Off target?

May 14, 2009

The latest Vanguard News – May 2009  contains a link to a report in the Economist of 10 May 2009  about the failure of performance targets and comments that “It is good on the problems but not so good on what we should measure”. The Economist report is actually based upon an academic study (Ordonez et al, 2009, Academy of Management Perspectives) that has been reproduced in a number of places, including this one at the Wharton Business School.
 
Perhaps until we come up with an answer for this perennial issue that government will swallow, we will be plagued with targets? I think they have to take trust onboard and witness successful lean change for themselves…

The matter of targets was also jumped on by the editorial in the current edition of ‘Public Sector Executive’ (March/April 2009) under the title ‘Death by a thousand targets’, so we are not alone.

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How to complain…

May 12, 2009

On my drive home from work I identified a group of workmen breaking branches of a tree. In beautiful, rural North Yorkshire this is not considered good practice, especially by this experience nature reserve manager (part-time).

It was along a stretch of major road, so I initially informed the District arboriculturalist who was sympathetic but not sure who was responsible. I had also informed the County Council ecology unit (no response) and the County Councillor with Executive responsibilities for the environment, who passed my complaint onto the Highways Agency.

It was at this point I discovered ‘How to complain’. I posted a complaint through the site to the Highways Agency and within a few days had a phone message asking me to telephone the contractor responsible.

A phone call later and I was onto the manager responsible who understood the reason for my complaint and is, I hope, investigating. Lets hope the contractors change their practices, too!

If you’ve read my post about US Airways, the good news is they’ve apologised! Lets hope the service improves the next time I can afford a trip away!

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No place to be

May 10, 2009

The website localgov.co.uk, the online version of the Municipal Journal, had the headline on 7 May 2009 that ‘Less than half happy with council services’, which was a report about figures compiled by Ipsos MORI from the Place survey data required to be collected by local authorities.

Ben Page of Ipsos MORI blames this drop in public satisfaction on poor communication and increases in Council Tax. I think the Place survey is a waste of money and meaningless. If a local authority employs the strategy proposed by Ben Page and communicates good messages before its survey, it’ll get improved results!

Lets better employ the money by continually measuring satisfaction with services and channels and using it to improve the delivery of services!

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Need and satisfaction

May 6, 2009

My thanks go to Ian (Cuddles) Cuddy at Public Sector Forums, who on the same day he’d discovered the news, informed me about the publication on Chorley Council’s web site of the final documents to come out of all their work on ‘circles of need’.

It must be a year since I mentioned the original introductory report that had been done. The latest documents fill out a lot of the detail and learning since the original proposal. Bravely, on page 34 there is an admission that: “If published, such a model would be too complex to be useful and by saying everything says nothing. “ So they decided to focus on the strongest links. Well done!

Importantly from this person’s view there is an even braver admission: “There is plenty of evidence from Local Authorities that customers are cheaper to server if they are migrated to cheaper channels such as the telephone or the Internet, but there is no way of knowing if these customers in the longer term  are ‘cheaper to serve’.” On this basis, the project has developed a ‘cost to access’ formula, and a ‘customer satisfaction tool’ (an eleven question survey).

Incidentally, there is also the output from Chorley et al’s work on a Business Process Architecture , which is mentioned in the report.

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What I’d expected?

May 4, 2009

Its two weeks since the launch of the annual survey (well, this is the second one), and having harrassed a large number of colleagues to complete it, despite it being far from statistically significant, I thought I’d give some brief impression of what it might indicate.

In general, channel usage and recording is very similar to the 2008 study, with Digital TV still being much ignored. Recording of channel usage is also still thin on the ground, although between a half and two thirds do record most channels.

The surprise for me was the little attention being paid to the intent behind National Indicator 14, which I thought would get all channels measured but those doing it have focused on the face-to-face and telephone with the email, Internet and e-forms lagging quite a lot!  Similarly the list of services is mixed between all of them, the CLG list and a locally agreed list, but, most surprisingly to me, only two thirds are doing anything with the data, and even then what happens is pretty sporadic!

Satisfaction remains as popular a measure as 2008 with people meauring it through a variety of means.

If you are interested and, preferably, in UK local government please complete the survey, it doesn’t take long at all. I’ll keep feeding back through these pages, which are also covered by localgov.co.uk and PSF.

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