What really matters?

March 14, 2010

A new report from Accenture is entitled “Performance Management – Driving High Performance by Focusing on What Really Matters to Citizens.” At 28 glossy pdf pages it’s probably what one would expect from a high-class consultancy.

Surprisingly, in a bullet-pointed list on page 2 to stress the need for performance management, there is no mention of the citizen, although they do appear later, fortunately rather more often than customers!

Interestingly, on page 9 a number of points are made about performance management in government – that it’s not used for measuring citizen-centric social outcomes, it is deployed in silos (not as an end-to-end enabler) and that it is used as a means of retrospective review or accountability…to report accomplishments (or failures).” Which I’d probably agree are points of failure.

They develop the neologism of “social outcomes”, sometimes used in educational circumstances, and employ it in mixed contexts with public value and social capital, which it perhaps is.

Overall, nothing I’d disagree with, apart from having to probably pay through the nose for what should be common sense to the public sector by now.

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Varieties of participation

March 11, 2010

In the EU eGovernment Benchmarking 2010+ report by Alexander Schellong advantage is made of the “democracy cube” developed by Archon Fung, I presume, one of his colleagues at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Fung’s paper, recipient of 81 citations to-date, is entitled “Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance” and is well worth a read in its own right.

Two brief sentences from the conclusion, starting on page 23 say it all for me:

“Citizens can be the shock troops of democracy. Properly deployed, their local knowledge, wisdom, commitment, authority, even rectitude can can address wicked failures of legitimacy, justice, and effectiveness in representative and bureaucratic institutions.”

“Reaping (indeed perceiving) these pragmatic benefits for democracy, however, requires a footloose analytic approach that jettisons preconceptions about what participatory democracy should look like and what it should do in favor of a searching examination of the actual forms and contributions of participation.”

Currently we are recycling mechanisms of approaching citizens and pretending they are new and open. Real change will require real changes.

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Democratic participation

March 9, 2010

…or should that be participative democracy? No, the two are definitely not the same! However, so as not to get confused with a post about participation, per se, I thought some expansion necessary! Thanks to Jose Manuel Alonso for mailing the W3C e-government interest group with the European E-participation Summary November 2009. The authors include Ann Macintosh and the document attempts to play out both the necessity and practice behind e-participation in the light of the Lisbon Treaty of December 2007, which is now ratified.

It’s only 30 pages and fairly graphical but the key sections for me is number 24 on page 28 where it states:

“In a context where at least 30% of Europeans will not be online for the foreseeable future, where ICT is still in its infancy as regards participation, and where ICT is unlikely ever to meet all the needs of participation (especially those related to its social and community experience, and the needs for considered long-term and highly nuanced debate), multi-channel solutions are highly desirable.

  • eParticipation rarely stands alone. Both implementation and research should focus on why and how switching between channels occurs. “
  • The role of intermediaries needs to be better understood and encouraged where appropriate.
  • eParticipation can be and often needs to be combined with traditional channels like meetings, personal consultations, mass media, the use of the telephone and mass mailings, etc.
  • Alternative e-channels like digital TV, kiosks, mobile phones could also be exploited especially for enhancing the participation of specific target groups.”

Which confirms for me that the EU is also getting it head around the fact that e-government is not a majority event and there will always be a significant minority to support. It also appreciates the little understood channel switching that occurs and needs to be seriously researched when designing systems.

An excellent report appreciating the challenges ahead!

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Community work

March 7, 2010

A report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and the IPPR entitled “Capable Communities – Public service reform: The next chapter” has appeared. It’s another short one at 24 pages and it follows a long list of other reports concerned with co-production, such as the ones I’ve managed to cover here, here and here (and even back in October 2008, too)

It doesn’t seem that long ago since the Baroness Thatcher decided that “society” didn’t exist, we now have them coming at us from all political directions, along with various combinations of the words “social”, “good”, “value”, “capital” and “public”,  and this report is no exception!

Whilst I support the obvious statement that “services work best when citizens are involved in producing them”, I cringe at some of the expectations of those who must be so detached from the society they are now trying to involve. Most councils struggle for volunteers be they school governors, PTA members, attendees at consultation events, community forums etc, so where are all the additional ones to come from? 

The report is right in that in order for this ever to happen, the state needs to change. Citizens will only spend their time when value is returned to them and the community, not through the penny-pinching or pseudo-consultative exercises that it has been so often in the recent past. Results will have to be delivered before they are expected!

I hope that the survey results from the report are taken with a pinch of real experience before anyone decides that communities are actually willing or able to do many of these exercises without adequate funding or support. If the truth is out, they’ll be initially used as ways of finding savings, and we can then watch community, services and society wither, as well as the state.

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Poor relations?

March 4, 2010

With the ongoing debate about broadband availability in the UK it comes as a slight surprise that the United States is little different. A recent report in the MIT Technology Review, 16 February 2010, from Associated Press confirms this stating that 40% of US homes lack broadband access. Unsurprisingly, just like the UK, there is an urban versus rural divide. There is also a racial and age divide with blacks, Hispanics, and those aged over 55 less likely to have broadband at home.

Or perhaps I shouldn’t be suprised? It’s a big country!

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