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Keith, there is much in what both you and Lord Haskins
say, but the problem is how to do it. And what may be possible in Britain
could be very difficult here in Canada, where we have a national government, ten
provincial governments and three territorial governments, each with their
separate jurisdictions (as defined, mostly, in 1867) and each with their
centralized bureaucracies. Perhaps the closest we may come to
decentralization is in our northern territories where you not only have central
public governments but also Aboriginal (land claims defined) governments with a
lot of jusirdictional overlaps. One might suggest that northern Canada is
something of an experiment in how such overlaps might be
accommodated.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 12:07
PM
Subject: [Futurework] Status ranking is
ubiquitous -- particularly in the civil service
Status ranking is ubiquitous and nowhere is it
more ubiquitous than in the British Civil Service and no doubt many other
similar public services elsewhere. It is a perfect example of the institution
of rank order on a huge scale, involving at least 24 grades and a quarter of
the total working population. And, what's more, it works. At least it works to
the satisfaction of most public servants for most of the time, except for
strikes which break out in the lowest ranks periodically, usually on matters
of pay rather than conditions.
Why does it work so well? Because those
who started it -- whether they were fully aware of it or not -- were carrying
out a formalised system of rank ordering which is deeply engrained in all
primate species and particularly in us. Originally, the Civil Service as we
know it today in the UK was brought in because, by the 1850s, what then passed
for public servants were simply not professional enough to do their job
properly, particularly in a rapidly industrialising and increasingly complex
society. By and large their jobs were highly paid sinecures sought after those
in the 'genteel' class with good political connections, for their young
relatives who were generally fit for nothing else. In the classic
Northcote-Trevelyan Report on the problem, Trevelyan wrote of parents and
others foisting 'sickly youths' on government departments whose salaries and,
after retirement, high pensions, were a lifetime burden on the
taxpayers.
So they instituted an examination system of entry. As it
happened there were more than enough candidates due to the extraordinarily
high birth rates of the preceding decades. In particular, England at that time
had a surfeit of extremely talented graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, the
sons of successful merchants, industrialists and the professions who did not
want to follow into their parents' occupations, who had what passed for a
well-rounded education in those days (philosophy, literature, history,
classical languages and similar), and who did not want to enter the church
either (previously a career path for such). For them the new British Civil
Service was a Godsend -- either as administrators at home or in the colonial
civil service where, very often, individuals could hold sway over African or
Indian territories the size of Wales or Switzerland.
Those
administrators who went abroad tended to be neglected by those at home and
were often left for years at a time without much guidance, or else they died
of malaria or diseases spread by the testse fly or similar. (If they survived
and came back home they'd be given a cracking good pension, of course.) But
for those at home, it was a beanfeast of power and status. From about
1870, these able administrators, able to recruit lower ranks in large numbers
due to the growing tax-base of a prosperous country, were able to insert
themselves (with the help of legislation) into all sorts of home affairs, such
as education, pensions, factory regulation, food and health matters,
agriculture and so on and so on, multiplhying not only the numbers of their
underlings but also offering finer and finer gradations of rank. And what's
more, they were able to convince everybody else in the civil service of the
excitement of all this by instituting plenty of opportunities for further
promotions (after all, there were creating so many extra ranks), thus holding
out carrots to almost everybody however ambitious they were for a higher
rank.
So, to cut a long story short, a century of all this has produced
superb administrative machines which have effective inputs, if not control,
over almost every social and economic activity in the country. Not only this,
but the British Civil service (together with the French and the German
equivalents in particular) were also able to set an example to the rest of the
civilised world as to how countries should be run. And, of course, it is the
top civil servants (Permanent Secretaries in the case of the UK) who usually
do control everything. New governments mandated by a popular vote to
bring about new policies which threaten to affect the civil service too
radically have a very hard time bringing new practices about.
Because
of its size (smallish) and communications (goodish) England is probably the
most highly centralised civil service in the world, except for perhaps Russia.
However, after that paeon of praise for the efficiency and effectiveness of
the British Civil Service in the way it runs its own affairs, it must be said
that it isn't anywhere near as efficient and effective in the outside world.
Increasingly in the last two or three decades, the British Civil Service has
started to fail rather badly. Great departments concerned with education,
agriculture, industry, state pensions, health, police, prisons, social
services and so on are finding that the policies that they are handing down
from on high are becoming increasingly unworkable and sometimes, such as the
foot-and-mouth crisis fairly recently and which should not have been a crisis,
the mistakes have enormous consequences in terms of livelihoods and penalties
paid by the taxpayers.
It is, in fact, in the field of agriculture
(excuse the pun!) that Lord Haskins, formerly the chairman of Northern Foods,
a very large corporation, was asked to report on the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) which consists of scores of
thousands of civil servants, at least forty grant-making sub-agencies -- often
overlapping on one another -- and of mind-boggling complexity impinging on
every aspect of countryside life yet rigidly controlled from the top in London
by civil servants, some of whom probably never see the countryside from one
month to another. His task was to suggest remedies to this. As expected, he
proposed as much devolution as possible and here is his short account of all
this.
However, in an organisation which meets the status aspirations of
so many people so very satisfactorily it is doubteful whether more than a few
token gestures will be made no matter how strenuously politicians (and the
rest of us) may desire it.
Keith
Hudson
<<<<
GIVE POLICY BACK TO THE
PEOPLE
Christopher Haskins
Britain suffers from an
over-centralised form of government that is inefficient, lacks accountability
and is insufficiently responsive to individual and local needs.
That is
the message of two studies with which I have been involved recently: my
report, published yesterday, reviewing the delivery arrangements of the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra); and the King's
Fund's recently issued paper on the National Health Service, to which I made a
small contribution.
The reports suggest that the lack of transparency
between the policy-making and the policy implementation process is the
fundamental cause of poor accountability. The dominance of policymakers over
those who carry out policy means that regional and local interests are
neglected in favour of top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions.
The two
studies take a similar approach to the problem: separate, as much as possible,
policy development from policy implementation and, to reinforce that
separation and increase public credibility, devolve the delivery of policy to
regional and local networks. The King's Fund suggests the NHS should be an
arm's-length agency from the Department of Health, responsible for arranging
implementation of government policy for its 60 million clients, and the Defra
review recommends that delivery of agricultural, environmental and other rural
policy be regionalised and localised.
Despite the welcome introduction
of devolution, Britain is unique among large democracies in maintaining a
highly centralised form of government, though this was not always the case.
The remarkable progress made in raising the quality of public services in the
19th century was entirely due to the imagination and commitment of local
authorities, backed by local business. Corporate responsibility was in a much
healthier state in 1880 than it is today.
Since the second world war,
however, provision of public services has been increasingly centralised. The
creation of the NHS set the trend. Extensive nationalisation of railways,
mines and various utilities further weakened local accountability and
Westminster reduced the power of local authorities.
It is now generally
recognised that centralisation must be reversed. The case for national
provision of services is that it achieves consistency across the country. This
was a matter of great importance to Aneurin Bevan when he created the NHS in
1948 and it remains an essential priority for today's health service. Other
departments, with less justification, pursue the same objective. However, it
is a mistake to believe that huge departments such as Health, Education, Defra
and Trade and Industry can carry out policy effectively via a stream of
targets and e-mails emanating from Whitehall.
The bureaucracies set up
for this purpose have become remote and inflexible. There is also plenty of
evidence to suggest that taxpayers' money is being frittered away on
well-meaning initiatives and funding programmes whose outcomes are
inadequately scrutinised.
The case for devolving provision to local
authorities and other local networks and partnerships is that local and
individual needs will be better understood and dealt with. It is much easier
to identify accountability in small, local organisations than it is in vast
national bureaucracies. Consistency of provision is very important in the
health service, but accountability for the service is even more important; if
there is no accountability there cannot possibly be any
consistency.
Much needs to be done to restore the high standards of
local government that existed 50 years ago and to ensure that they have the
competence and capacity to do the work. The same challenge can be directed at
the recently created Regional Development Agencies. Our structures of local
democracy have been neglected and we must find ways of revitalising
them.
Successful large businesses have learnt that, while policy and
the funding needed to carry out policy must be the responsibility of the
board, at the centre, it is impossible to implement policy through a
centralised bureaucracy. Much better to go to the operating subsidiaries, get
them to take ownership of the central strategy and give them plenty of
discretion as to how they plan to carry it out. Instead of targets being set
from the centre, they should be proposed by the subsidiaries and, if
acceptable, agreed by the board.
The government machine is now held in
generally low regard because it is unable to make convincing contact with the
citizens it is meant to serve. The best way to restore credibility is to bring
service networks closer to regional and local interests. By encouraging
engagement between citizens and the public services we shall improve service
quality, economic performance and productivity, and strengthen community
solidarity. These are the criteria by which public service departments must be
judged.
Lord Haskins is adviser to the government on rural
affairs.
Financial Times -- 12 November
2003
>>>>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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