Don’t work longer, or harder. Work smarter. This favourite bit of management-speak has finally risen to the top of ministerial in-trays and is being regurgitated all over the show.
‘Smarter government’ is the recession rescue remedy de nos jours. Ahead of a white paper on the subject from Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne (see news story on page 7), we are being drip-fed smart solutions to everything from cutting crime to curbing carbon emissions.
In the space of 24 hours this week, ministers rolled out measures ‘to help the police work smarter’, introduce smarter, net-savvy methods of jobseeking, and install ‘smart’ energy meters in millions of homes. The 2020 Public Services Trust and other think-tanks have waded in with proposals for outcome-based commissioning, payment by results, and numerous clever-clogs solutions for these stricken times.
Bang on trend, Public Finance this week hosted a high-profile round table on doing ‘More for less? Risk and innovation in the recession’ (see cover feature on pages 20–24). It came up with some interesting insights.
First, despite the dismal fiscal prospects, things might not be as bad for public services as they seem. Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred thought the likely level of structural deficit was ‘perfectly manageable’, particularly after a decade of being ‘extremely well fed’.
Second, these could in fact be rather good times for pushing through long-talked about public service reforms.
And third, there is no shortage of innovative ideas – from Total Place onwards – to help the public sector in its hour of extreme need.
This is where smart government comes in. The Conservatives, as Peter Riddell argues opposite, are signed up to much the same prescriptions as Byrne, but even more so; quango culls, back-office mergers, pooled budgets, better procurement and the rest.
Even so, however popular the new austerity chic, there is a sneaking suspicion that it will not be enough. Many of the ‘new’ transformational government ideas have been tried before, to limited effect.
Ahead of a gruesome Pre-Budget Report next week, and with Britain said to be the only G20 economy still shrinking, pledges to work smarter and more efficiently are unlikely to fend off major departmental cutbacks.
And in the rush to make economies and merge services, there are risks of ad hoc, incoherent decision-making, in which frontline services could suffer.
Now that would be stupid, not smart.
