Public Services are too serious to be left to.......bureaucrats and academics

A journalist friend has written making the very good point that people tend these days to live in what he called national “traumas” in which any mention of government reform is treated as just so much pointless rhetoric – if not with outright scorn and ridicule…(my words).

Of course this simply reflects the fact (as I’ve emphasised in recent posts about reform efforts) that those who write about admin reform are predominantly (95%) academics – and that they talk only to one another – or down to students – and never to the public at large ….

But every European State spends about 40% of its GNP on public services – so there must be a few informed citizens out there – even if most of us are so overwhelmed with apathy/fatalism that we don’t bother….  We mutter amongst ourselves but, otherwise, leave it to the politicians, bureaucrats, trade unionists and lobbyists!

And I know of at least one academic who did try (in 2003) to write a book about the subject for the general public – it was called The Essential Public Manager. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to have made much impact….

But what effort - it might be asked - do public service professionals make to try to change the things we (and they) don’t like about the services they work in? It is, after all, real individuals who run our schools, hospitals and state infrastructure. They have received expensive training; surely they should be more active?

The idea of transferring some public services to its staff caught the imagination recently in Britain in a policy called “mutualisation” - which was indeed embraced early into the UK 2010-15 Coalition government programme. The Post Office was to be the gem in that particular policy jewel but ideological fervour beat principle and the famous PO was duly privatised in 2015…..  Despite that setback, the past couple of decades have seen a considerable growth of social enterprise (employing about 1.5 million) particularly in the field of public health and some welfare services….

But how many articles do you see about this - even in north-west europe let alone the south-east?

Indeed, looking back over the past 40 years or so, I can recall only two books by journalists about public services (in the English language at any rate) – one an American (David Osborne) who produced in 1992 what turned out to be a best-seller – Reinventing Government. The other is a Brit (Polly Toynbee) whose recent book Dismembered – the ideological attack on the state actually triggered the blog series I did last autumn…

I understand the environment in which journalists write – but still think it’s sad that so many journalists just take the PR handouts from government departments and don’t bother with even minimal some policy digging. (Needless to say, my friend doesn’t belong in this category)….

Perhaps other journalists might therefore be interested in a little book (100-odd pages) which has pictures, tables and para headings to make it all the more reader-friendly; not to mention an eye-catching title - How did Admin Reform get to be so sexy?

I readily concede that the book titles and lists which adorn the text are a bit of a turn-off but there is little I can do about that since one of the book’s intentions is to guide the interested reader through the extensive literature; and to help people identify what is actually worth reading….

 I always liked the comic-book approach – in the 70s there were a couple of good series (Writers and Readers Coop was one) which did excellent ones on figures such as Marx, Freud…even Chomsky…

Of course, cartoons should be used more often to liven up such texts. Dilbert has long shown the way…

Perhaps the subject of Government Reform needs that sort of approach?

Further Reading on mutualisation and social enterprise

https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/portal/files/22033682/Hall_and_Hazenberg_2014_Pre_Publication_Version_pure_.pdf

http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/content/original/Book%20covers/Local%20PDFs/106%20Lyon%20et%20al%20Process%20of%20SI%20in%20mutual%20organisations%202013.pdf 2013

https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/enterprise-solutions_barriers-and-solutions_final.pdf

http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/5852/7/Hazenberg20135852.pdf

http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/5850/7/Hazenberg20135850.pdf

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/84380/1/Le%20Grand_Public%20service%20mutual_2018.pdf

https://journals.openedition.org/osb/1632 The Big Society

http://www.kellogg.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Becoming-a-public-service-mutual.pdf

2008 https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/generic/tsrc/documents/tsrc/reports/social-enterprise-for-public-service.pdf

The Solidarity Economy

Some time ago I shared an excellent couple of diagrams about the ills of our present socio-economic system and how it might be changed.

I had some issues with aspects of the presentation and have just come across this diagram which, for me, offers a clearer outline of the features of a better system – one called a “solidarity economy”

Yes I realise that you can't read the small print! For that, just click the diagram.

The author has a short paper which superbly situates the concept in the wider context of an emerging global movement of the past two decades in which even yours truly became involved as far back as 1978 - when I launched a community-based project designed to help the long-term unemployed access jobs which would contribute missing local services in poor areas.

Within a decade, it had become a well-resourced Community Business in the West of Scotland – part of a wider social enterprise effort within Scotland and Europe which continues to this day.

My effort at making sense of this concept can be seen at p 124 of In Transit – some notes on Good Governance (1999). Interesting to compare it with the amazing richness of the diagram which adorns this post!

No Excuse for Apathy

One of my unfinished projects has been a mapping of “alternative” ways of using our energies than that of the mad economic system which has had the globe in thrall (and peril) for at least the post-war period……

The project started with a short essay in 2001 (updated in Notes for the Perplexed) and moved into higher gear with the opening last autumn of a website Mapping the Common Ground which acts as a library of useful material for those keen to effect social change. Ways of Seeing…..the Global Crisis was my round-up of the reading I had been doing in recent years – with my common complaint being the failure of writers to give credit to others and indeed to make any attempt to do what Google Scholar exhorts us to do – “stand on the shoulders of giants”.

   

So I was delighted, this morning, to come across an encouraging American initiative The Next System whose opening video may be a bit crass but which makes amends with its initial report – The Next System Report – political possibilities for the 21^st Century which contains extensive references to writing I had not so far encountered and to good community practice in various parts of the world.  This led me to new writers such as Pat Devine and Andrew Cumbers (celebrating public ownership); and such gems as -

- the manual Take Back the Economy;

- the book Capitalism 3.0 by Peter Barnes

- We are Everywhere – a celebration of community enterprise

- An article on Democratising Finance by Fred Block

- The full bibliography of Danny Dorling’s glorious Injustice book

And that was just a couple of days after I had downloaded a lot of material relating to “the commons” which delicately tiptoes round the topic of “common ownership” – see this excellent overview The Commons as a new/old paradigm for governance – with a second section here

I was alerted to that by a fascinating article in Open Democracy Planning a Commons-based Future for Ecuador which is part of a wider effort that country has been making – set out in a document National Plan for Good Living which must be one of the first efforts this century to have a National Plan!

Other finds are -

- Celebrating the Commons – from On the Commons website

- The evolution of social enterprise – a very friendly overview of various landmarks in the important history of this “movement” (rather US-centric)

 - Commons Transition – the book from a site “of practical experiences and policy proposals aimed toward achieving a more humane and environmentally grounded mode of societal organization. Basing a civil society on the Commons (including the collaborative stewardship of our shared resources) would enable a more egalitarian, just, and environmentally stable society.

- Bibliography for the Social Knowledge Economy

 - Humanising the Economy

- Beyond the Corporation

- Owning our Future

- Cooperative enterprise building in a better world

So no excuse! Let’s get off our backsides and do something to build a more sensible world!!

social innovation and social enterprise

The price of potatoes has apparently almost doubled here – so there is a particular poignancy to the efforts of my 80 year-old neighbours whom I guiltily watch in their vegetable patch in the field below.
I’ve been too busy all morning to be able to offer any help – first on my own chores now that the sun is shining brightly and then on reflecting on the questions I got in my mail this morning from a US reader of my blog who was responding to a comment I had made on the Understanding Society blog and reproduced here My correspondent is in the process of establishing an organisation based on the recognition that

well intentioned organizations are constantly reinventing the wheel due to the poor state of networking amongst them. This, in turn, is responsible for the far below optimal rate of progress being generated by these organizations

.My correspodent asked four fascinating questions -
• about my experiences in trying to create positive change.
• Are there certain organizations you are especially fond of?
• What do you think about the "social innovation" movement?
• Is there a set of principles that you follow?

This quickly took me back to a short paper I had been looking for recently – which I had written ten years ago about the state of the world and what effective action committed individuals could take - and which I was able at last to unearth. It dealt with the first two of the questions and I have just spent a couple of hours adding footnotes to it to bring it up to date – and adding it to my website
The term “Social innovation” is actually a new one for me – but some surfing quickly established that it covers what I knew as community enterprise in the 1980s; what the French have called “social economy” and what, in the 200os, was called social enterprise in the UK. This 2006 paper is a good overview of the US and European understanding of the term.
Also in 2006 an interesting book was published on the European experience of Social Enterprise
This 2005 paper is a theoretical overview from Strathclyde University
In 2007, Charles Leadbeater wrote Social enterprise and social innovation: Strategies for the next ten years for the UK Cabinet Office and, in the light of the UK Coalition Government interest in Big Society, the Guardian had a brief chat with some social entrepreneurs.
Tha painting is one of the famous Bulgarian ones - "Peasant with a hoe"by Vladimir Dmitrov (The Master)

that there is a lot of thinking (about alternatives) going on - but it is not easily shared and stored. What can be done about this?