Performance is driving force behind delivery.
Public service delivery will always be a balanced deal. In the absence of the profit motive, which drives the private sector, conflicting expectations of public services lead to multiple challenges, which constantly make that balance difficult to achieve.
I suppose the dominant criterion nowadays is performance, but even that leads to confusion and perverse outcomes in some cases. In local government there is no direct correlation between performance and electoral success. Moreover, overall ratings can mask massive differences – poor performing councils usually have some areas of excellence whilst even the best can demonstrate some instances of incompetence.
When I first became responsible for a councils performance, more years ago than I care to remember, I met the chief executive of the Regional Electricity Board. He described his task as providing electricity to the local populace as safely, cheaply and efficiently as possible. He asked me to reciprocate. It was not easy to respond in succinct or accessible terms, particularly in age when more councils delivered as well as commissioned a myriad of services.
Our public accountability also demands that we concentrate on the way services are arranged. When I became involved in social services in the late 60’s the spirit of the Elizabethan poor law, abolished only two decades before, was alive and well. Essentially, we did things to people because we knew what they needed; choice was not an issue, simply availability of resources. This was eventually replaced by a commitment to assess need and providing things for people with an explicit link to those assessments.
Now we have arrived at true partnership through empowerment; making decisions with people, allowing them to define their own needs and arranging appropriate service responses. This is by no means universally implemented, but the force is unstoppable. To make these requirements effectively there will be inefficiencies, false starts and some mistakes, but this is the essence of community-based public service.
The job of management is to balance community involvement, competing expectations, rising costs, reasonable conditions for staff working flexibly and a range of other challenges.
Difficult and complex, but that is the business we are in and why real managerial talent must be encouraged and rewarded properly.
