Reviewed by Canon Mike D Williams
Performance management by government is back. Wes Streeting recently told NHS managers that they would be sacked if their organisations do not meet the targets. The Home Secretary is setting up a performance management unit to drive improvement in the police service. The Prime Minster has set out six milestones.
Focusing on gathering data and using that to drive delivery is what this book is about. Ministers in the new Labour government have clearly absorbed the wisdom of Michael Barber who ran the Prime Ministers Delivery Unit (PMDU) under Tony Blair and has subsequently advised governments around the world. He has written several books on the topic of improving the delivery of public services. Having great policy is only the first step. Without ministers and civil servants having a clear strategy, delivery chain and routines then even the best policy idea will not happen.
Citizens expect a lot from their governments and are frequently disappointed. The first step says Barber is for political leaders to be clear on their priorities. As Tony Blair is reported to have said, “There are priorities, and things you just have to do.” Many functions of government need management and oversight, but others need to be prioritised. Labour under Blair prioritised literacy and numeracy in primary education. Keir Starmer has set out his six priorities. The question now is how can they be delivered?
Barber explains the need for organisation, strategy, planning, routines, and problem solving. Getting government to move from silo working to cross government is a challenge. The PMDU, set up in Blair’s second term, was the engine room for driving delivery of the priorities. The Unit gathered data, assessed performance and built routines of meetings to review and drive change.
The chapter on strategy is whether government trusts the public sector professionals or performance manage them with clear targets from the centre. Barber suggests other strategies where competition and choice is used in the public sector to drive improvement combined with inspections and league tables (shaming). Privatization is another approach with mixed results, as we have seen.
Perhaps surprising is the fact that Barber had to spell out to civil servants the need to plan delivery chains. The way to improve literacy requires planning in detail how teachers will be trained and performance monitored in a way that connects the policy to delivery in every classroom. Establishing routine meetings where the Prime Minister reviewed performance data on the priorities was an innovation. Barber led the change from ‘government by spasm’ to ‘government by routine’. A move from chasing headline announcements to focused work on delivering the priorities.
If you wish to better understand how the current government is grappling with the challenges of turning good ideas into improved public services, then this book will help. Whether our current politicians have the discipline to stick to ‘government by routine’ rather than press release spasms remains to be seen.