (and international). Since that blog I have been in Nottingham on the 14^th July for our event on ‘knowing your community’, met with East of England colleagues in Cambridge on the 15^th, those from the South West in Exeter on the 21^st and then spent two days in Cornwall meeting a range of public partners, voluntary and community sector representatives, officers and members. There was a distinctive local flavour to each of these but what struck me strongly is how the equality issues that come up are essentially the same – poverty, isolation and separation. The important thing is, however, that effective solutions are grounded in an understanding of local communities.

The other day I heard a colleague describe the current policy arena as one where headline announcements enjoy the limelight while the detailed wiring is up for grabs. That offers us an opportunity – getting the wiring right in communities is exactly what local government has always strived to do and the Equality Framework is designed to assist.

It is short-sighted therefore to say ‘we are no longer using the Framework’ as I have heard from some quarters. The necessity of understanding diversity to tackle inequality to shape cohesive communities will not disappear simply because the CAA has been abolished. Working out the future performance management landscape will be dependent on the comprehensive spending review in the autumn. Whatever happens however we are not going to stop thinking about how to improve (I hope) and the Framework is designed help do this.

Nottingham was the first of our regional events to explore our narrative about the business and moral case for effective diversity and equality practice in the current economic, social and political context. Following a debate right across the country, as well as virtually via the Equality CoP, with your help by next April we aim to have a comprehensive case.

In the meantime, I know that some of you are already having to explain this. Therefore, with thanks to the Audit Commission (not necessarily a fashionable reference I know), I think there are four key risks to adopting the ‘equalities doesn’t matter anymore’ stance. The basic arguments are as follows but essential to crafting them successfully is the specific local context:

· Legal – it is unlawful in exercising a function of a public nature to perform any act which constitutes discrimination.
· Reputation – delivering poor services to those who are discriminated against or whose dependence upon services is great can lead to a loss of reputation as can discriminatory workforce practices.
· Financial – managing complaints, ombudsman cases, redress, judicial reviews, employment tribunals and court cases are hugely costly even before any costs are awarded. The long-term costs of not providing adequate services for people in need and in discriminating against people can be huge. Properly focused preventative services can reduce the need for costly intensive support.
· Democratic – with an increasingly diverse electorate there is increasing pressure for equitable outcomes. Poor outcomes can lead to a loss of confidence in public bodies.

In addition there was a clear message at our Nottingham event from Alison Pritchard, the Head of Strategy at the Government Equalities Office, about the importance of undertaking impact assessments in making the hard spending decisions. The court challenges to Barnet and Portsmouth about their proposed changes to support to people living in sheltered accommodation are indicative of what can happen.

Clearly as well as thinking about what can go wrong we need to reflect on positive arguments for getting our practice right and three themes are emerging strongly in the discussions so far.

Firstly, how can practitioners develop the right skills to adapt to a fast changing environment? Perhaps more crucially how are you all going to be more confident about what you have done already and your ability to articulate its importance? At each of the events I have been to there has been loads of energy and enthusiasm – use and exploit it! The CoPs are just one way to support each other in doing this.

Secondly, strengthening the relationship between officers and councillors will be vital to making the best spending decisions about services for vulnerable residents. Councillor Edward Lord, the LGA Lead Member for Equalities, is establishing a national Equality Framework Sounding Board which will bring together a number of chief executives, senior councillors and partner organisations to provide a strategic steer. This group could help us think through the kinds of discussions which may need to happen at a local level.

Councillors will need the right kind of equalities information to help prioritise decisions so officers have to be able to advise honestly. Based on work in Tower Hamlets last year, in recent weeks we have facilitated open problem-solving workshops designed to develop these skills in Crawley and Rotherham which have proved very successful. We are undertaking a further pilot session in Boston in September. Are you interested in using the model?

Thirdly, building better partnerships – we have all known that they make sense so on Wednesday this week a number of local government and NHS colleagues met to explore the opportunities and challenges arising from shared equality services. We will use the Equality CoP to share the outcomes from this shortly but would welcome any experiences of successful practice.

Fundamental to all of this continues to be how we can share what we do well and support each other to adapt and develop it. One piece of work which struck me in Cornwall last week is an excellent example of how to do ‘knowing your community’. As you’ll see it captures on one side both the nature of the county and the service implications arising from this knowledge. It seems to be me to be straightforward, clear and opens the door to working out how to get the wiring right – exactly what we should all be doing.

Round up of new content from Efficiency Exchange CoP - 29th July

Charlotte Hayes — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:18:02 GMT

Library

Stimulating new markets – commissioning social enterprises – This report, based on in-depth case studies, aims to provide practical advice to support commissioners in establishing and developing social enterprises.

A new web resource from LG Improvement and Development and partners - Integrating local public services: the workforce issues. Helping the public sector to develop radical new ways of delivering more efficient services…

Local charity cuts jeopardise David Cameron's 'big society' - reduced funding for community-based activity threatens to undermine local power.

Anyone that has done any work on Stress management/policies is invited to leave your comments and suggestions on the CoP here.

Smarter procurement – a case study from the Essex Procurement hub

Blogs

How esd-toolkit can help your council determine what services it MUST deliver!! The toolkit holds a powers and duties tree lists that include most of the powers and duties conferred on a council by law, with links to Local Government Services Lists for each.

Hot seat and hot links – useful links to resources/discussions on social media, efficiency and open data

Fraser Henderson at Bristol City Council has shared a document that provides practical advice on how to select and set-up an e-petition facility based on the experience of experts and early adopters…you can download it now from the CoP

From the policy and performance CoP

Anyone want to share their regular national/external policy briefings...? This is a good source of councils who are doing a similar thing in slightly different ways, all look useful.

Events

Public administration in an era of austerity 6 Sept - Nottingham

The 2010 Conference will bring together academics and practitioners from a broad range of disciplines including public policy, public administration, public management, social policy, politics to explore theoretical, empirical and practical questions about the changing nature of public service reform.

Establishing Shared Services in Local Government 23 Sept – London

If you are implementing or considering collaborating with other public authorities or establishing and continuously improving internal shared services to meet your efficiency targets for 2010 or 2011; this is an essential event for you to attend. Packed full of practical, relevant and fully transferrable ideas.

Help on selecting and setting-up an e-petition facility

Fraser Henderson — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:19:20 GMT

New advice has been published prior to the mandatory introduction of local authority e-petition facilities by 15^th December 2010 according to the Local Democracy Economic Development and Construction Act (LDEDCA).

This sector-led document provides practical advice on how to select and set-up an e-petition facility based on the experience of experts and early adopters. Download it directly from the library section of the 'petition network' online community.

Happy reading....

UK Councils – Customer Access Index May 2010

Nic Streatfeild — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:34:52 GMT

Quite timely again this month following on the heels of the IDeA’s Avoidable Contact Online Conference. Although NI14 is now defunct it is really good to see so many people ‘getting it’ re the value of measuring avoidable contact to gain insight into potential service and efficiency improvements. Lots of good discussions and case studies available online.

We were particularly pleased to see the online session with David Lindill (Transformation Officer, East Herts District Council) talking about channel migration / optimisation – also see last month’s blog regarding channel management ‘themes’.

There has been no significant change to the overall channel mix of the sample group this month – as previously discussed i doubt we will see a structural difference until we move to Gov 2.0. See last month’s chart if you missed it.

Last month we looked at the difference in access channel profiles between different types of councils.

This month we plan to look at a specific service. We thought we’d kick off with Housing which is one of the higher volume services in most councils – and which is also widely measured across the GovMetric base.

With respect to satisfaction, the highest performing councils in May were:

If we look at a longer timeframe (12 months from 1^st April 2009 to 31^st March 2010) we can start to understand some of the ‘high level’ dynamics of how customer access housing services.

From last month you’ll be familiar with the access channel chart showing the number of interactions across primary channels in the sample group. Please excuse the watermark on the charts – these are internal use charts only.

This shows higher than average use of the ‘assisted service’ channels – however if we look at the months of March 09 v March 2010 we can see usage of web channel moving from 45% to 60% - a significant shift in what many would argue was a hands on service!

March 2009

March 2010

However when we look even more closely at the housing interactions we can see the highest volume is around repairs. With the right web services in place this is a simple interaction type that could be moved increasingly online.

Lets also have a look at the trends over the 12 months – not enough data to compare with in the previous year but interesting to see the dip at Christmas – does it feel like a dip at the coal face I wonder?

On a separate note it was interesting to see the Scottish Improvement Service launching a new national customer satisfaction standard a couple of weeks ago. Whilst different in some details to GovMetric it also seeks to establish a consistent approach nationwide. We also had discussions recently with Toronto City Council – the Canadians have also been using a consistent approach called CMT – a pan government approach to measuring customer experience. The momentum is building!

Notes

For a demo of how GovMetric works please click here. Make sure you have volume turned on!

Hot seat and hot links

Ingrid Koehler — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 06:27:27 GMT

This week I’m in the hot seat of the National Member Development Community. So, councillors and those who support them – join me in a discussion about how councillors can use social media effectively.

Links I’ve spotted…

Big Society:

There’s a good idea in Cameron’s ‘big society’ screaming to get out | Jonathan Freedland | Comment is free | The Guardian

(tags: bigsociety coalition government conservative guardian labour news policy)

Big society: app stores and hyperlocal democracy | DavePress

Dave Briggs muses on a commons for big society tools – and it’s not all tech

(tags: bigsociety Dave+Briggs David+Wilcox)

David Barrie: Who are the recruiting sergeants of The Big Society?

(tags: community bigsociety)

Online comms

COMMS 3.0: How open data will change the face of news and PR « The Dan Slee Blog

Excellent piece on the new challenges to comms and PR of open data and the skills that will be required to deal.

(tags: opendata data pr journalism communications localgov reference)
Councils! Act now or lose out to Facebook Community Pages | Sectorshare

An outline of community pages and how councils can lose out on shaping the Facebook conversations about their areas.

(tags: councils facebook)
How the internet really affected the election | Media | The Guardian

Among the many promises broken during the course of the 2010 UK general election was the contention that this was to be Britain’s first true internet campaign, won and lost Obama-style due to grassroots funding campaigns, intimate video messages and – anathema to the serious political pundits – soundbites on Twitter.

Open Data

“The Semantic Web, Linked and Open Data: A Briefing Paper”…07.13.10 « The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian’s Weblog

briefing paper explaining the ins and outs of data (via Steve Dale)

(tags: linkeddata opendata semantic)
Local government data: how to make it really open. Five principles for transparency | News | guardian.co.uk

Texas.gov | Open Data

Listing of open data in Texas

(tags: data texas state opendata)
10 Do’s and Don’ts of Opening Up Public Data – 100% Open

New Public Sector Transparency Board and Public Data Transparency Principles | data.gov.uk

The Public Sector Transparency Board, which was established by the Prime Minister, met yesterday for the first time.The Board will drive forward the Government’s transparency agenda, making it a core part of all government business and ensuring that all Whitehall departments meet the new tight deadlines set for releasing key public datasets. In addition, it is responsible for setting open data standards across the whole public sector, listening to what the public wants and then driving through the opening up of the most needed data sets.

(tags: opendata data transparency uk data.gov.uk principles gov2.0)
Publishing Local Open Data – Important Lessons from the Open Election Data project | data.gov.uk

During the May 2010 local elections, Socitm joined with the Local Government Association to support the Open Election Data Project (http://openelectiondata.org/) set up by Chris Taggart, developer of OpenlyLocal.com and a member of the Department of Communities’ Local Public Data Panel, on which Socitm also sits.Local authorities were encouraged to publish election results on their websites as ‘Linked Open Data’ – data that is published under an open licence that allows unrestricted reuse, and that is marked up to identify the structure and meaning, making possible its automated collection for re-publishing and mashing up with other data.

Efficiency

ConservativeHome’s Local Government Blog: Hillingdon triples library use – and cuts costs by 20%

Check out the amazing content from last week’s More for Less online conference

Engagement

Engaging communities in the scrutiny process

(tags: hyperlocal scrutiny)

Involve – Pathways through Participation: Using participatory mapping to explore participation in three communities

(tags: engagement involvement community)

Gov2.0

Digging digital government: recent major works and what they mean

(tags: neil+williams gov2.0 central.government)

Local charity cuts jeopardise David Cameron's 'big society'

Neil Rimmer — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:11:56 GMT

Prime minister's flagship idea at risk as reduced funding for community-based activity threatens to undermine local power

Patrick Butler

Guardian, Friday 23 July 2010

Cuts to the local structures capable of delivering David Cameron's 'big society' pose a threat to the plan, say charity chiefs.

Thousands of small community-based charities expected to help deliver David Cameron's "big society" idea are facing potentially devastating cuts, leaving some under threat of closure, and putting services to some of Britain's poorest and most vulnerable people at risk.

The prime minister relaunched his flagship idea in Liverpool this week, promising a huge expansion of philanthropy and social activism. But charity leaders say the government will struggle to close the gap between rhetoric and reality as cuts to grants made by local authorities and NHS trusts to community groups hit home.

Charities have warned that many local organisations embodying the ideas promoted by Cameron – some of which have been held up by ministers as exemplary "big society" projects – are at risk of collapse as councils seek cuts of up to 30% over three years.

Voluntary organisations affected include those providing local services such as after-school clubs, play schemes, domestic violence charities, rape crisis centres, parenting programmes, projects to tackle youth crime, and support schemes for isolated older people. The cuts range from million-pound investments to grants worth just hundreds.

Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, said: "Small scale community activity is fundamentally important to civil society. It depends on small grants, and if these are wiped out this will remove the very support structures that community groups depend on and undermine the big society."

Stephen Bubb, CEO of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, said the cuts meant the government would struggle to "close the gap between its heady rhetoric and current reality". Charities were likely to bear the brunt of reduced spending. He added: "It's just like the 1980s. Charities are seen as the easy target."

Charities are furious that some councils and central government departments appear to be riding roughshod over the so-called compact arrangement - a voluntary agreement that requires statutory funders to consult charities over proposed funding changes. Many charities rely on the compact as they do not sign formal legally binding contracts with councils.

One local charity leader said: "What the government says it wants to achieve with the big society and how it is behaving are two different things. All this has created a lack of trust. Within weeks of this government starting out it has destroyed its relationship with the sector through its dishonesty."

Community projects and small charities affected include a charity in Ealing, west London, that attracted ministerial praise after recruiting 1,600 new volunteers, each pledging 100 hours' service. It says its programme will close after it lost £1.3m of Whitehall funding agreed by the previous administration. The government's "big society" adviser Lord Wei recently visited the scheme in Ealing, west London, and declared it to be at "the cutting edge of a lot of what … community organising ... is looking to be about." Ealing council's voluntary service chief executive, Andy Roper, said: "Government said that this year's cuts were about cutting waste; but our experience is that they will impact on the voluntary sector frontline."

A rape crisis centre - one of just two in London - faces a £30,000 funding cuts - equivalent to a tenth of its budget - after Conservative-led Croydon council in south London announced a 66% reduction in its grants pot for local charities. Rape Crisis South London fears losing a further £106,000. London Councils, is to consider whether to give a £16m charity grants pot back to individual councils, with no guarantees that the money be spent on charities. Croydon's council leader Mike Fisher last month voted himself a £13,000 rise in his allowance, taking it to £65,000.

Also at risk is a community-led project aiming to create 67 jobs in neighbourhood social enterprises set up by residents on one of Britain's most deprived estates. Ministers have suspended a New Deal for Communities grant, which Glenn Jenkins of Marsh Farm Outreach, based on the Marsh Farm estate near Luton, said would be a "complete disaster" and would "fly in the face of the claims by the coalition to cut without affecting the poorest".

Ministers have also taken flak from local charity umbrella groups that help set up and develop small grassroots organisations. Many were told without consultation that they would no longer receive millions due under reward agreements signed by the previous government.

Some of the groups, known as councils for voluntary service (CVS), have been left tens of thousands of pounds out of pocket after investing financial reserves in projects with the expectation that funding would continue. They are anticipating even deeper cuts next March, when further spending reductions agreed in this autumn's spending review are expected to filter through to council budgets.

Cameron said in his speech the "big society" was an attempt to empower local individuals and groups: "We need to create communities with oomph – neighbourhoods who are in charge of their own destiny, who feel if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them."

Interviewed afterwards, he denied the scheme was a cover for cuts to public services. He said: "It is not a cover for anything. I was talking about the 'big society' and encouraging volunteering, encouraging social enterprises and voluntary groups to do more to make our society stronger. I was talking about that way before we had a problem with cuts and deficits and all the rest of it."

Is your charity or community organisation facing cuts? Tell us about it at guardian.co.uk/cutswatch

Round up of new content from Efficiency Exchange CoP

Charlotte Hayes — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:57:47 GMT

'Getting more with less' online conference is going strong with 873 participants currently taking part. Over 200 people have joined since the conference started on Monday and it’s not too late to join in. If you want to leave a comment, question or just have a look through the discussions just sign up here. Join in tomorrow where the theme for the day is ‘Innovations for cuts without cutting services’, starting at 9.30am with Paul Kirby, Partner at KPMG describing how the shift in power from Whitehall to public services could help deliver them in a more cost effective and efficient way, leave Paul a question or comment now!

Blogs

Stress Management within local Government, Do you have any current examples of implementing a stress management policy? Peter Smith at Maidstone Borough Council is looking for good examples, best practice, challenges faced, good resources to use, etc. Any information that you can provide will be gratefully received, just leave your suggestions on the CoP here.

What can social media do for you? Reduce the cost of providing, using and sharing information or a way of telling people what you had for breakfast…read Ingrid’s blog, Crisis and opportunity for social media in local government for a discussion on what it could offer your LA.

The cherry on the cake, a discussion around various approaches to behaviour change in the public sector.

The Rise and Rise of the Private Sector... When you want to improve your services and reduce costs do you seek help from the private sector? Why? Are the skills not there in the public sector, or is it that an outside person is able to ask those questions that you dare not ask!! Join in the discussion here!

Events

Getting more with less: Online conference Last Day Friday 23^rd July

Book your place now

Join us in a FREE online conference which covers strategic commissioning, working with the public sector, better procurement and radical innovation for efficiency. The working agenda and a list of speakers can be found here

Public administration in an era of austerity 6 Sept - Nottingham

Establishing Shared Services in Local Government 23 Sept – London

Summer holiday: but is it going to be a break from work ?

Paul Allsopp — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:07:14 GMT

Summer holidays are supposed to give busy workers time away from the office to switch off and unwind. However new research from the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) reveals that over one-third work while on annual leave, while 40% return to work feeling more stressed than when they left.

The survey of almost 2,500 managers shows that out of those who work while on leave, 80% frequently respond to emails, almost half take phone calls and one in ten even go into the office. Blackberries and Smartphones are the main culprits for holiday work, over two-thirds of respondents admit to checking them at least once a day, if not more.

“Gone are the days when people cut off contact with work for a fortnight over the summer and made a complete break,” said Penny de Valk, Chief Executive of the Institute of Leadership & Management. “While technology means that it is easier than ever to work remotely, it also makes it extremely hard to switch off. Uncertain economic times also mean that many UK employers are keeping one eye on their job at all times, when what they really need is time away from the office to rest and re-energise.”

Worryingly the survey also reveals that when employees go on leave, the stresses and strains of work do not disappear quickly, with half of the respondents admitting that it takes them at least two days to start to unwind, and one in ten saying that they need a week or more to fully relax.

The research results also suggest that holidays are not really hitting the spot when it comes to relieving stress, with 40% of workers feeling more anxious when returning to work than before they went. Overflowing inboxes are a key factor, with 90% saying that they come back to a deluge of emails.

De Valk added: “It is a real concern that so many employees return to the office after annual leave feeling more stressed than when they left. This anxiety is almost certainly due to the high workloads we anticipate returning to, and the fear of what might be waiting for us when we get back. Everyone needs a decent break from time-to-time to recharge and regain a fresh perspective on life and work.”

Sound familiar, or do you have you work life balanced and your absence management well organised ?

Checkout ILM’s 5 top tips for cutting down holiday stress levels at:
http://www.i-l-m.com/research-and-comment/8741.aspx

Paul Allsopp, The Agile Organisation.
www.agile.org.uk

Crisis and opportunity for social media in local government

Ingrid Koehler — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:02:02 GMT

I’d been invited up to Kirklees to give a talk about social media – entitled ‘social media, what’s it all about’ – and rather typically I scuppered that title. I’m a maverick, me. Instead I went with Local by social: Crisis and opportunity for social media in local public services. For one thing, I think we’re in a strange period when many (but not all) have moved beyond the what’s it all about stage and into the ‘ok, I know I’ve got to use this stuff, but I’m not really sure how.’

For sure, people are well beyond the days of ‘I dunno about this Twitter thing, isn’t that what Stephen Fry does’. I haven’t had a question which seems to be based around ‘isn’t this going to all blow over’ for ages at one of these gigs. I spoke to a room of about 130 officers when this time last year I suspect it would have been 30.

And rather than talk about the specific aspects of different tools and how people are using them – I gave examples of the convening powers that are genuinely unique to social media. Social media reduces the cost of providing, using and sharing information – it can be a platform for organising collaboration and the self-organisation of communities. Or it can be a way of telling people what you had for breakfast. Along the spectrum of social media each of these things has value. But transforming the way that people are supported is going to really challenge our creative and organisational skills – but the rewards are far greater.

Crisis and opportunity for social media in local government

View more presentations from Ingrid Koehler.

Big Society

Not to jump on the Big Society bandwagon, but social media is ideally suited for this sort of thing. Social media doesn’t make people volunteer or engage in the civic realm, but it makes it easier for them to do so (provided the design is right). Big Society is criticised for being a cover-up for cuts. But I don’t think it is. The cuts are going to happen. They will hurt. But this is a huge opportunity to do things in a really different way in order to dull the pain and in some cases achieve things we never managed through government only provision. And unlike paying for services through taxation, paying for services through your own time, sweat and skills brings rewards to the giver as well as the recipient. It creates social capital.

Today we’ll be talking about Big Society and what it means for efficiency in the Getting More for Less Online Conference, including a welcome message from Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society.

Kirklees on the money

Although there was some frustration from staff about the pace of starting to use these new tools, they were reminded by a senior manager Jane Scullion that they’re really in the vanguard in terms of councils in the UK. Easy words from the inside, but as an outsider and professional watcher of these things – it’s absolutely true. Some of the questions I was asked after my talk were answered with “this colleague of yours is working on that, too.” So they have fantastic resources within their own organisation (and on some niche areas where they don’t I was able to refer them to the Social Media Community of Practice) The engagement of the audience was amazing. Although I stressed that social media isn’t about the tools, but you do need to understand how they work to know which ones are appropriate and how to get the most of them, I didn’t talk much about that in practice. Fortunately following my talk there was a two hour workshop on a whole range of aspects of social media – how to use the tools and how social media was being applied locally. The buzz in the workshops was amazing and it was great to hear what staff were either doing or thinking about doing.

Facebook edges out

As well as talking about how social media can be used as infrastructure for new ways of co-delivering services, I also touched on how we’re taking the same approach on harnessing the convening and amplifying powers of these tools for knowledge management, improvement and efficiency on the professional side through the Knowledge Hub (I say professional, but we’re not envisioning limiting access to just professionals – but to social entrepreneurs and the voluntary sector).

In any of these presentations, I usually ask where people have memberships online – by show of hands. Are you on Facebook? Overwhelming show of hands. Are you using Twitter? A goodly number. Are you registered on our communities of practice? Eek. Under a third. We need to do better. And we will. Through the Knowledge Hub.

But don’t wait for the Knowledge Hub (which we expect around February 2011). Register now on Communities of Practice – there is lots of great stuff there and it’s the best place to be for now to get get the benefits of khub.

A personal note

I had an absolutely fabulous welcome in Kirklees, so thanks to all the staff there who were warm and incredibly helpful. I have a notoriously poor sense of direction and I was met at the train station for the walk to the university where I gave my talk and managed to hitch a walk back to where I couldn’t possibly go wrong. It was really needed after a miserable train journey with layers of delays and cancellations, and where Twitter had better information than the rail staff. (Thanks John Popham). And when I finally did catch a connection to Huddersfield I was sat next to a guy with the leakiest headphones ever playing exactly the kind of music I HATE (speed metal – genuinely gives me a headache and I’m unable to tune it out).

And I’d like to add that I think Huddersfield has one of the coolest train stations in England.

Stress Management within local Government

Peter Smith — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:35:29 GMT

Afternoon all,

We're currently looking at implementing a stress management policy and I'm keen to see current examples of best practice within this discipline. If anyone here has recently implemented something similar, I'd be interested in hearing from you. Anything is good: examples of best practice; issues that you had during implementation; suggestions for good resources to use, etc. Any information that you can provide will be gratefully received.

Cheers,

Peter M Smith MA

Corporate Project Officer

Resources & Partnerships

Maidstone Borough Council, Maidstone House, King Street, Maidstone, Kent ME15 6JQ

t 01622 602010

www.maidstone.gov.uk

Round up of Day Two: Getting more with less online conference

Charlotte Hayes — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:10:28 GMT

We’ve had 100 new members since the conference began yesterday, so a big welcome to the new sharers, you’re in good company with over 808 delegates participating. Remember the event runs through to Friday 23^rd July covering topics such as strategic commissioning, the Civil Society, working with the public sector, better procurement and radical innovation for efficiency. The working agenda and a list of speakers can be found here.

Don’t forget the £10 Amazon voucher up for grabs each day in our Icebreaker Competition!!! Today’s winner is Anne Couts from Leeds City Council, see Anne’s winning entry here

In the Forum hotseats today…..

The theme for Day 2 was 'Releasing Organisational Potential' .

Over 500 delegates viewed the hotseat at 9.30am where Paul Tonks’ outlined some key steps to delivering savings using a portfolio management approach. Questions were asked about the ‘sweating the asset’ approach and how to keep people engaged and motivated whilst cuts are being made to budgets and staff.

Paul Highlighted one successful model of staff engagement from Calderdale MBC’s 'Grasp the Nettle' Campaign, a scheme that encourages staff to listen to their customers and follow up their comments with actions. We will shortly be posting some materials from Calderdale on the CoP so watch this space.

Dr Bernd Vogel’s discussion on ‘Organisational Energising in the context of the efficiency agenda’., stirred up a lively debate with almost 500 delegates participating. Bernd summarized the different states of organisational energy and the strategies involved in leading or changing it. Some offered challenges to the approach and others asked for examples of different leadership strategies and inspiring council leaders!!

Many delegates commented on the practical ways in which the questions, responses and materials, from both of today’s hotseat’s, have provided further support and information to develop their own strategies, particularly in terms of building engagement. Join in on Wednesday 21^st for more of the same where the focus of the day is Smarter procurement…

Day Three: Smarter procurement

Procurement Lincolnshire starts off at 10.00am with a discussion on how to make savings through partnership working and the challenges and responses to this. If you have anything you’d like to ask leave a question in the forum now…

At 14.00pm Dr Andrew Larner, presents a discussion 'Getting more with less by using smarter procurement', join in the discussion then or leave a question or comment for him now….

Throughout Wednesday there will be a FRINGE EVENT on ‘The Future of Commissioning?’ Your thoughts and comments are welcome on questions such as ‘What forces do you see shaping the future of commissioning?’

Follow the conference in the forum area of the CoP plus supporting documents in the library and remember to REFRESH THE SCREEN to update the discussions at regular intervals…

Not sure how an online conference works? Read the delegates guide for more information and tips on how to get the most out of the event.

If you want to follow the discussion on twitter use #EffXchange

See you Wednesday!!

A traitor writes

Roger White — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:13:37 GMT

Anyone keen (sad?) enough to trawl the LGID’s archives can find various posts to a blog I started up on the CoP platform. This is notice to anyone who might have been kind enough to find some passing interest in them that I have now set up my own more public blog. Sorry, ex-IDeA but I thought I needed a wider/different audience (interestingly the WordPress technology is also much more flexible than this platform’s).

Rather than perpetually cross-post items this is the first of a series of occasional notices (single if there’s collective outrage at my desertion) that if you’re interested you can find my ramblings here. Recent efforts include:

my support (yes!) for senior public sector salaries and how modest they are even at the highest levels compared to the private sector
what happens (not much) when you try to contribute to the UK government’s Spending Challenge web site that is looking for people’s ideas on public sector savings
my frustrating experience with a (publicly funded?) freebie called the Eaga ShowerSmart that arrived unsolicited in my snail mail. Whatever it is it gives sustainability a bad name
oh, and a list of jargon (The Jargon Bin) that annoys me and should annoy everyone – new examples welcome.

Enjoy.

Speak Truth to Power

Iqbal Husain — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:33:41 GMT

The only thing we need fear is fear itself? It’s a statement that chimes well with one used in counselling for bouts of anxiety, “feel the fear and do it anyway”.

What is it that makes people fear their boss, their employer, the 'organisation' and what impact does this have on innovation, creativity and change?

French and Raven identify five types of power that may start to build a picture of what we are up against. Let us take the five elements of power one by one:

Reward power is the power to give people what they want and ask them to do things for you in exchange. An employer or senior may use this to offer a pay rise or promotion in return for ‘good performance’.
Legitimate power is the power coming from a higher power source often with coercive (e.g. sack, dismissal, investigation) power
Referent power is what ‘leaders’ of groups can have. This is the power from another person liking you or wanting to be like you.
Expert power is the power of knowledge and skills that someone else requires.
Coercive power is the power to force someone to do something against their will. This can also include the withholding of rewards or expertise or the threats of social exclusion.

Knowledge of these types of power may understandably contribute to the feelings of fear each level of the organisation has of ‘stepping out of line’. Maybe it also contributes to a collective failure to really speak truth to power - we know where things are going wrong, we want to try something different yet we fear ultimately making the change or taking the initiative. Local Government is no different and if anything in a large organisation these elements of power can be far more pronounced. It may also be a reason why as a model large organisations can be particularly ill suited to change, innovation and creativity.

A tutor at the Open University who introduced me to French and Raven’s model outlined how in his workplace his acquisition of expert power, which his employer required, gave him a useful tool to challenge other forms of power in which he believed he was weaker.

Maybe collectively we can suggest ways we can address issues of power to bring about changes we want to see. How ready are we to speak truth to power?

The Rise and Rise of the Private Sector...

Iqbal Husain — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:14:15 GMT

At the cost of sounding unnecessarily incendiary the talent appears to be in the private consulting sector or at least that is the impression given - you want to improve your services and reduce costs as a local authority so you ask the private sector to come in and advise. You don’t ask another public body; arguably the skills are not there.

The private sector have gained considerable knowledge and expertise of public service work over many years and are well placed at a time like now to capitalise on the potential contracts that will flow (see article). Deborah Orr’s reflections on public debt and how the opportunity to review public services is also worth considering. Whilst people may fear the cuts it may help expose inefficiencies that may rightly need addressing. Maybe part of the reason why people have voted in the way they have, which has made coalition government a reality, is about wanting things to change.

The private consulting companies are coming in to ask the fundamental questions that the public sector should have been asking itself long before any financial collapse. Is it not a key sign of the poor culture of public services such as those delivered via local government that apparently no such fundamental root and branch analysis has ever taken place or taken place on a consistent basis? And this maybe goes to the heart of the problem – could many parts of the public sector be depicted as a sick patient protected over years and years, imagining itself into a state of ‘improvement’ through audits and reviews largely of its own making. Is this crisis already exposing with the assistance of private consultants the excessive ‘fat’ of public agencies? Is this not in itself shameful?

If as I suspect many (if not publicly but secretly) are grateful for this opportunity to do some clearing out maybe it’s not the cuts themselves that are the concern but how things will end up looking. Is it as some or many suspect that the private sector will benefit greatly from what ends up happening or will social enterprises, mutuals and smaller localised initiatives have a fair share of the cake. Experience from the externalising of leisure centres that started to take place in the 1990s suggests that eventually the market consolidates into a dozen or less key players who swallow up smaller rivals. Will social or local enterprises really emerge to challenge the bigger private (consulting) firms? Recently Tridos bank announced that a £3 million social investment fund created to make equity investments in social enterprises was unable to fund enough organisations which met the qualifying criteria. It made only one investment in two years.

Have years and years of being looked after by the state in jobs that paid relatively well and which were not so demanding taken the edge off whole swathes of public sector staff. I was recently talking with someone in another authority about the opportunities to form an enterprise and deliver their service through this route but got the distinct impression that whilst this sounded exactly what they would have liked to do it was the risk, the lack of know how and lack of support that would ensure that they would stick around in the public sector for as long as possible despite the unhappiness they felt for how mediocre things were. They were going to stick around maybe in the hope that some form of miracle would happen or at worst they would at least be able to claim the relatively good salary and terms/conditions in exchange for an unsatisfying job. How many more public servants, particularly in local government are like this?

It appears that this time the crisis won’t allow any form of status quo to remain. And whilst the coalition may talk about localism and the emergence of mutuals and social enterprises I think they and others maybe disappointed in the short term. It is very likely as the references above suggest that the real winners at this stage will be the private companies and that maybe at some later stage as the market matures we may see the emergence of new forms of more democratic and equitable enterprises.

In the short term the future of local authorities is likely to be in the hands of a small elite of officers/members with more and more services shared, externalised or just stopped. The private sector will definitely benefit, its methodologies are what we are all going to be using far more now than before and it is likely that as the coalition envisages the public sector will contract and a reinvigorated private sector will emerge. On one level this maybe no bad thing if it disrupts inefficiencies in the current system. But what we all need to be wary of is that it does not itself become a new oppressive system.

The cherry and the cake

Iqbal Husain — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:57:46 GMT

Recently colleagues have been discussing approaches around behaviour change. It is certainly an area of great interest across the public sector and much has been made of its efficacy? Recently at a presentation on ‘nudge nudge think think’ (see www.civicbehaviour.org.uk/policy_briefings/ ) the case was again made for the efficacy of such an approach packaged as ‘robust’ and ‘scientific’:

door to door canvassing led to 10% increase in kerbside recycling
a 6% increase in household food recycling as a result of residents getting ‘smiley face’ feedback on how their street was performing

Whilst the headline findings appear to show changes there are questions that remain:

is it not the case that when people are given attention, at least for a short period, they largely respond favourably - what’s scientific about that?
how long can you keep behaviour change interventions going before they lose their edge?
if these campaigns do not deal with the substantive issues, are we wasting effort on what looks good without addressing what really matters?
is it the case in many communities that they feel that no one in power has really done anything for them (debt, unemployment, drugs) and so why should they do anything in return, hence resistance to any forms of behaviour change (the recycling bin at the back of my flats is one image of a campaign that has failed to ignite).

My observations of living in a vulnerable community is one of worklessness, drug abuse, debt, family breakdown, long term unemployment, lack of sufficient education and skills. In this environment behaviour change approaches may only ever be nice additions which fail to address the more substantive issues. A report, ‘The End of Regeneration? Improving what matters on small housing estates’ from the Young Foundation makes the case for a more in depth and sustained approach with examples:

Harlem Community Zone adopts the ethos ‘whatever it takes’ and runs community centres, parenting classes and three schools with a strong focus on literacy and numeracy skills
The Place2Be is a children’s counselling service for children who have difficult home lives such as parents with drug or alcohol addiction or parents separating
Peer to Peer motivators which train volunteers aged 19-25 to work with NEETs to help them overcome barriers preventing them from pursuing education, training and employment
Leyton Orient Community Sports Programme that set up a local football team that involved teenagers on an estate who had been identified as at risk of offending. The outcome of a six month programme was that young people on the estate were comfortable travelling off the estate to train which helped to break the 'estate mentality'
Think Family is an approach to co-ordinating support from children’s, young people’s and adults and family services for the families who are most in need.
Framework Housing Association provides tenants with support services to help them sustain their tenancy - these range from help with basic life skills such as setting up a new home, budgeting and accessing local services to help with personal problems such as drug and alcohol addiction
Growing Roots, Strengthening communities was a five year initiative from Canada that gave grants to resident led groups that undertook projects such as improving community gardening, offering parenting classes and developing neighbourhood associations. Investment was made in leadership development for residents so that they would have the skills to continue with the initiatives once the funding dried up

Maybe our resources and time can be better spent on addressing the substantive issues contained in the proverbial ‘cake’ rather than worry too much about the cherry?

Something most definitely needs to be done, we can’t continue to have a situation where 'problem' tenants are moved onto estates and then local residents have to deal with the fall out and make a case for their removal because public agencies currently feel unable to manage this.

Another small milestone: 300+ ideas on efficiency, effectiveness & economy

Jon Harvey — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:20:42 GMT

My small creative ideas blog has now reached 15,000 pageloads - and 300+ ideas to improve efficiency and effectiveness. To celebrate this - I have turned it into a PDF / e-book too (see http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/1071722/blog/blog-display.do?backlink=ref&id=5078167 for my other e-book on my other blog)

The purpose of the small & creative ideas (news) blog is to support, celebrate and communicate ideas that are making a difference in the public and third sectors. (The live blog is at: http://smallcreativeideas.blogspot.com/).

The attached book is a collection of all the posts since Feb 2009. All feedback welcome.

Round up of new content from the Efficiency Exchange CoP - 14 July

Charlotte Hayes — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:56:51 GMT

A quick round up this week as its nose to the grindstone preparing for the 'Getting more with less' online conference. With only days to go, we now have over 600 members participating in this FREE event, starting on Monday 19^th and running through to Friday 23^rd July.

Book your place now The conference will cover strategic commissioning, working with the public sector, better procurement and radical innovation for efficiency. The working agenda and a list of speakers can be found here. There’s also a £10 Amazon voucher up for grabs each day!!

Forums

Join in the continued discussion on workforce productivity and change.

Blogs

We are entering a new era of Local Government which will require new ways of thinking. However will the coming months and years become a battle of putting up barriers to creative and innovative ideas that may improve service? Over 600 members have looked at Iqbal Husain’s blog ‘Yes but’ vs…‘Yes, and…’ what do you think?

To celebrate the fact that his leadership & organisational development blog has now been browsed over 10,000 times, Jon Harvey has turned it into a PDF file for our viewing pleasure. It’s available to download from the CoP now, thanks Jon!

Like to know what your council’s social media reputation is? Find out more from Gov Metrics’ Nic Streatfeild, who has provided some stats, summaries and examples of how councils are making themselves heard.

Mind your business - Agile property and Agile Working explained…

Events

Getting more with less: Online conference 19 – 23 July

Book your place now

Public administration in an era of austerity 6 Sept - Nottingham

Establishing Shared Services in Local Government 23 Sept – London

What is Agile Working ?

Paul Allsopp — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:04:53 GMT

When people discuss agile and flexible working instinctively the focus is on flexible hours, hot desking or home working. This leads me to ask do we have a real understanding of the terminology. So what is ”agile working”. How does it differ from “flexible working” and other terms often encompassed by the phrase “new ways of working”.

The RICS published a very interesting paper on Agile Working which certainly gives plenty of thought to what agile working isn’t and what agility is, with some great examples, but it is difficult to extract a succinct definition of agile working. Another interesting read is the FM World article Test of Agility which summarises BT’s thinking and experience on the subject. For BT flexible working is first generation thinking, while agile working is the new paradigm, “a transformational tool” that is the cornerstone of their property and people strategy providing gains on cost, personnel productivity and sustainability.

One of the more straightforward and memorable descriptors is “Martini” working (for those old enough to remember the ad slogan): “anytime, any place, anywhere”. Most definitions of flexible working follow this tagline. But this is 2 dimensional, and “new ways of working” these days must be multi dimensional - not just limited to doing the same work in the same way at a different time and place. Agile working on the other hand incorporates time and place flexibility, but also involves doing work differently – it is transformational. Indeed one organisation (Tameside MBC) has named their programme “Working Differently”.

Agile working is not new, but it is a “new way of working”. It can certainly be included under the umbrella term “smart working”, which is about utilising the benefits gained from changing work practices, deploying new technologies and creating new working environments. Behind the dissemination of new ways of working is progressive improvement in mobile, wireless and fixed line technology and related investments in fibre, bandwidth, server capacity, cloud computing and convergence. In fact the network is increasingly seen as the place of work with the consequent rise of people working in the “clouds” or “virtual world”.

You may ask where terms like “home working” and “mobile working” feature. These are essentially classed as “Workstyles” which relate to the place or location description in the concepts of agile and flexible working. “Hot desking” and “Touchdown” are other well used terms which are specific ”work settings” in office workplaces.

One of the reasons agile working is difficult to pin down is that it’s not prescriptive – there is no one size fits all – it has common themes but is essentially individual and involves choice in the how, what, where and when of working. My definition of agile working was aired at the CoreNet Global Conference in Brussels September 2009:

Agile working is about bringing people, processes, connectivity and technology, time and place together to find the most appropriate and effective way of working to carry out a particular task. It is working within guidelines (of the task) but without boundaries (of how you achieve it).

Whatever the arguments over definition and terminology the goal of agile working is to create more responsive, efficient and effective organisations based on more balanced, motivated, innovative and productive teams and individuals – essential ingredients in surviving and thriving in the current economically challenged world.

To learn more about implementing agile working initiatives contact:
Paul Allsopp, The Agile Organisation.
paul@agile.org.uk
www.agile.org.uk

UK Councils Monthly Social Media Reputation Index – June 2010

Nic Streatfeild — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:52:40 GMT

This month’s report comes hot on the heels of the LGA Annual Conference (#lgaconf).
Eric Pickles (@ericpickles) set the tone for the conference – reinforcing previous messages including those of doing away with the burden of central government targets and returns – Music to our GovMetric (@govmetric) and CouncilMonitor (@councilmonitor) ears where our philosophy is all about measuring the things that make a difference to improving frontline service provision imp – not to populate data returns to Westminster.
We also had the opportunity to attend the Midlands SOLACE event in June – where Dom Campbell (@dominiccampbell) and Alex Aiken both ran stimulating and informative sessions.

Alex was launching the LGA’s New Reputation Guide which is an excellent resource. One of the elements contained within it is the Reputation Index. We were interested to see how social media reputation compares to the metrics gathered in the index – by way of comparison we took the highest scoring councils for ‘Overall Council Satisfaction’ from the Index – and compared their CouncilMonitor sentiment scores (based on average score over last 6 months).

The CouncilMonitor Sentiment Score is derived from a Sentiment Classifier for all online mentions – and scores sentiment on a scale of -10 to +10 – Not surprisingly the above councils are all in positive territory with Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea scoring 3.4 . By way of benchmark most councils usually fall between -2 and +2. We hope to do more cross analysis of these indices next month.

Anyway, on to the numbers and observations for June. As per previous months we’ll start with the total monthly buzz chart – i.e. the total amount of mentions and references to UK councils online.

The total volume of ‘buzz’ continues to grow – but there is a caveat to explore / be aware of. The next chart shows the breakdown of the media mix. Over the last 2 months we had started to see Twitter extend a lead over News sources – partly because of the rapid growth of Tweeters – partly because events like the general election created a significant amount of tweeting.

However, this month we see a huge increase in News. The change was so dramatic we figured there must be something going on.

The issue is related to local newspaper groups such as Johnston Press who have 319 local website titles usually with the format www.<locality>today.com . Within their online publishing platform they are syndicating references regarding a specific council across other titles in their group – so articles relating to Westminster parking are also showing up in their regional and local titles.

For next month we will consider whether any such duplicates should be excluded (we need to think whether they should stay if they are a national view of a Local Authority’s online coverage – views welcome please!) – but for now we reckon removing these duplicates would reduce the News references in the above chart to around the 3000ish mark again – which would still put News back in the lead.

Part of the reason for this would also be the Budget and the amount of news coverage around this. I mentioned last month we would start to look more at the trends relating to council service references online.

We can see several ‘spikes’ in the lead up to and after the budget on 22^nd June.

Benefits – concerns re benefits allowances in a harsher economic climate
Planning – Lots of references to the news that RDAs will definitely be abolished.
Housing – Housing Benefits cuts concerns

Lets look now at the top 5 councils in each category – ranked by volume but also showing sentiment.

Worthy of mention here are certain events which have had a big impact:

Kirklees - Review of the Shannon Matthews case makes national headlines again.

Braintree – Fans invited to big screen viewing of football enabled by the council – very popularly received.

Essex - Expenses politicians in appeal bid (Lord Hanningfield) again.

Notes.

Images and chart data may be used provided CouncilMonitor are credited accordingly.

For a more comprehensive service description please look at www.councilmonitor.com/about .

Monthly Buzz Index methodology – Details can be found here

About CouncilMonitor – CouncilMonitor trawls the Internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week, searching through news, blogs, forums and social media sites. It reads through all of this information and summarises what’s being said about UK councils, and can even tell you whether the sentiment is positive or negative (similar to the election worm we have seen at #leadersdebate). The service was launched in December 2009 so is still quite early on, but by measuring a benchmark group of councils on a consistent basis we hope to be able to provide some national trend information relating to what people are saying about their councils – and how they choose to say it.