In Memoriam; Ion Olteanu 1953-2010

I dedicate this post to the memory of Ion Olteanu – a Romanian friend who died a year ago and whose anniversary was today at the Scoala Centrala in Bucharest. Sadly, being in Sofia, I wasn’t able to attend. He was one of a tiny minority in post-Ceausescu Romania with a vision for Romania – and worked tirelessly and with great sacrifice and professional passion with its adolescents to try to realise it. He had a marvellous and unique combination of tough logic and tender care.
I hope he will consider it a suitable memorial comment.

In recent years, some of us consultants in admin reform have found ourselves drafting manuals on policy-making for government units of transition countries. I did it ten years ago for the Slovak Civil Service (it is one of the few papers I haven't yet posted on the website). I’m sorry to say that what is served up is generally pure fiction – suggesting a rationality in EC members which is actually non-existent. I like to think that I know a thing or two about policy-making. I was, after all, at the heart of policy-making in local and regional government at the height of its powers in Scotland until 1990; I also headed up a local government unit which preached the reform of its systems; and, in the mid 1980s I got one of the first Masters Degree in Policy Analysis. So I felt I understood both what the process should be – rational, detached and phased - and what in fact it was – political, partial and messy. I was duly impressed (and grateful) when the British Cabinet Office started to publish various papers on the process. First in 1999, Professional policy-making for the 21st Century and then, in 2001, a discussion paper - Better Policy Delivery and Design. This latter was actually a thoroughly realistic document which, as was hinted in the title, focused on the key question of why so many policies failed. It was the other (more technical parts) of the british government machine which showed continued attachment to the unrealistic ratonal (and sequentially staged) model of policy-making – as is evident in this response from the National Audit Office and in the Treasury model pushed by Gordon Brown.
The Institute of Government Think Tank has now blown the whistle on all this – with a report earlier in the year entitled Policy-Making in the Real World – evidence and analysis. The report looks at the attempts to improve policy making over the past fourteen years – and also throws in some excellent references to key bits of the academic literature. Based on interviews with 50 senior civil servants and 20 former ministers, along with studying 60 evaluations of government policy, it argues that these reforms all fell short because they did not take account of the crucial role of politics and ministers and, as such, failed to build ways of making policy that were resilient to the real pressures and incentives in the system.
The Institute followed up with a paper which looks at the future of policy making “in a world of decentralisation and more complex problems” which the UK faces with its new neo-liberal government The paper argues that policy makers need to see themselves less as sitting on top of a delivery chain, but as stewards of systems with multiple actors and decision makers – whose choices will determine how policy is realised. As it, with presumably unconscious irony states, “We are keen to open up a debate on what this means. There is also a third paper in the series which I haven’t had a chance to read yet.

In this year’s paper to the NISPAcee Conference, I raised the question of why the EC is so insistent on accession countries adopting tools (such as policy analysis; impact assessment; professional civil service etc) which patently are no longer attempted in its member states. Is it because it wants the accession countries to feel more deficient and guilty? Or because it wants an opportunity to test tools which no longer fit the cynical West? Or is it a cynical attempt to export redundant skills to a gullible east?

Looking at the evidence

“Evidence-based policy-making” was a phrase which, for me, epitomised UK New Labour’s ahistorical arrogance after their 1997 victory and the make-believe world they inhabited. It carried with it the dual assumption that, until their arrival in power, policy-making had not been based on evidence and that truth would now replace political prejudice. Granted, major issues such as the municipal poll tax and rail privatisation had been introduced in the previoius decade by Conservative Governments on the basis of ideology and scant regard for evidence – but it was asking us a lot to believe that political calculation and inclinations were suddenly going to vanish and politicians start behaving like technical experts. And Bliar’s constant mantra about “what works” was probably more a way for him to justify his constant rejection of old labour policies in favour of those which better fitted corporate interests. William Solesbury was part of an academic unit 10 years ago which looked critically at the fashion. However, it is still nice to see evidence incisively brought to bear on a policy issue - and this short article on the latest policy measure the Greek government is having to impose to keep financiers happy certainly does that! Has any financier even bothered to give a coherent explanation of the logic behind these actions? The Social Europe website, from which the article is taken, also has an excellent post on global measures which should be adopted.

I’ve just finished one of the most powerful descriptions of man’s inhumanity to man I've read since Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation – the conquest of the middle east.The author is Oliver Bullough; the book, Let our Fame be Great – journeys amongst the defiant people of the Caucasus and it opened my eyes to the fate which overcame the various tribes of the north east part of the Black Sea during the Tsarist period – let alone the Stalin and Putin ones. We all know about the Chechens and Ossetians – but who has heard of the Circassians, let alone of the Avars and Balkars and the repression, forced exoduses and genocide they suffered? Neal Ascherson’s great The Black Sea had introduced me to the history of the northern part of the Black Sea but not the Caucasian part. Bullough tells here how he came to write the book.

People types and a plea for slow politics

I’m a sucker for labels! By that, I mean I enjoy people classifications. It was probably Jung’s introvert/extrovert distinction which first impacted on me and I remember, twenty years ago, a book which looked at three scenarios for the future - "Retrenchment", "Assertive Materialism", "Caring Autonomy" - and how different groups are likely to respond to them viz the self-explorers, the social resisters, the conspicuous consumers and belongers, and the survivors and the aimless (the book was Millenium - toward tomorrow's society by Francis Kinsman). Those particular labels were, however, a bit confusing.
I prefer when the labels emerge from a simple matrix; for my work, one useful matrix has people plotted on one axis on the basis of their „agreement with the change” and on the basis of „trustworthiness” on the other – to give 5 types – allies, adversaries, bedfellows, opponents and fence sitters. In 2000, Malcolm Gladwell’s famous book The Tipping Point argued that the attainment of the "tipping point" (that transforms a phenomenon into an influential trend) usually requires the intervention of a number of influential types of people. On the path toward the tipping point, many trends are ushered into popularity by small groups of individuals that can be classified as Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. Connectors are individuals who have ties in many different realms and act as conduits between them, helping to engender connections, relationships, and “cross-fertilization” that otherwise might not have ever occurred. Mavens are people who have a strong compulsion to help other consumers by helping them make informed decisions. Salesmen are people whose unusual charisma allows them to be extremely persuasive in inducing others’ buying decisions and behaviors.
And we mustn’t forget Belbin’s team roles and test.
I remembered all this when I saw this article in today’s Guardian which quotes from an ongoing research study in Britain which has suggested its citizens can be classified in three ways - Pioneers, Prospectors and Settlers

I mentioned the UK government’s White Paper on Open Public Services yesterday; and Owen Abroad’s blog alerted me to an inquiry the House of Lords is currently running on Overseas Aid.
It should be fairly obvious from this blog that (whatever my gripes about UK political leaders) I am a fan of the "classical model of british government” – a combination of rhetoric and "golden age” quasi-practice of –
• The judgement and "institutional memory” of career civil servants balancing the impatience and naivete of politicians who enjoy power for only a limited period
• Strategic statements of government intent being published as "Green” papers – with interest groups (or "stakeholders” in the modern jargon) being properly consulted
• Policies being reviewed not by "one-off” technical evaluations – but by submissions to a parliamentary body which are then cross-examined those with knowledge and experience and issued cross-party reports

It's time for a taste of "slow" politics - it was Tony Bliar who turned British governments into 24-hour media fixated machines. Hopefully the present media scandal there will encourage politicians also to look at this fixation.
And finally a marvellous commentary (and video) by the man who exposed the dirty tricks.

Good Friday's new norms

My father would have been initially horrified (if not altogether surprised) that this morning – Good Friday – found me reading papers about, first, Impact Assessment (IA) and, then, Project Management (PM)!! But in many ways, it is appropriate. After all, these are some of the central elements of the new secular religion which we have learned to worship in the last 4-5 decades (I’m not joking). But, in redemption, let me pray that –
• I was last night cursing Google for the way it feeds the frenzy of the contemporary and dishonours the nobility and wisdom of so many of our immediate predecesors (I could trace no reference to my father or any of the great teachers I had – save one memorable English teacher (Mabel Irving) who died recently and was very nicely remembered.
• I have been tuned (as usual) to BBC 3 Classic Music – in particular Through the Night whose choice today has very much respected the date and theme of death and resurrection.
• The readings of IA and PM have been critical (as distinct from adulatory) ones.

Let me explain. I first began to hear of this powerful medicine called Impact Assessment about ten years ago and, frankly, found it very difficult to understand (which is entirely appropriate for a wonder ointment). My background is political science and policy analysis (I had one of the first postGraduate Degree courses in the latter subject in the early 1980s). At one level, therefore, IA seemed to me to be common sense – enjoining us to think about the various ways which proposed legislation would impact on social groups and the costs (if not counterproductive consequences) it would bring. But, of course, it came from a specific political agenda – which was hostile to government intervention. And it did require us all to pay particular attention to the costs which Regulations would have on business – particularly the Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) which have been the West’s holy grail of the past few decades. Fine – and so were the „ex-ante impact assessments” which also became all the rage a decade or so ago in the European Commission. I met a Bulgarian Professor recently who was apparently a specialist in this (as she had been of Stalinist planning a couple of decades ago). Fine. I decided therefore to read the 2006 book which I had found recently on the internet about the subject - Andrea Renda’s Impact assessment in the EU - the state of the art and the art of the state. I found this a bit, well…Stalinist …but her more recent slides for the OECD seemed a bit more critical and provocative ; and also here . And this academic paper threw even more light on the matter.

I alighted today on project management because of a last bit of cleaning up to the Varna paper – and had an incomplete reference to a paper by Roger Lovell on civil service reform which used the dimensions of “agreement to change” and “trust” to distinguish the very different roles in the change process of allies, adversaries, bedfellows, opponents and fence sitters.
Project Management is what I did not have enough of in the 1970s and 1980s - and have had a surfeit of since! I was then led to some good papers here, here and here.

Der Spiegel has a disturbing picture of what Europe means for some Bulgarians and this article remiinds us of how life is lived elsewhere.
Glory indeed to God!
The painting (Maglitz Monastery) is by one of the most famous Bulgarian "Secessionists"(as the Nouveau Art is called here) - Milev. Maglitz has great wine!!

part V - more open and creative policy-making

I have written an extensive paper about the innovative work I was involved in from 1975-1990 in the Region trying to make its policies, structures and staff more sensitive to the needs and aspirations of those who lived in its poorer areas. It is paper 5 of “key papers” of my website. Here I just want to focus on the structural aspects of our work – how we tried to get officials, councillors and community activists working more productively with one another to solve problems.
This entry talks about our member-officer groups -the next entry looks at how we tried to "make a difference" in the poorer areas.
At the end of Strathclyde Region's first year of existence in 1976, a major weekend seminar of all the councillors and the new Directors was held to review the experience of the new systems of decision-making. The exhilarating experience a few of us had had of working together across the boundaries of political and professional roles first to set up the new Departments and second on the deprivation strategy was something we wanted to keep. And other councillors wanted that involvement too.
Our answer was "member-officer groups" (Young 1981). These were working groups of about 15 people (equal number of officials and councillors) given the responsibility to investigate a service or problem area - and to produce, within 12-18 months, an analysis and recommendations for action. Initially social service topics were selected - youth services, mental handicap, pre-school services and the elderly - since the inspiration, on the officer side, was very much from one of the senior Social Work officials.

The member-officer groups broke from the conventions of municipal decision-making in various ways -
· officials and members were treated as equals
· noone was assumed to have a monopoly of truth : by virtue of ideological or professional status
· the officers nominated to the groups were generally not from Headquarters - but from the field
· evidence was invited from staff and the outside world, in many cases from clients themselves
· the represented a political statement that certain issues had been neglected in the past
· the process invited external bodies (eg voluntary organisations) to give evidence
· the reports were written in frank terms : and concerned more with how existing resources were being used than with demands for more money.
· the reports were seen as the start of a process - rather than the end - with monitoring groups established once decisions had been made.

The achievements of the groups can be measured in such terms as -
· the acceptance, and implementation, of most of the reports : after all, the composition and the openness of the process generates its own momentum of understanding and commitment !
· the subsequent career development of many of their chairmen
· the value given to critical inquiry - instead of traditional party-bickering and over-simplification.
· the quality of relations between the councillors : and with the officials

With this new way of working, we had done two things. First discovered a mechanism for continuing the momentum of innovation which was the feature of the Council's first year. Now more people had the chance to apply their energies and skills in the search for improvement.
We had, however, done more - we had stumbled on far more fruitful ways of structuring local government than the traditional one (the Committee system) which focuses on one "Service" - eg Education which defines the world in terms of the client group: of one professional group and is producer-led. And whose deliberations are very sterile - as the various actors play their allotted roles (expert, leader, oppositionist, fool etc).