Local government stands at a once-in-a-generation inflection point: We’re seeing devolution to new Strategic Authorities, a wave of re-organisation into unitary councils, and major changes to partners with the abolition of NHS England and overhaul of Integrated Care Systems.
It’s time to harness that change to build 21st century public sector organisations, designed for the internet era, drawing on all that we’ve learned over the past two decades.
Forward-thinking system leaders across the public sector are recognising that the old ways of working are deeply flawed: working in organisational silos, implementing badly-designed cost savings in one part of the system that simply generate unavoidable demand and rising costs for other services, are no longer viable options. With many councils on the brink of bankruptcy, residents struggle to access services before they reach crisis point, and those most in need are hardest hit.
Over the last two decades, pioneering models (like Buurtzorg) have proven that tightly-integrated teams, rapid test and learn cycles, open cultures and loosely-coupled digital platforms deliver better outcomes, and yet the UK public sector has done little but admire these examples. How do we start building our own dynamic service organisations as a response to the deep challenges of the current moment?
We know that solving complex social problems in our local communities only succeeds when we step back from the paternalistic top-down approaches of the past. Progress comes from harnessing the capacity and creativity of the whole place, combining ground-up knowledge of the issues and the strengths of the people living there, with innovators inside and outside the public sector, working collaboratively and focusing on the outcomes people need. Rapidly testing ideas in practice, learning from each iteration, then trying again and openly sharing what works and spreading that knowledge across the sector should be standard practice.
But the change or transformation teams in most councils, and their colleagues in digital, data and technology, are focused on improving the efficiency of transactional services within a single organisation. Even where they have adopted user centred service design and agile methods, there is a gap between these approaches and what is needed to enable an ecosystem of local service delivery across a range of partners of different shapes and sizes. The opportunity we’re missing is radical transformation of local public service.
At the same time, there are signs of hope and radical thinking.
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA)’s work on creating an Office of Public Service Innovation is a good example of this necessary shift. Learning from examples like Cradle to Career in North Birkenhead, LCRCA is co-designing a new institution of partners across the region, committed to using test and learn approaches and working with the people and communities affected by deep-rooted issues.
The Cabinet Office's public sector reform team at the heart of government is embracing this proven approach to big social challenges, working with places to Test, Learn and Grow.
The same barriers to transformation have been identified by many including DSIT, New Local and Future Governance Forum / Public Digital.
To tackle them we need:
To move from leadership that’s stuck in an old command and control model, which fails to support the “Radical How” approach to systems and servant leadership.
To design adaptable organisations, able to meet the needs of rapidly changing environments.
A supportive centre of government, that creates the conditions needed for local government to collaborate with communities and the wider public sector.
Over the past decade some councils have attempted radical change.
They follow a similar path: a leader with vision creates the space for teams within the organisation to do things differently. They research what users and communities really need, and design new services that take advantage of modern digital technology and support a changed culture. Or they take an even more expansive view of public service transformation and work to nurture community-led and social economy solutions, supporting the growth of networks and neighbourhood power.
Some of those beacons have remained bright - Wigan is the best known example, with the Wigan Deal evolving into Progress with Unity.
But for too many of these pioneers, financial and political pressures result in leadership changes at the top, and there is a return to traditional command and control mindsets and behaviours. New approaches are halted, and councils return to formal governance, slowing the pace of change and reinforcing traditional power centres of financial control. With a focus on being “safe” and short term risk aversion, the systemic and existential risks remain – and multiply.
This happens because so many councils and a generation of senior leaders still rely on a New Public Management approach which - like the traditional target operating models of big consultancies - treats organisations as machines that can be structured for maximum efficiency and predictable outputs.
It’s an approach which is fundamentally unsuited to the ever-changing financial and political environment that today’s councils operate in. It cannot enable long-lasting change because it fails to embed the adaptability that is vital for weathering inevitable flux and instability.
Decades of squeezing the last drops of savings from this outdated model have left local government with nowhere to go, facing an ever-increasing financial challenge from people’s genuine needs for relational services that can’t be met in tightly controlled 15 minute packages.
Local government reorganisation should be an opportunity to make best use of a crisis. But as Catherine Howe writes, there’s a real risk that leaders don’t understand the opportunities that modern digital transformation can bring, kicking the culture, processes and technologies that could underpin public service reform further down the road.
So how do we make use of a crisis? How do we clear the path so that we can create the capacity and capability for deep changes within and between organisations?
Today's crisis needs a new breed of senior leaders – whole system leaders shaping their council’s capabilities to work collaboratively with all partners across the whole place, not just organisational managers who will keep the status quo running “safely”. Solace has a role to play in fostering those qualities in its cohorts of current and future leaders, so that the bright spots of innovation are spread across the whole sector.
We need sector-led organisations like the Local Government Association (LGA) to help councillors understand the need for these leaders.
Even more importantly, we need to see different leadership behaviours from those in “statutory” roles like Directors of Finance, Children’s and Adult Social Care. These professional leads are pivotal: they can either be gatekeepers preventing innovation from becoming mainstream, or they can be powerful enablers, challenging their teams to think differently and take measured risks. That's why professional associations such as Cipfa, ADCS and ADASS will need to work alongside other sector bodies and national government to understand and promote the new mindsets and behaviours that their members need to adopt to make place-based test and learn approaches successful.
These outside-the-box methods should be integrated into public sector leaders’ professional development pathways, so that their organisations can follow in the footsteps of the early adopters.
In a world where political intentions, user needs and emerging technologies are constantly changing, static operating models are unhelpful.
Councils need dynamic operating models that establish their capability to evolve services over time, so that they can be highly responsive to political, strategic or tactical shifts. They need to learn more quickly, make better decisions, and deliver value faster. Traditional council command and control culture does not support the flexibility and pace of decision-making that can be achieved from lean and agile practices.
Councils need to start thinking of themselves as organisms or ecosystems - natural, growing and self-organising, with the ability to trust parts of the system to do their jobs. They must have faith in the instincts, intelligence and responsiveness of those working directly with service users. This dynamism needs to extend beyond the edges of the council as an organisation too.
Effective responses to complex, long-standing social challenges need to be co-designed and co-produced with people and community organisations that grow from the ground up. Modern councils need new capabilities that enable them to work well with a constellation of partners, thinking about the network's ability to create teams and services that wrap around the person and family, rather than assuming that the council must create top-down solutions themselves. They need to be effective conveners, brokers and collaborators in the ecosystem of the whole place.
Perhaps the biggest barrier to local government making these changes is that the sector cannot change the conditions it exists in by itself. Local public services are shaped by nationally defined incentives and measures, funding structures and models.
Only the centre can reshape statutory responsibilities and the requirements of regulators, to change the dynamic from a culture of compliance to collaboration; change funding models to encourage joined up work over silos; and shift the focus to long-term, relationship-based outcomes rather than short-term, measurable outputs.
Creating relational services around a whole person or around communities needs the centre to recreate the Total Place approach so that the costs of serving people can be spent and benefits recognised across all of the public and community organisations involved at a place level.
The Public Service Reform programme of Test, Learn and Grow is a key part of the answer, alongside changes to local government funding, devolution of power, and Integrated Settlements for Mayoral Strategic Authorities.
At Public Digital we believe that optimism counts in an era where pessimism is prevalent. We know that radical transformation of local public services is going to take a system wide adoption of new models of leadership and delivery. There are signs of change emerging and beacons we can learn from.
We’re running a PD Session on 27th November to showcase radical thinking and explore how we can build a movement together across the sector. Sign up and join the conversation.
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