Open Eye:Chat

Efficiency in the public sector - getting more for less

Just lately I’ve been noticing that there seems to be a growing consensus that the severe economic outlook not only brings significant challenges, but opportunities to be siezed.

July’s McKinsey Quarterly, presenting ‘The case for government reform now’ argues that:

‘The idea that “a crisis is too good an opportunity to waste” is becoming commonplace.

Businesses around the world are seizing this opportunity to rethink their operating assumptions and even reinvent themselves, often radically. Governments must do the same.

The crisis may well mark a “structural break from the past—a moment when many of the critical assumptions that have driven our previous behavior and attitudes no longer seem correct or appropriate.’

The widely distributed John Harris Memorial Lecture ‘The Implications of the Economic Downturn for Policing’ by Richard Lambert, CBI Director-General, positions itself in the same territory. Mr Lambert stating that  “The country faces a choice. It can decide to get out the salami slicer, and keep it whirling through our public services for eight hard years to come.  Or it can determine to make necessity the mother of innovation. To look at radically different ways of delivering services to citizens of the quality and breadth that they have a right to expect. We can use the opportunity of a crisis to think about ideas that might have seemed impossible in calmer times.”

Ploughing straight into this agenda is a booklet, published today by Demos, called ‘Getting more for less - efficiency in the public sector’ and authored by Jamie Bartlett.

It’s not a particularly light read, but it is an interesting one and raises a number of thought provoking issues.The premise is that ‘For the next decade the most urgent public policy question will be: how can public services achieve more for less — providing services that meet people’s needs, while costing less?’

Mr Bartlett’s contention is that ‘The way to make savings in the public sector is to make sure it is effective. Effective services are personalised — driven by people’s needs, they take aim at the cause of problems rather than the consequences and they are delivered collaboratively.’ In common with other commentators he suggests that ‘The current climate offers a real opportunity to transform the way services are delivered’ and that ‘Efficiency comes from solving problems not managing them’.

The paper, which outlines three routes to efficiency: Peronalisation through personal budgets, Prevention and Collaboration, looks at the application of these three routes across a wide range of public services. It provides a really useful look at the commissioning role, it’s uses, strengths and difficulties and suggests a new approach to defining ‘performance’, suggesting that the public sector needs ‘new approaches to efficiency that are less about streamlining individual processes and more about service redesign’

In terms of the development of policing, commissioning and collaboration, it’s not hard to see that the concept of a local authority stimulating and then commissioning services from a varied and vibrant supply side has interesting potential and application to, for instance, the delivery of neighbourhood safety services.

The paper argues that ‘The general view is that accruing efficiencies out of partnerships is the ‘next phase’ of the agenda’ but ‘for such efficiency gains to be realised, there needs to be a change in the way that partnerships work.

The new landscape of local service delivery points to a different kind of model. Traditional partnerships have involved a very linear form of contracting or performance monitoring. The commissioner sets goals, provides managers with the freedom to meet those goals, and then links payment to delivery. Citizens benefit because, in theory at least, the service improves. Accountability is assumed to operate through central government inspections and the electoral system, but the prime relationship is that between commissioner and deliverer, with the public and other agencies seldom involved. Efficiency in this model is about the way that an individual service delivers the outputs that the commissioner wants — how much it costs to produce a particular level of improvement in recycling levels, for instance.

However, partnerships of the future will need to work on different principles. Councils seeking to deliver place shaping outcomes for their local area will need to broker collaboration between different parts of the public sector, and bring private and third-sector organisations together to work on problems too. In this model, efficiency has to be sought not just within an individual service, but through whole area efficiency, where outcomes are achieved for less’.

This is clearly the intended model through which area services will increasingly be delivered and the paper provides a good overview of some of the issues and challenges associated with it. The paper can be downloaded here or in the sidebar under Miscellaneous.

Assessing Police Performance: Giving the public a voice

About a year ago Barry Loveday (Reader in Criminal Justice at the University of Portsmouth) wrote an interesting article, in the Police Professional magazine I think, outlining his views that the performance target culture had created a generation of middle managers at the expense of leaders. His contention was that the obsession with delivering central government performance targets required  little more than compliance and developed managerial skills at the expense of what the police, really needed, leadership and innovation.

Interesting than to see Peter Fahy, GMP's Chief Constable, arguing in the Daily Telegraph a couple of weeks ago that the government's culture of central control has produced a generation of middle and senior managers who are expert administrators with no instinct on how to how best to catch criminals.  He went on to explain that, in his view,  the police service is now hampered by an 'addiction' to targets  and that forces' ability to catch criminals is being undermined by perfomance targets and form-filling.

So, with that as the background context, now seemed a particularly good time to take a look at HMIC's new police performance inspection regime 'Rounded Assessment'.

The document which sets out the new regime: 'Assessing Police Performance: giving the public a voice' is currently out for consultation, with responses required by Friday, 26 June. Available here and in the sidebar under HMIC.

 Make no mistake, this one really is required reading, as it will define the performance inspection agenda for some years to come. It will most certainly occupy a place high in the thoughts of police authority and chief officer colleagues and, by extension, BCU command teams

Whilst the full document needs to be read and understood in detail, a couple of things worth highlighting:

As with the existing APACS, which it will replace, there will be five domains. These are:

Confidence and Satisfaction
Local Crime and Policing
Protection from Serious Harm
Value for Money and Productivity
Managing the Organisation

As far as is practicable, these five areas are mutually exclusive – ie, a particular activity or performance measure will feature in only one domain. The grading system applied to each domain will be excellent, good, fair or poor. Poor will be a very uncomfortable and very visible place to be. 

One of the key criticisms of previous performance inspection regimes has been the lack of context and professional judgement. Rounded assessment seeks to address this, and in each domain a professional judgement will be applied by HMIC to the range of quantitative and qualitative information available to arrive at a domain grade or score.

As always, one of the most difficult areas to  assess is Confidence and Satisfaction. The Confidence and Satisfaction domain will reflect the Home Secretary’s single target focus on confidence, measured by a BCS question (are the police and local councils dealing with anti-social behaviour and crime issues that matter in their area.)

HMIC's view is that in order to see the bigger picture and provide the best diagnosis of police performance, it may be helpful to set results from this measure alongside another BCS measure – the % of respondents saying they are confident/very confident in the local police. So far so good.

They then go on to suggest that 'Further understanding could be gleaned from robust local surveys on confidence and satisfaction'.  The problem with this is that currently only roughly a quarter of forces meet the  Home Office criteria for robustness in respect of their surveying.

The paper says that 'Statistics will be used sparingly, as research shows that the public is neither interested in, nor trusting of, statistics. We will focus on where the public is put at risk through poor performance, using easily understood graphics to convey key messages and explain relative performance to the public'

The critical thing to note about rounded assessment is that it is not designed as 'a practitioner dialogue'. It will be much more public-facing. Supporting this approach HMIC have already designed a public facing website to display the results of the inspections. It's striking how similar this website is in feel and approach to the Audit Commission's website which details the results of Comprehensive Area Assessment.

There is no doubt that,  driven by the old 'what gets measured gets done' adage, Rounded Assessment will significantly impact everyone's performance agenda. It will be interesting to see how the focus on these broad range of de facto targets affects future managerial behaviour. Peter Fahy has a clear view:

"Capturing the most prolific, the most dangerous, the most harmful is the best way to reduce crime, increase public confidence, and lift the souls of our staff. In my experience if you get this right there is a clear sense of purpose and, yes, a buzz in a team or division/department then the key figures will look after themselves."

'Local policing and health care services remain insufficiently accountable to their local populations.'

Whilst it’s tempting to focus on things of direct and immediate interest to policing performance, like the Policing Pledge, there is a bigger picture and that bigger picture continue to evolve.

There was an interesting report published by the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee on 20 May, entitled: The Balance of Power: Central and Local Government

The report looks at the current role of local government, assessing where it could be more proactive in making best use of existing structures, and where change is required elsewhere, by central government and its agencies and by Parliament, to increase the scope for autonomous local government activity. Pages 30 -36 of the report take a look at ‘The delivery of local police, health and healthcare services: the role of local government’. I have put together an extract which can be found here. The full report is in the sidebar under DCLG.

The position of the Committee in relation to the localism versus national agenda is made clear: ‘During the course of this inquiry we have come to recognise the potential benefits of greater decentralisation in terms of outcomes both for local people and communities and for the democratic process’. It goes on ‘Local authorities should have the freedom to shape the development of their communities and the scope to unlock the full potential of local innovation’

The Committee asked a wide range of key practitioners (ACPO’s Sir Ken Jones gave evidence) whether local government’s role and influence needed to be strengthened in relation to local policing and health services. The answer from local government, and local government think-tanks, was “yes”

Andy Sawford, Chief Executive of the Local Government Information Unit, observed that in polls they had commissioned “both the public and councillors feel that there should be stronger accountability at a local level around policing and healthcare. Policing comes out as the number one issue that people want a say over in their community, and one where there is least opportunity for them to do it.”

A number of different local government and think-tank witnesses who gave evidence advocated a model where local authorities would commission local health and policing services from the local NHS or police authority. The Association of North East Councils felt that a commissioning model “under which the local authority would hold the budget for, and be responsible for the commissioning of, local health and policing services” would “be a bold innovation but it would take us a long way forward in securing democratic accountability”, and suggested that the model be trialled “in the first instance in a few authorities”.

The Chair of the local authority representative body, London Councils, was of the opinion that 'the way ahead is for commissioning to be carried out along with the budget for level one policing, particularly neighbourhood policing, in other words to be joined to the budget that local authorities spend, which is often quite substantial these days, pool those together and then for the local authority to commission the borough commander to deliver level one policing in our area'.

Not surprisingly, the Home Office take a different view. When Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker was asked for his response to the proposal that neighbourhood policing should move to local authorities, who would become commissioners for these police services, he was described as ‘taken aback’, appearing more comfortable envisaging local authorities in purely supportive crime prevention roles, observing that: “we see the involvement of local authorities in a crime reduction role”

Game on then, because the Committee felt that ‘local policing and health care services remain insufficiently accountable to their local populations. If local councils commissioned these local services, local accountability through the ballot box would be much stronger. At present, local councils are unable fully to assimilate local policing and health and healthcare services into their strategic vision for the locality. So long as two such important local services, arguably the most important for most local people, remain outside its scope, the full benefits of an empowered, autonomous local government cannot be realised’.

They expressed their concern that ‘neither the Home Office nor the Department of Health, on the evidence put before us, are ready to allow local authorities a real role in local policing and health and healthcare services. Despite recent changes that have brought in greater transparency and more consultation, the balance of power remains very firmly in favour of Ministers and the policing and health professionals over locally elected politicians. Whilst we acknowledge that there is much useful joined-up working going on in some aspects of local policing and health services, involving some joint commissioning, it is by no means sufficient to alter the overall balance of power’.

To make sure that the debate continues, they have recommended that the Department of Health and Home Office work with Communities and Local Government to establish a local authority commissioning model for local policing and health and health care, and, as a first step, the bringing forward of pilot projects in localities where there are matching boundaries and where some joint commissioning already takes place.

The Pledge: a promising start.

HMIC have recently completed their first round inspections of the police and pledge. They visited seven forces ( Avon and Somerset, Cumbria, Essex, the Met, Northants, South Wales and West Yorkshire) as well as undertaking reality checks and website reviews.

They have delivered a generally favourable state of the nation review, finding that there is strong leadership and personal commitment to the pledge at chief officer and operational level. They identify gaps in the communication (both internal and external) of the pledge and express concern that few forces appeared to be effectively monitoring the delivery of what has been pledged.

Overall then, a promising start. Some detailed points from the report:

All seven police forces visited had a clear direction from chief officers, together with a set of values that help underpin their commitment to provide a highly professional service. The forces all had clear diversity and equality strategies in place. The forces had also carried out a range of reviews to assess and improve access to services.

There were some good examples of getting through to harder to reach groups, but there was little evidence of the Pledge itself being translated into other languages; and formal consultation with minority groups or independent advisory groups on the Pledge itself.

The IPCC has identified incivility as one of the highest causes of customer dissatisfaction yet HMIC state that ‘We have not found very effective practice in responding to dissatisfaction, nor evidence of any considerable capacity to capture, analyse and learn from experiences to support organisational learning'.

Pledge point 2
Overall the work of neighbourhood teams is generally well explained on force websites

Pledge point 3
Assessing the amount of time teams spend in neighbourhoods is problematic.

Pledge point 4
There was evidence of a real commitment on the part of staff to get back to members of the public quickly. However, it is also true that this is a difficult area to monitor.

Pledge points 5 & 6:
Generally HMIC identified a very strong customer service ethos among staff who deal with
calls from the public on a daily basis. Their visits showed that staff have a good knowledge of the Pledge and an understanding of the key role they have to play in delivering it. All seven forces demonstrated that they have a well-developed performance monitoring regime within contact management centres and a strong commitment to improving performance was very apparent.

HMIC also found some good work being done in respect of advice and guidance to staff concerning vulnerable or upset members of the public. They identified some excellent processes within contact management centres to ensure that neighbourhood priorities were instantly flagged to the staff. However, areas of challenge remain, including: a force being confident in estimating the time of arrival for a response unit; ensuring that calls relating to agreed neighbourhood priorities are responded to within the 60-minute target; and appointment systems, where they exist, are somewhat embryonic.

HMIC state that ‘This is a critical area of work for forces as they develop their delivery of the Pledge and will be subject to further reality checking’

Pledge point 7
There was good evidence of meetings taking place but HMIC considered that there was still
a wide variation in terms of how the meeting was run. (There is clearly a training and skills issue associated with this point)

Pledge point 8
All forces have introduced crime mapping and some good practice exists, such as the e-cops electronic update in Cambridgeshire, in terms of providing updates on crime and policing issues. However, once again, this is an area for development, particularly with regard to consistency and sophistication.

A few forces which are particularly strong in terms of their approach to Citizen Focus policing encourage feedback from the public and use that feedback to improve their services. Critical to this approach is that the public can make their comments relatively easily, for example by using links from the police force home page, from quality of service pages or from the Pledge itself.

There are some examples of forces taking quick action to address any dissatisfaction or concerns. However, HMIC found that while all forces have well-established systems for dealing with what has been traditionally referred to as ‘complaints against the police’, there was little evidence of a systematic approach to managing general dissatisfaction. They found it ‘particularly challenging’ to find any robust evidence of forces acknowledging dissatisfaction with the service within 24 hours of it being reported. This will be a further area for testing during inspection.

About half of all complaint allegations relate to incivility, yet it was apparent from some focus groups run by HMIC that there was little local awareness about which issues were being raised by local people in terms of dissatisfaction – or how to resolve them.

Comprehensive communication strategies were evident in all the forces HMIC visited, however awareness and understanding of the Pledge varied. Contact management and Neighbourhood Policing staff were very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. Elsewhere in the organisation, awareness levels were below acceptable.

HMIC’s advice: Forces would be advised to check their overall communications strategy and processes for monitoring delivery of the Policing Pledge.

HMIC’s conclusion: The Policing Pledge is a commitment to the public. Early signs from scoping work are encouraging; however, there is no room for complacency. Forces need to ‘step up a gear’ and focus their efforts to ensure that the Pledge becomes a reality.

The full report can be found in the sidebar under HMIC.

Five go hunting...efficiencies.

One of the fun things about writing this blog is that the scanning you need to do to stay on top of unfolding events allows you to watch the strands of policy being woven into an emerging direction.

Three things have caught my eye in the last week, all of which appear to support a greater emerging focus on efficiencies.

The findings of the so called ‘five wise men’ of the Treasury, the extension of the ‘Total Place’ pilot schemes and the review of Local Strategic Partnerships by the Audit Commission. Join them together and you have a clear sense of travel. Maybe.

So, firstly to the findings of the Treasury ‘five wise men’. In short, they believe that there are still significant savings to be made by way of greater efficiencies in the public sector. The public sector has delivered 5 bn pounds of efficiency savings above the target for the last three years, but the five advisors (commissioned by HM Treasury for a year long programme examining operational spending in the public sector) believe there is scope for an additional 15 bn pounds of efficiency savings.

Each advisor examined the scope for savings in their area of expertise. Back office operations can deliver 4 bn pounds of savings a year and a further 3.2 bn pounds of savings a year on IT spending. This can be achieved through better management information, benchmarking and review of costs and better governance of IT-enabled change programmes.

Collaborative procurement can produce 6.1 bn pounds of savings a year through harnessing the public sector’s collective buying power by buying more goods in a collaborative way and driving more procurement spending through collaborative channels.

Property could result in savings of 1.5 bn of annual running cost efficiencies by 2013-14, rising to 5 bn pounds a year over a ten year period.

A further 20 bn pounds of proceeds from property sales, excluding council housing, may be possible over a ten year period.

They also believe that local incentives and empowerment have the potential for further efficiency savings.

Enter the second of the three issues, the ‘Total Place’ programme (you will recognise the increasing tendency for a focus on ‘place’, consistent with the ‘place shaping’ agenda and the sense of ‘place’ that underpins Comprehensive Area Assessment) part of Sir Michael Bichard's work on the Operational Efficiency Programme looking at the scope for efficiency savings in the public sector.

The ‘Total Place’ programme will map flows of public spending in local areas and make links between services to identify where public money can be spent more effectively. It has been trialled in two areas and now the programme is to be extended to 12 other locations. These are: Dorset/ Poole Bournemouth, Kent, Croydon, Lewisham, Luton/ Central Beds, Leicestershire/ Leicester City, Coventry, Worcestershire, Birmingham, Bradford, 10 Manchester LAs and Warrington, South Tyneside/ Gateshead/ Sunderland and Durham.

DCLG’s view is that the Total Place programme will lead to practical new ways of working - closer cooperation, more joint projects and greater pooling of budgets across local public services.

Coincidentally (why waste a good conspiracy theory though) the Audit Commission last week called for a firmer grip on partnership working. In their report ‘Working better together?’ (available in the sidebar under DCLG) which takes an in depth look at how local strategic partnerships are performing, they conclude more needs to be done in terms of governance and resource management.

Their findings suggest that resource allocation is not well managed (and if budgets are to be pooled within a ‘Total Place’ approach, then effective resource allocation and management is essential).

Most LSPs lack mechanisms for assigning mainstream resources towards achieving the goals of the sustainable community strategy and the local area agreement and few LSPs have assessed the costs and benefits of joint working. They also fail to align planning and reporting cycles and this makes it difficult for local agencies to align performance and resource management systems.

The Commission is also critical of overview and scrutiny arrangements to hold LSPs and partners to account. It found little evidence that governance arrangements are supporting LSPs’ accountabilities to member organisations and through them to local people. It recommends that overview and scrutiny committees should focus on one-off activities or events and review systems and risks. They should also assess performance in different themes and review performance data from LSPs and partners.

So, Treasury savings, Total Place and better resource management by LSP’s. Enid Blyton or clear links to an emerging agenda ? Time will tell.

Not about Twitter

Whilst I get the list of Forces and colleagues that use Twitter together, I thought that I would round up a couple of things from the last three weeks that you may find of interest.

Firstly, off to North Northants BCU where they have a cctv system that climbs lamp posts and an interesting approach to increasing familiarity with the local PCSO.

To combat anti social behaviour and crime in the area, the BCU has invested in several Sherpa Portable Rapid Deployment camera systems. The cameras, which can be deployed and set up within 15 minutes, can be fitted on a pole in any locality and can then be controlled remotely from a single location either by radio transmission (upto 1.2 km) or Wi-Fi.

The cameras, which have been tested in Northern Ireland, crawl up the lamp posts to any desired height, and are designed to withstand most vandal attacks.

The really cool bit is that and once set up they can be viewed from a BlackBerry handheld device, which all Safer Community staff on the BCU have been issued with.

So just who is my local Safer Community PCSO? What do they look like ? That was the public question that the BCU set out to respond to. The staff suggestion: cardboard cut-outs of the local PCSO displayed at strategic locations and times in the area to improve accessibility and visibility.

However, there is a steady turnover of Safer Community Staff so, with costs firmly in mind, full colour cardboard cut-outs with interchangeable heads have been developed. A generic uniformed body is used and different PCSO's can then use the cut out with their face. Clever solution and an instant diet if one is needed. Great.

Finally, a bit of self promotion (well HMIC are inspecting the Hallmarks of Citizen Focus at the moment, so it is topical), working together with Diane Lowe from Maxlowe, we have developed a scenario based approach to Citizen Focus training.

Aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at Inspector and Sgt level, the training provides a highly interactive and 'real world' approach to understanding Citizen Focus. Delegates get inputs about CF and then spend a day looking at a fictional location, understanding the complexity of partnership delivery and applying the Hallmarks of Citizen Focus to the scenario. In the last couple of weeks we have run the course for colleagues in North Wales. We had a great time and by their responses ( "So much packed into every day", "Thought provoking, I feel inspired", "Put it all into context") so did they.  If you're interested in getting this good stuff for your colleagues, give us a call.

Top Cop sacked by Home Secretary

In a move that has stunned UK policing, Worrieshire’s top cop, Chief Constable S Colari, has been sacked.

Colari, who was appointed to lead Worrieshire in late 2007, was called to a meeting at the Authority's Headquarters, Troublesome House in Little Confidence, Worrieshire today, by the Chair of the Police Authority, Mr Bare Lee Credible. There, in a short but tense meeting, Mr Bare Lee Credible announced that following a meeting between himself, Regional Police Commissioner Con O’feedence and Home Secretary P F Ormance, the Authority lacked confidence in the Chief Constable’s ability to deliver the MSF Confidence League Trophy so badly desired by the Authority and the influential regional office and that CC Colari was sacked with immediate effect.

The meeting followed a string of poor MSF Confidence Trophy results, the latest being the woeful recent home showing against Sporting Club HMI Coking. Despite the awfully Sporting HMI Coking Club (motto - fierce advocate - est 2008_) lacking key players in depth and being short of resources, they held Worrieshire to a scoreless (and some would say, dull) no score draw.

Worrieshire, with strong close season buying in the approved, post SCC, AKKPOE transfer window, were expected to perform strongly and, ignoring repeated calls and exhortations for an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to the game, produced a dull, listless and, at times, unimaginative draw (Despite changing pitch and weather conditions Worrieshire played a conventional line up of a lone CC up front, a DCC sweeper and a midfield packed with ACC’s).

This was the latest in a string of less than stellar results for Worrieshire. They were recently knocked out of the APACS Challenge Cup and their lacklustre recent performance raises real doubts about their ability to compete in the newly formed, but influential, CAA League.

Mr Bare Lee Credible explained that, in the view of the Authority, Chief Constable S Colari, had “lost the dressing room and the confidence of the key authority players”. “Colari was a popular Chief” said Bare Lee Credible “but under him we have slipped to seventh in our MSF. If this continues we will have no chance of achieving our APACS and CAA ambitions. He simply had to go”

Although not corroborated at the time of this report, senior players were apparently surprised and shocked at the speed of the dismissal. Sources say that key players, currently away on career grooming assignments, were immediately informed of the decision by Force communications systems. They are expected to receive the shocking information next week.

It is understood that the Regional Commissioner has asked Sparklingshire’s Chief Constable, Des Perate, to run both forces until a suitable (and available) candidate can be found.

Placeabet Bookies Ltd say that the short list for the vacant post includes 43 Deputy Chief Constables, 26 Senior Civil Servants and a (much fancied) pigeon from Tring.

'Public information does not belong to Government, it belongs to the public on whose behalf government is conducted’

If you are interested in the development of digital services and the potential that it has to affect the delivery of service in the public sector, you ought to take a quick look at the beta report that the Power of Information Taskforce has recently released.

The Taskforce, which recently ran the ‘show us a better way’ competition (previous post refers) brought together a group from government, industry and the third sector, to enable better public service delivery.

Their report, which follows, Lord Carter’s interim report on Digital Britain, is about improving Digital Britons’ online experience by providing expert help from the public sector online, where people seek it, and by freeing up the UK’s public sector information for innovative new services.  The report seeks to move into the mainstream activities that are currently minority best practice.

The report makes 25 recommendations, a number of which have a direct bearing on the provision of policing information and the accessibility of that information.

The recommendations most certainly speak directly to the need for a cultural shift in staff access to the internet and a much broader understanding and use of the collaborative tools that are shaping our world.

The report makes recommendations to help this culture shift and make more transparent the public sector’s attempts to engage online, which, the authors believe, ‘public servants should do as a matter of course’.

A selective flavour of the recommendations:

Public servants should be active in online peer support forums concerned with their areas of work, be it education specialists in parenting forums or doctors in health forums

Public servants will require adequate internet access to take part in social media as part of their job

Unlock innovation in leading public sector sites using a ‘backstage model‘, a standing open online innovation space allowing the general public and staff to co-create information-based public services.  This capability should be a standard element of public information service design.

Invest in innovation that directly benefits the public by ensuring that public sector websites spend about as much on innovation as leading knowledge businesses. 

The public services can break out of the traditional challenge/response model of consultation by using the latest online tools.

Public bodies are often required to publish notices and other information in newspapers, by physical notices or by other means.  The same information should now also be published directly to the internet.

‘Usability’ critieria should be published with an implementation plan to central government websites.  The criteria and guidance should be published as soon as possible with an implementation plan by June 2009.  The approach should be extended to the websites of the wider public sector including local government, health and police.

The Permanent Secretary Government Communications should bring forward a plan to train communications staff in the basics of social media and a modern web presence by Q3 2009

A new external high level advisory panel should replace the Taskforce, reporting to the Minister for Digital Engagement.  The Panel should advise Ministers and public servants on the latest developments in the area in the UK and overseas, scrutinise departmental plans and capabilities, set priorities for the Cabinet Office’s R&D fund, and drive and monitor progress in implementing the recommendations set out above. It should publish regular reports on the internet about developments and the government’s progress. The panel should be established by June 2009.

The timing outlined in the recommendations does provide a sense of momentum, possibly fueled in some part by the Obama effect and the rapid 2.0 changes in United States governmental web services.  It is definitely a fast moving agenda, and one well worth contributing to and keeping an eye on.

Blogs, Bloggers & Twitter

I’m running a Citizen Focus Course for the NPIA this week. Part of the course is an input that I give about marketing and communications and in particular, the need to embrace web 2.0 thinking and techniques and move away from old fashioned ‘organisation out’ messaging and embrace a less centralised approach which builds community and allows people to engage with the brand.

This normally leads to a discussion about the merits, wisdom and benefits of blogging. My view is unequivocal: Colleagues (and BCU Commanders in particular) should be blogging. For me it’s a no brainer because…

You control the message
The only real ‘cost’ is the investment in the time it takes to write each post
It allows you to reach a new and wider audience through an additional communications channel
It presents the human side of policing and allows people to see the challenges and dilemmas that you face.

I find it interesting that whilst colleagues are still coming to terms with blogging (most state that they don’t regularly read blogs, despite the fact that blogging has now been around for quite a while and you are reading a blog at the moment !), the wider world has recognised the benefits of blogging and is looking at the integration and use of new communications channels, such as Twitter (think 140 character micro blogs which allow you to create your own social network (group of friends etc), follow people of interest (Obama, Branson, OpenEyeComms ) or follow specific companies (Supermarket chain X has an upcoming Sale and special product announcements).

It would be interesting for you to find out what your force press office position is on blogs and bloggers. Are blogs monitored by them? Who are the influential bloggers in your area ? What are their hot button issues ? Do any local notables blog ? About what? What is the Press Office stance on citizen journalism and bloggers ? When they hold a meet the press' evening, are influential bloggers invited ?

These, and many more issues, have popped into my thoughts as a result of the recent decision by the NPYD to provide police press accreditation to three bloggers.  There is no doubt that Citizen Journalism is here to stay. What’s your force position on it ?

In the frame

Framing is a term used in a range of disciplines including sociology and psychology. In media terms ‘framing’ refers to the packaging, or frame of reference, applied to something in order to provide context and meaning or, depending on your point of view, to encourage certain interpretations and to discourage others.

Interesting then to look at the ‘framing’ applied to the Policing Pledge by the various players.

The Home Secretary spoke to the Daily Mirror last week and, whilst the salient points of the Pledge were covered, the story that got picked up and covered across the media was about accessibility and access: street surgeries, meetings at the local supermarket, church hall, football club - or even mother and baby group. ‘New era of policing starting tomorrow: People set priorities for beat cops’ announced one headline. ‘Police to give communities more say’ states another. Even ACPO, in the form of Sir Ken Jones, got in on the act, stating that ‘the Pledge will deliver the needed headroom which local policing teams need to create a truly local service tailored to individual neighbourhoods’.

So, the public framing of this issue, the expectation, context and meaning, is about more access, and much more influence. A bespoke and responsive service, sensitive to local need.

Now change the lens and take a look at the Pledge from the internal perspective. What is the ‘framing’ here ? What context and meaning has been provided to the workforce ? The people that you lead ?

Is the Pledge seen as heralding a new era of responsiveness and customer service ? Do colleagues understand the Pledge and their part in it? Do they understand the Why of what is expected from them in this new world, rather than just the What?

Is there an understanding that this isn’t about process and targets, it’s about becoming an agile and responsive, customer centric organisation.

The Pledge is, in some respects, the Government wielding the picadors lance and driving the service to the realisation that responsiveness and customer service are key components of modern service delivery. Expected by the customer and the hallmark of an effective organisation.

Reality check. Most conversations that I have heard around the service about the Pledge, have centered around the particular Division/Department/Unit’s ability to meet the various mechanistic ‘90% within x minutes’ targets that are being perceived as the new targets. I have heard very few (make that very, very, very few) conversations about the attitude, culture and leadership that need to underpin the Pledge if it is to be successful.

Make no mistake, the Pledge will take a very long time to become mainstream, to become more than something that is just applied to neighbourhood and response teams. I have had very recent conversations with middle ranking colleagues in specialist departments who have never heard of the Pledge.

I guess that the challenge for you then, is to consider your own unit, your own leadership and the ‘framing’ that you have applied (intentionally or unintentionally) to the Pledge thus far. If you were scoring yourself, if you were being honest as to whether you have provided the framing that helps people understand why customer service standards are important, what their delivery role is and what level of service is expected around here….how would you do?