04 May 2007
Personalisation is the latest buzzword in the government's public service policy review. But putting the focus on the customer as user rather than as a taxpayer just sidesteps many of the difficult issues
Back in the late 1980s I worked for the London Borough of Lambeth, in the days when the 'people's republic' was taking on the Conservative government over rate-capping. The comrades organised rallies, mainly attended by the council's own workforce, in which the slogan was usually 'Lambeth services — well worth defending'.
The trouble was, they weren't. Lambeth's services were generally appalling, despite costing far more than many other boroughs'. Those of us — and there weren't many — who cared about real (as opposed to mythical) services were searching for answers.
They came from an unlikely source (unlikely because most of us were from the Left): a best-selling business book. In search of excellence, by two McKinsey alumni, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, was the first business book to hit the bestseller lists. It had a rather simple message: do what you are supposed to do — 'stick to the knitting'. Do it well and, above all, do it for the people who buy your products or services.
'Close to the customer' was not just about good service, but also about finding out what people actually want, as opposed to what you think they want.
Peters' and Waterman's ideas were picked up by equally unlikely champions, various Left-wing Labour and Liberal councils, and supported by the Institute for Local Government Studies at Birmingham which re-packaged In search of excellence into what they called the new 'public service orientation'. (Some of us tried — and failed — to introduce these ideas into Lambeth, but that's another story).
Now — fast forward 20 years and the Labour government, ten years into office, publishes a much-heralded policy document, Building on progress: public services. Launched at another fancy conference on 'Twenty-first century public services' at the QEII Centre in London, the document has one central theme — personalisation of public services. Sounds familiar? Well, yes and no.
The public service orientation was actually twin-themed — it emphasised customer service, yes, but also the democratic role, of local government especially.
Today's Labour policy-makers have ditched the second theme — just as the new personalisation of public services mantra was being lauded in the QEII, Sir Michael Lyons' attempt to revitalise local democracy was being quietly buried by ministers.
So we are left with personalisation as the key theme for public services for the twenty-first century. But what does it mean and can, or indeed should, it work?
The main argument for it is simple: people get personalisation in the private sector and now they want — nay demand — it in the public domain. Manufacturing and services have become responsive and personal and public services will have to follow suit.
The problem with this argument is also simple: it isn't true. First, some services have undoubtedly become more personalised in the private sector but usually only if the costs of personalisation are small or if you pay for the privilege.
Anyone strolling along our increasingly homogenised high streets for a bit of retail therapy knows only too well just how lacking in personalisation some services are. Take a simple cup of coffee — yes, you can get a highly personalised cup in Starbucks but it will cost you several times as much as a depersonalised McDonald's brew.
Few people — least of all me — will deny that public services are often too impersonal. They could certainly be better — but the real questions are how much better, and who decides?
As Mark Moore, the Harvard academic and creator of the 'public value' movement, recently pointed out at CIPFA in Scotland's annual conference in Glasgow, you can bet that if public services reached oak-panelled, leather-seating, personal-shopper and latté levels of provision, the customers would soon be up in arms — about having to pay too much tax. And, I would add that if they became too personalised, as in 'personalised' taxation or 'personalised' fines, they would also become rather unpopular.
The truth is that public services will always be a balancing act between the customer-as-taxpayer/citizen and the customer-as-user/participant. New Labour seem to be obsessed with only one aspect of this balancing act — the customer-as-user.
They might be right that we need to 'bend the stick' in the direction of better services to users, including some personalisation — but it is not a costless option. It takes resources, and there is the potential danger of undermining people's commitment to the more collective and, dare I say redistributive, aspects of the public domain.
As with so many other aspects of policy, simplistic rhetoric always seems more attractive to politicians than the complex realities of balancing conflicting interests and contradictory imperatives.
So what's new?
Colin Talbot is professor of public policy and management and director of the Herbert Simon Institute at the University of Manchester
PFmay2007
