Friday funday: innovation

The lighter side of local government

It's all about inovation today. Innovations of all sorts. It's quite timely because one of my colleagues, Adrian Barker attended a seminar on innovation this week. Charlie Leadbeater spoke - he's always thought provoking - and you can find his recent presentations - including those on innovation - here.


Drunk or just boring?

'Tis the season of office Christmas parties. And yes, I know it shows a flaw in my character, but unless I'm drunk, I usually find them dull, dull, dull. And ever since that last unfortunate incident, I've really tried to avoid overconsumption of alcohol in front of the people that sign my cheque.

But thankfully for seasonal revellers in the borough of Westminster, the City Council has got you covered either way.

With the Christmas party season underway, a new free texting service has been launched to help revellers get home safely from central London.

The service is part of a Westminster City Council's "Some things you only do when you're drunk" campaign All people have to do is go to http://www.somethings.co.uk/ to get telephone numbers for bus and safe taxi services.

And if making small talk with the boss is just too much, there is even an excuse text to help you get away from the boring office party.

What's that smell?

What's the smell that you usually associate with public transport or bus shelters? No, really - go on - close your eyes and smell that smell.

Now imagine what they could smell like, roses, freshly laundered sheets hanging in the sun, new-mown hay, warm chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven?

Via the Governing blog, I've discoverd that one need no longer imagine. Bus shelters in San Francisco are to smell like chocolate chip cookies - thanks to an advertising campaign by California's milk board. (See, you Brits think of biscuits then tea, but we Americans think of cookies then milk).

Christopher Swope writes of this advertising innovation:

I know how I'm supposed to feel about this. I'm supposed to mourn the passing of yet another of our five human senses into the advertising kingdom. Madison Avenue took sight (TV) and sound (radio) from us long ago. Taste as advertising is give and take -- I'm thinking free samples here. Now they're snatching smell from us, too. Only touch remains an ad-free zone, barring changes in law or social behavior.

But let's be honest: Bus shelters could do worse than smell like chocolate chip cookies. Much worse. As a teenager quoted in the Chronicle points out, "It's going to smell like cookies and bums."

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Restless for improvement

Topics: performance management, improvement, City of Westminster Council

On a fairly regular basis, the IDeA brings in external speakers. Invariably these events are always really good, with a fresh take on some aspect of local government or area governance.

Today Peter Rogers, Chief Executive of Westminster, was our speaker and he described his organisation as "restless for improvement". He has a low key, but really engaging speaking style. He covered a lot of really interesting topics, but a couple really stood out for me.

• Westminster had a peer review - an "international peer review" involving the then Mayor of Baltimore and now Governor-elect of Maryland.* Peter Rogers has been a peer reviewer himself, but he also said that peer reviews are a great way to reinforce self-awareness.
• Westminster undertook several studies -a local area study looking at some of their most deprived areas and a customer needs analysis. They also looked at how much money they had been spending in these areas (apparently it was a lot). They took this information to their partners who worked in the area. Funding was occurring in parallel - so much more effort was placed on defining and sharing outcomes and harnessing funding in train to achieve those outcomes. Local Area Renewal Partnerships have been developed to really help area partners focus on the achievement that needs to be made in 1 year, 3 years and 5 years down the line.
• As part of their improvement planning, Westminster mapped all of their services against a matrix of cost versus quality and with their 50 top managers planned how they would achieve improvement in quality and a reduction in cost through increasing efficiency.
• Peter Rogers challenged the notion of improving performance indicators across the board in a bid to improve satisfaction. Council-level performance indicators "average the misery" and don't tell you what residents in different areas prioritise. Tackling the things that really matter to different neighbourhoods means that you can see an increase in overall satisfaction, while the council level PI remains the same, and cost possibly goes down.
  

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*Martin O'Malley had been invited to take part in the peer review particularly for they way Baltimore has been working on policing and quality of life issues through their CitiStat performance management approach. I have blogged about that here.

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Friday funday

The lighter side of local government

Environmental health don't take half measures
Or the wrong content in measures either at Westminster. Westminster City Council's Food Team busted a pub landlady for replacing branded spirits with the cheap stuff.

Councillor Audrey Lewis, Westminster City Council's Cabinet Member for Licensing and Community Protection, said: "When customers order drinks in any licensed premises we expect them to be given what they asked for and not some cheap alternative.

Darn right! I do have to admit to having done this once myself. I filled a Jack Daniels bottle with cheap supermarket bourbon to bolster the liquor table at a party. None of my guests drank it. But a friend of mine (and co-conspirator in the spirit switch) and I did end up drinking the cheap stuff by accident some time later. The next day we both ended up with the hangover of our lives.


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