In the 2010 Spending Review, Chancellor George Osborne outlined £81bn in cuts over four years. Integrated and shared services will be a vital part of meeting this goal. But the coalition will face a significant challenge in achieving the collaboration, joined-up thinking and effective management needed to realise this target unless it tackles the inefficiencies in government departments that are caused by harmful complexity.
Overly complex organisational structures, convoluted decision-making processes, poor coordination and communication between departments mean that these efforts, and the resources funded by public taxes, are not going directly into services that add value for the public.
The Public Sector Complexity Review surveyed 150 civil servants across all major government departments about the impact of internal and external complexity. The findings were particularly concerning when contrasted with our previous study, The Global Simplicity Index (GSI).
The GSI showed that the world's largest 200 companies are each losing, on average, $1.2bn a year to harmful complexity. This latest research found that central government departments are, on average, 30 per cent more complex than these largest companies. Imagine, then, the impact harmful complexity is having on the delivery of public sector services.
It is true that compared to large corporates, public sector organisations have no clear-cut and uniform performance measures such as profitability. They also have to cope with additional sources of unpredictability and ambiguity, such as multiple stakeholders and shifting policy agendas. But they do have the same core principles as private corporations: they need to be as effective and efficient as they can in everything they do. Key enablers to this include:
- Facilitating collaboration within and across government departments, agencies and local councils
- Joined-up thinking in terms of sourcing and procurement of services
- Strong leadership and management of service delivery, including clear decision-making, effective relationship management and simple and robust performance metrics and reporting.
It is clear that public sector leaders aren't doing enough about the harmful complexity creating barriers to these enablers. Some civil servants treat complexity as an inevitable cost of operating in the public sector. As a result, some departments are not handling complex environments as well as others. For example, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills was the most complex department in the survey, and was over 50 per cent more complex than the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). Interestingly, the MoJ is also one of the most efficient departments.
But when we looked more closely at the major effects of complexity common to all departments, we found that managers are distracted from their focus on delivering core services because of overly complex public sector strategies. Managers also find it hard to make joined-up decisions because of bureaucratic and hierarchical structures. Further evidence of this comes from the Institute for Government in an analysis of the business plans for 17 major departments. It found that, on average, these departments are late on over 25 per cent of the actions committed to in their plans. Eradicating complexity could significantly reduce this figure, but it's not an easy process.
Some in government have highlighted further complexity challenges to delivering integrated and shared services. Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, recently suggested that weaknesses in management, planning and IT skills meant government departments were unable to negotiate simple, cost-effective contracts. Bernard Jenkin, chairman of the Commons Public Administration Select Committee, said that IT systems are difficult to understand and civil servants negotiate contracts that are overly complex and siloed. "We have professional scientists and professional statisticians in Whitehall. So why isn't there a professional procurement cadre across the civil service?" he asked.
Solving the complexity challenge isn't easy; this is mainly because complexity can be so widespread in an organisation. The only solution is to take a top-down approach, which cascades through the organisation. Senior civil servants have to first demonstrate a commitment to reducing complexity. Managers then need to identify the biggest complexity problems and their impact. Frontline staff – those taking the daily brunt of the effects of harmful complexity – then need to be engaged and shown that they will benefit significantly from reducing complexity.
Most importantly, new behaviours, tools and skills must be learnt and reinforced through reward systems, recruitment etc. Every new project and process must be assessed before implementation. Simply put, if it's too complex, redesign or bin it.
With fewer people and smaller budgets, it will not be possible to maintain quality public services unless government removes complexity and significantly changes the way work gets done. Embedding a culture of simplicity throughout the public sector should be an essential part of the coalition's strategy.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Simon Collinson
Quelle/Source: Public Service, 26.03.2012
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