Innovation in partnerships

I've seen several articles on innovation lately that caught my eye. The first was in The Guardian Extreme Makeover and was looking at the idea of social innovation and how social innovation can be used to transform the public sector. But Geoff Mulgan, Director of the Young Foundation, says:

...there are strong disincentives to innovate in both the public and voluntary sectors. It is well known that the penalties for failed innovations are often high while the rewards for successful ones are slim.
...
And all new ideas threaten existing vested interests. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that ineffective models survive far longer than they should - for instance, in fields as various as criminal justice (where recidivism rates remain ridiculously high) and education (where levels of truancy and the number of people not currently in employment, education or training have remained stubbornly high for a decade or more).

Despite the difficulties, he thinks that future challenges in the public realm will require more than iterative improvement, they'll require real innovation. He calls for a shift in how we look at and fund innovation.

There have also been a series of articles recently out of the Harvard School of Government on public sector and in particular local government innovation.

Robert O'Neill, Jr. is optimistic and highlights several examples of innovation in American cities. He says the key has been:

One of the most significant factors determining the success of local government is how it relates to those it serves. I believe that the working capital of innovation is citizen trust.

and

Strong political and managerial leadership and competency also play a major role in determining a local government’s level of innovation. Having leaders who can create meaning and a compelling vision within the strategy of change, support and protect a culture of innovation, and focus on results and accountability are important prerequisites. Being able to synthesize information to create a persuasive case for change and to execute strategies designed to move an organization forward are at the heart of what makes a transformational leader.

But what about the passionate innovator at lower levels of an organisation? What kind of hurdles must they face? In another of the Harvard series of articles, John D Donahue says:

Public managers aiming to innovate need to outperform their private-sector counterparts in two ways. First, they have to develop really, really good ideas. A proposed innovation must offer benefits that are big enough, widespread enough, and (not least) certain enough for supporters to outnumber skeptics by the requisite wide margin. Second, public managers have to promote their ideas with exceptional deftness and determination. Public-sector innovators rarely have the luxury of ignoring objections or failing to mobilize latent constituencies.

That's of course within single organisations. When working across agencies, there are even more constituencies to mobilise and more applecarts to upset.

But Donahue also argues that when innovation occurs in the public sector - often greater value is created than from similar levels of innovation in the private sector. So again, innovation within a single agency must be great, but even better when it reaches across the public realm to meet new needs or meet old needs better and more efficiently. There are great challenges in innovating across partnerships, but also great rewards - most of all the potential to really make the difference in people's lives.

This innovation and the difference it really made to real people is captured in a series of case studies called The innovation forum: beyond excellence (link to a pdf) which came out not too long ago. It's a beautifully written piece by Charlie Leadbeater which examines three projects that have changed the shape of future service delivery through influencing government thinking and direction on target-setting largely through agencies working together and innovating and achieving more than they could have on their own. And there's more, too, from the Innovation Forum on IDeA Knowledge.


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to blog or not to blog

Topics: blogging, ODPM

In today's Local Government Chronicle, David Miliband's blog gets a bit of a slating. Not for its quality or even for its content, but for its cost.

From the LGC (though I can't link to the article itself, because it's in the paid subscription part of their site):

The site has brought readers a glimspse of the minister for communities and local government's thinking on some of the most fundamental challenges facing local government - as well as some pure trivia.

...snip...

Some users have criticised the cost of the blog, which is part of £6,000 Office of the Deputy Prime Minister IT contract.

Six thousand quid? I wouldn't for a moment be frivolous about public money, but 6K is relatively cheap compared to the cost of printing and distributing even brief three colour leaflets. And of course, the blogging element is only part of the contract.

For me, I use this blog to communicate as well as place to store information and my own thoughts about more effective partnerships as these develop. Truthfully, this is a bit of an experiment, but one I'm personally passionate about. I hope it's useful to you as readers - and please do give me feedback on how it could be more useful. Just click on the comments button below the post and let me know.

Already, this blog has been useful to me. Just today a reader has sent me a tip on some good practice in partnerships (feel free to leave those kind of things, too, in the comments section.)

The dangers of alliteration

Topics: Public health, older people, partnerships, public campaigns

Caerphilly Council is a member of the 50+ Positive Action Partnership. The partnership is responsible for:

implementing the Older People's Strategy aimed at maximizing the health and independence of the ever increasing 50+ population in the county borough.

And they certainly have been getting a lot of attention recently with a poster campaign designed to raise awareness of older people's health issues around physical, mental and errr... sexual health.

According to the Caerphilly Council's website:

The campaign, launched this week for one month by the 50+ Positive Action Partnership, sees controversial posters on buses and notice boards in public buildings like libraries and leisure centres bearing the risque slogan "Happy, Healthy, Horny". The head turning posters, which feature the devil depicting lust, is an attempt to see the over fifties in a new light.

I know I'm being squeamish, but please turn that light off. Well, turn it off until I turn 50 anyway. Still the campaign certainly has been attention grabbing:

Caerphilly 50+ Forum which is supported by the partnership and GAVO (Gwent Association of Voluntary Organisations), is open to anyone over fifty living in the area. Secretary Ralph Thomas said: "Generally I think it's going to be a bit controversial but I think it's a good thing that is gets people talking about the over fifties. Some people it will amuse, some people it will annoy but at least it'll get them talking about the issues."

And it is important to talk about these issues. My grandfather died of prostate cancer long before he needed to and I belive that a failure to think and talk about sexual health was a contributing factor.

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Like a deer in the headlights

Coordination between different layers and levels of government can be fraught with difficulty. In New Jersey, the county and state governments are in a tussle over dead deer.

Via the 13th Floor (a blog on US state and local government):

Local governments always complain about states passing responsibilities (and costs) down to them. But this takes the cake.

NJ Guv Jon Corzine is proposing to have cities and counties scrape dead deer off their own roads. Apparently, about two-thirds of the 21,000 deer that get whacked by cars each year in NJ are on local roads. Shifting clean-up duty from the state DOT [Department of Transportation] to the local public works departments will apparently save the state $734,000.

Partnerships, projects and performance

Topics: Performance management, project management, IT systems

Today I was in Bristol speaking at a conference sponsored by one of the many IT companies in the performance management software business. There was, of course, the obligatory sales pitch, but it was brief and not too pushy (and actually pretty entertaining). But the rest of presentations - from Teignbridge, Bristol City Council, Devon County Council, Torbay and Mid Devon DC - were all very good.

Through the PMMI project, we did develop some guidance on IT performance monitoring systems (when to use them, what to look for). But that guidance, like the presentations today were very much focused on performance management in single organisations.

That's hard enough. But the new challenge is, of course, is the increasing pressure (both locally and nationally) to deliver better outcomes through partnerships, because complex outcomes are delivered by multiple agencies. Managing performance through partnerships means (among other things) using information in a different way and sharing information openly, robustly and in a timely fashion. That's even harder, but that's what makes it more important.

A good place to start looking at some of these issues is Local Area Agreements (including new guidance published this week) and of PM Partner - our collaborative website has lots of information and links, too.

Not many councils yet have PM IT systems that encompass all of partnership activity and are open to partners, but some do. Lorraine O'Donnell, described what Darlington is doing in this area in our online conference Partnerships: Governance and Performance.

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Much of partnership delivery is managed through projectrs. At today's conference Tim Bridger, from Mid Devon District Council gave a cracking presentation today on project management. It's early days for their approach, but it seems that they're really engaging councillors constructively in the oversight of priority projects. They say they've already reaped some benefits, such as identifying where a number of projects (each with their own managers, teams and resources) were essentially working toward the same goal. Knowing this has helped them combine efforts - much more efficient and effective. And even though the Mid-Devon example was for projects within the council, imagine how powerful this approach would be among partner agencies.

model contracts for local authorities

The Office of Government Commerce has developed model contracts for local authorities. One for goods and one for services - and they're now out for consultation. According to the OGC site:

They are specifically for use by local authorities and designed for low to medium risk general procurement projects, where the values range from £140,000 to £1 million – values exceeding the EU thresholds. Both were written in consultation with representatives from key stakeholders, including the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, IDeA, 4Ps, and NW Regional Centre of Excellence.

My procurement expertise is...well, not great. I see that this guidance is for "general procurement", but when contracting for goods and services with partners, I imagine it's just all the more complicated. Is anyone aware of any guidance for partners contracting? In your experience is it better for one party (the one with the deepest pockets?) to run the contract?

The consultation period for these draft model terms closes at the end of May.

public sector silo busting in America

Topics: children, economic development, partnerships, American, article

Apologies for the double posting - software issue.

Governing - a magazine for state and local government in the US - has an article on eliminating silos in government from Scott D. Pattison as part of a weekly series in collaboration with the Government Innovators Network at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

There are several interesting examples of silo busting in state governments, some of these included changing existing structures, such as South Dakota's Department of Tourism and State Development*, which helps to ensure that economic development doesn't just "chase smokestacks", but takes account of broader quality of life issues. Others were less about reorganisation and more about getting the right people in the room together and making them collectively accountable, including Maine's Children's Cabinet.

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*In case you were wondering what kind of tourism there is in South Dakota - there's plenty to see, there's the Mitchell Corn Palace, described officially as "A-maize-ing ear-chitecture", two National Parks (the Badlands and the Black Hills), and this...

Tearing down silos in government

Topics: article, children, economic development, partnerships, American

Governing - a magazine for state and local government in the US - has an article on eliminating silos in government from Scott D. Pattison as part of a weekly series in collaboration with the Government Innovators Network at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

There are several interesting examples of silo busting in state governments, some of these included changing existing structures, such as South Dakota's Department of Tourism and State Development*, which helps to ensure that economic development doesn't just "chase smokestacks", but takes account of broader quality of life issues. Others were less about reorganisation and more about getting the right people in the room together and making them collectively accountable, including Maine's Children's Cabinet.

__________

In case you were wondering what kind of tourism there is in South Dakota - there's plenty to see, there's the Mitchell Corn Palace, described officially as "A-maize-ing ear-chitecture", two National Parks (the Badlands and the Black Hills), and this...

New PM resources

The PMMI project - a joint effort by the Audit Commission and the IDeA - has just published new guidance briefings:

• Beyond consultation: public involvement in performance management. This briefing describes ways that you can incorporate the views of users and citizens in your performance management arrangements as well as involving users and citizens themselves. It contains links to other useful resources as well as tips, tools and examples.
• Priorities and prioritisation: Deciding where to focus attention and resources is one of the most difficult aspects of performance management. This briefing covers how you can do it in an effective, evidenced-based way. It also includes an online, interactive tool to help you choose your top priorities.

I hope you'll check these out.

Sharing information

Information sharing between partners is vital to achieving partnership objectives.

Information Sharing: Practitioners' Guide has been produced by Department for Education and Skills, Department of Health, Home Office, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Department of Constitutional Affairs, and Youth Justice Board.

It includes a guide as well as a training pack, helping you to make the most of the information.

Quick hits - partnership reports

Some reports covering partnership issues in the public domain you might find interesting:

Delivering efficiently: strengthening the links in public service delivery chains (link to a pdf file)
A report by the heads of the National Audit Office and Audit Commission.

A ‘delivery chain’ refers to the complex networks of organisations, including central and local government, agencies, and bodies from the private and third sectors, that need to work together to achieve or deliver an improved public sector outcome defined through a central government Public Service Agreement (PSA) target.

Advice and guidance for the networks of organisations delivering central objectives locally. It includes a checklist (and lots of cool photos of chains).

Department for Education and Skills: Joint planning and commission framework for children, young people and maternity services (link to a pdf file)

Covers:

• assessing local needs - incorporating user and staff views
• joint commissioning arrangements - addressing issues of pooled resources, and
• monitoring and reviewing services and processes

Department for Education and Skills: The role of district councils in improving outcomes for children (link to a pdf file)

This 12 page report is really for counties and districts and how they can work in partnership within the framework of Children's Trusts to achieve better outcomes. For districts it focuses on their roles in housing, leisure, planning, environmental health and community safety in improving children's lives. Includes a summary of relevant legislation and a checklist for identifying partnership working opportunities.

Review of GIS-based information sharing systems (Home Office onlie report - link to a pdf)

Although I've only skimmed this, this looks pretty interesting. The opening paragraphs in the executive summary states:

Information sharing amongst Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) is essential for supporting the following objectives:

• to enable the initial and periodic review of crime, disorder and other
  community safetyissues;


• to help partnerships become evidence-based, driven by factual information
  and multiagencyanalysis products that can be used to help influence and direct
  their decisionmaking; and


• to ensure that targets remain valid and that activity is
  sustained.

The use of GIS-based information sharing systems by CDRPs has been increasing in England and Wales. The first systems began to emerge in 2000 and now there are over 20 systems, operating at either a regional, county or district level.

This report reviews some existing systems and then summarises the learning. It covers not just the systems themselves but also the lessons about information sharing and using data within partnerships.

Mainstreaming regeneration (ESRC/ODPM working paper - link to a pdf file)

Looks at what mainstreaming is and what it's involved in local strategic partnerships (LSPs) and local area agreements (LAAs). Discusses neighbourhood renewal and the continuing challenge of dealing jointly with cross-cutting issues.

These will also be linked permanently through the resource pages of the PM Partner collaborative website.

more neat blogs

More and more people are blogging on local government issues, it seems like everyday I find a new blog with interesting ideas about partnerships, local government, community engagement or just interesting workshop ideas.

David Wilcox's blog called Designing for Civil Society seems to get all of these in one. I'd already picked up a couple of interesting ideas:

• a game for exploring the effects of "double devolution"
• a nifty way of organising conference seating
• and lots more generally about using technology to support communities and networking.

And from his site, I see that he links the Demos blog...which has been going for about three years. How did I not cotton on to this blogging thing sooner!

What's new North of the border?

The Scottish Improvement Service launched its website earlier in April, and it looks really good. The Improvement Service is a little like the Improvement and Development Agency for Scotland, but it's a joint venture between the Scottish Executive, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE).

With a pedigree like that, they ought to know a thing or two about partnerships...and they do. There are some excellent resources on partnership governance in their Partnerships & Joint Ventures section. It includes a lengthy, but at first glance, fairly comprehensive guide that they commissioned (?) called Partnership Working Tools Review. It outlines 23 tools (many in checklist form) that you can use within partnerships. They cover, among 19 other things:

• consensus building
• effective meetings
• shaping partnership direction
• choosing partnership projects
• exploring added value.

These resources will be permanently linked from our PM Partner collaborative website on the resources page.

Choice and voice in the future

In yesterday’s Guardian, Ed Mayo the chief executive of the National Consumer Council had some strong words for politicians whose words sound good, but hold little delivery for users and the public.

…while it is welcome that the language politicians use about public services has moved on to focus on people as consumers and citizens - wrapped up in the jargon of "localism", "personalisation" and "choice" - we need action not words.

The three partners in this work, unusual bedfellows, decided to try to create more of a consensus around practical action by putting down a series of "call my bluff" challenges, for open sign-up, in a Future Services Network.

I saw Ed Mayo speak at the launch of the Future Services Network last week, along with representatives from the partner bodies: Stephen Bubb, Chief Executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO) and Tom Drury from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Public Services Board.

It is laudable effort, backed by sound principles:

• The public needs a voice in public services
• We need flexible public services that respond to people’s needs
• Many services could be delivered in new ways, such as by voluntary organisations or private companies
• People need more of a choice in public services
• Public services need to focus on customer satisfactionMotivated staff make for better public services

The issues of choice and voice are important and merit every bit of the current attention they are receiving.

The debate at the Future Services Network launch event was lively and interesting. Jim Murphy MP, Parliamentary Secretary with responsibiilty for e-government was enthusiastic. One thing that struck me was that he said that for too long the centre-left has been too focused on "redistribution of income" and too muted on the idea of "redistribution of power" and urged public services to extend choice and engagement to the poorest communities (in terms of income and aspiration) quickly.

Some questioned whether a sustained focus on choice, engagement and satisfaction would result in a raft of new targets and reporting. (Answer: possibly but that they would be more outcome focused). I also found interesting a debate on the idea of risk - that as citizens became more actively engaged in the design and provision of services, they will have to shoulder more of the risk and responsibility for outcomes as well.

Local government is already working to accelerate the improvement of services and to increase customer satisfaction, by listening to responding to and working with users and citizens. The LGA is developing a very interesting programme on Customer Led Performance Management, which includes looking at how businesses use customer intelligence to provide the services consumers want, how local government can use similar information to use services, and examples of such from around the world. Through the Performance, Management, Measurement and Information (PMMI) project, we will soon be publishing a briefing on engaging users in performance management itself.

Cool local government blogs

Is everybody doing it?

The pinnacle of local government blogging?
David Milliband, the Minister for Local Government, has a blog.

CfPS Blog
The Centre for Public Scrutiny (CfPS) has a blog which is regularly updated. The CfPS focuses on supporting public scrutiny across more than just local government, but my experience of them has largely been around their support for local government scrutiny. They have a lot of great resources and the blog is cool, too.

Local governance
And I'll also be checking this blog, governancenotes.info. I'm not entirely sure who's putting this blog together, but it does have a lot of interesting links - the blog descriptor is:

All politics is local - a summary of news on localism and urbanism

By the way:

That "all politics is local" quote is often attributed to larger-than-life US politician Tip O'Neill - here's an interesting blog post on just that quote revealing that Tip got the advice from his father and learned it the hard way.

What's new on Knowledge

Two new things on IDeA Knowledge this week to help people with a partnership interest:

The Local Area Agreements (LAA) Network has some new material this week, in particular help in getting started for LAA theme leads and LAA lead officers.

There's also a great case study from Darlington Working with the community to create a safe and vibrant environment (link takes you straight to a pdf file) where a partnership between the police, council, the voluntary sector and young people themselves is working to reduce crime and aiming to be self-funding. (It also sounds like they have some cracking parties, which I'm almost certainly too old for now.) There are a lot of other case studies covering similar topics on IDeA Knowledge here.