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Localism alone won’t reform public services
Localism is becoming a ‘new political orthodoxy’ which will not improve public services on its own, according to a new essay collection called The Adaptive State published by Demos with Hewlett-Packard.
An ‘adaptive state’ would use the energy and innovation of local service providers while retaining the ability of governments to allocate resources nationally and provide overall direction.
The government has now joined its critics on the opposition benches and outside parliament in acknowledging that trying to change public services by ‘command and control’ does not work, and can be counter-productive.
All three major political parties are now trying to claim ownership of ‘new localism’ as the route to better public services in the run up to the next general election. But the editors of The Adaptive State argue that pitting localism against centralisation offers a false choice.
“Devolving power to the frontline is becoming a new political orthodoxy, as the policy pendulum swings towards the new localism,’ say Tom Bentleyand James Wilsdon. “Public services should be able to adapt to local needs but we still need government’s ability to allocate resources and connect up different parts of the public sector.
“In the effort to ‘modernise’ public sector organisations, the government has taken the services themselves for granted and focused on performance measures that are often not directly related to the real value of public services to users.”
Simply devolving power to local authorities or frontline service providers is not enough to transform public services, according to the essay collection. The editors point out that foundation hospitals will simply enable above-average hospitals to improve their own performance within the existing health service system.
“Moves towards decentralisation and the ‘new localism’ need to be matched with ways to spread good ideas throughout the system,” says Charles Leadbeater, a government advisor who wrote an essay on innovation for The Adaptive State.
“The public sector not only needs more decentralisation but also a different role for central government. It has to learn how to influence these decentralised systems without trying to control every detail of their operation.”
Public services will only continue to improve if public sector organisations can continuously reinvent themselves to respond to changing needs of individual people. The age of mass provision of public services is over: users expect choice and personalisation in public services.
“To use resources effectively, services must be personalised,” say Tom Bentley and James Wilsdon. “That means more than simply offering a choice of service providers but actually creating services which are flexible enough to respond to the needs of individual users.”
Authors featured in The Adaptive State include:
- Ronald A. Heifetz, co-founder of Centre for Public Leadership at Harvard University, on why leadership is often confused with managerial authority;
- Kate Oakley, associate director of Local Futures Group, on how ‘local knowledge’ can explain why central government initiatives fail;
- Jake Chapman, government advisor and Demos associate, on why the ‘myth of control’ persists in public sector organisations;
- Barry Quirk, chief executive of London borough of Lewisham, on why local authorities are the most adaptable tier of government;
- Robert Watt, business development manager for HP’s public sector division, on how an adaptable IT infrastructure can help public services respond to rapidly changing demands.
Notes to editors
- The Adaptive State: Strategies for personalising the public realm is published by Demos with Hewlett-Packard on Friday 12 December 2002. This publication is part of a major Demos research programme on public service reform.
- Tom Bentley is director of Demos and James Wilsdon is head of strategy.