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Irresistible government targets

Before the 2010 general election, David Cameron promised to ‘get rid of all those targets, all that bureaucracy and all that paperwork and replace Labour’s bureaucratic accountability with democratic accountability’. But the Government are now finding it hard to cope with life without targets and performance management.

Today, the phrase “community trigger” was coined, as Home Secretary Theresa May proposed that the police would have to respond when a certain number of families complained about antisocial behaviour. Doesn’t this look rather like a target demanding 100% compliance backed up by legislation? Also today, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced that he would be monitoring 17 indicators to assess “how well the government is doing in making society fairer”.  Will this be an existing measurement and reporting process or a new top down monitoring regime? Cameron’s pledge to replace targets and ‘bureaucratic accountability’ was always ambitious. But as political frustration with the pace of change grows Government seems to be increasingly tempted to reach for targets which jerk the system into action. The problem, however, is that lessons from the past are not being learnt. What the Labour years taught us is that targets can ‘work’ – in that if they are attached to rewards and sanctions people will up their efforts to meet the objective set. Hardly anyone would argue that targets hadn’t successfully reduced hospital waiting lists: precisely why the Coalition is hanging onto them. But we also learnt you can hit the target but miss the point – as Cameron’s initial critique clearly acknowledged. If all the police are following up community ASBO claims (which you could argue that they should be doing anyway!) what aren’t they doing? And is the cost of measuring and monitoring complaints worth it? Similarly, tracking social mobility is all very well and good – but unless you also get intelligence on whether what the Government is doing is working then all you will learn is whether you should try more (or less) hard – not what you should actually do. What’s needed is a much more sophisticated approach to performance management and evaluation in government – not the ad hoc targetry and monitoring that is currently emerging. Over the years, Labour gradually improved its approach to performance assessment, setting up and gradually improving Whitehall Capability Reviews, Public Service Agreements and Local Area Agreements. But, while these efforts were very far from perfect, the Coalition - having jettisoned most of the Labour machinery - feels like it is starting from scratch. Whitehall’s departmental business plans focus too much on tracking government’s activities rather than measuring whether they provide value for money. And today’s ad hoc announcements similarly neglect the questions of value for money and overall departmental performance that are so critical in these times of rapid expenditure reduction. The Government is beginning to take steps to develop a more holistic and considered approach, having recently set up a new government unit dedicated to understanding whether the Coalition’s reform agenda is being delivered. The question, however, is whether this new unit can (or will) learn the lessons of history. If not, there is another bite at the cherry. In June, the Government will publish its broader civil service reform plan. Today’s Institute report Improving Decision Making in Whitehall argues that government urgently needs to develop a coherent and effective system for assessing departmental performance and for holding civil servants to account for the value for money that they deliver. If it does not put it in place soon, the Government may well recreate the kind of messy bureaucracy it promised to eliminate.
Topic
Brexit

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