We’ve been flat out working on our projects and related activities - but wanted to make a quick post as we felt that this recent speech, by the new Policing and Criminal Justice MinisterNick Herbert MP was worth highlighting. The speech was given at Policy Exchange on 23 June 2010 and outlines the context for the Government’s plans in the area of criminal justice reform.
The speech highlights some of the issues we’re trying to work on (e.g. making things seamless/better for victims) and the need for greater transparency and less bureaucracy.
“[The criminal justice system is] a system that is fractured where it should be seamless, and reactive where it should be preventive.”
“It’s remote, lacking transparency where it should be open and honest, and too focussed on offenders when it should be accountable to the public and driven by the needs of victims”
The social and human cost of continuing as we are was also acknowledged:
“We can’t go on like this, spending ever more … the dislocated approach … has divided professionals and carries immense social and financial costs…”
This sentiment was echoed, all the more acutely, by speakers at London Action Trusts‘ recent “Who speaks for victims?” conference in London earlier this week. It was incredibly moving to hear directly from a number of individuals who have experience of tremendous suffering as a result of appalling acts of wanton violence. It was even more impressive to hear how they have been working to make a positive and tangible difference to the safety of their communities. For example, the work of Through Unity, Newlove Warrington and many others.
We look forward to working over the next 12 months to make a positive contribution to a safer Britain, and would invite anyone who might want to make contact, to get in touch.
I had the great pleasure of meeting some of the teams involved in CDI’s Apps for Good work in south London this evening. The highlight for me, and what made me ‘stop and stare’, was an application that seeks to improve the experiences of those subject to police ‘stop and search’ activities. It’s called, conveniently: Stop&Search.
It has obvious connections and synergies with the work of Sarah and Lauren at MyPolice and the NPIA (National Policing Improvement Agency). They can both expect contact from Greg and Aaron and the rest of the team in the weeks ahead!
The application also reminded me of the gaps and issues explored at the recent Authority 2.0 conference in Birmingham, where interest was expressed in the development of a “stop and search”-style app for the benefit of photographers and police officers alike.
From Viscero’s perspective it is yet another demonstration of how innovative ideas can be turned into a reality, to help improve the quality and effectiveness of public services and the criminal justice system in particular.
Congratulations must go to the team for their great work so far, supported and encouraged by their project mentor, Jeff Gilfelt (author of ASBOrometer), and CDI.
We look forward to keeping in touch with them – and helping if we can – over the journey ahead. I should also add that the other applications previewed/pitched this evening had real merit (StudioPhly and StudentVoice) and it will be great to see how these evolve and grow into live Android applications.
I spent an evening recently in Canary Wharf that sought to discuss the future for healthcare in the UK and how we might begin to seriously tackle the big health issues, such as obesity, that affect the UK. The evening also touched on how technology might provide new opportunities to deliver better healthcare for less.
There are already some interesting developments in this arena in terms of both clinical services (e.g. telehealth in Kent) and improved mechanisms to provide feedback on healthcare experiences (e.g. Patient Opinion).
What has continued to elude clinicians and other interested parties is a service or mechanism that intervenes early to prevent problems. It is sadly too late to decide to quit smoking in response to a diagnosis of lung cancer. As one respected clinician recently told me, and I’m sure others will have heard before:
“We don’t have a National Health Service, we have a National Illness Service”
With the country on the cusp of a general election, it will be interesting to learn more about how the NHS will be prepared for a future in which the demand pressures will be unprecedented. The NHS is a topic that has largely gone undiscussed in this election campaign, certainly it did not form a significant part of the Prime Ministerial Debates, which might lead one to believe that little will change in the NHS over the course of the next 5 years. But, if ‘health’ is to be put back into the NHS, something will need to change (and as if on cue…).
It didn’t make it into The Economist this week, but here’s the text of a letter that was submitted in response to last week’s article on the challenge of transforming Britain’s schools. Whatever the policies of the next parliament they shall struggle to move from the politicial rhetoric to a practical and productive reality so that we might begin to tackle one of the biggest challenges ahead.
Sir,
The Conservatives’ plans for a Big Society and their ambition to transform Britain’s schools to a local design are admirable. However on the basis of the evidence from big government as we have seen it over the last 13 years, rhetoric, no matter how sincere and well-meaning, often has a weak link to reality.
When it comes to realising the Big Society and new schools created by parents, there is a particular issue to address – How can citizens who might not have experience of government and policymaking empower themselves to make the practical contribution that is desperately needed?
The need for an answer to this question is urgent and unprecedented: the public finances alone demand a significant improvement in productivity in a sector of the economy that is both large (53.4 % of GDP) and complex.
If the plans of any future government are to be delivered, there is a clear and present need for a mechanism that helps close the gap between the rhetoric of politicians, the analyses and strategies of policymakers and the day-to-day practices of public, private and third sector workers engaged in service delivery.
Perhaps The Economist could set the rules and host a treasure hunt which calls for Britain’s front line leaders to “go compare” mechanisms that turn policies into practices. If the hunt served simply to focus minds on how to make services work in a service economy that would be a good step. If it turned up a replicable, scalable process that shows people how to do something collaboratively rather then endlessly repeating only the policy, that would be a collective triumph.
One early beneficiary of such a framework and set of processes, would be the New Schools Network and the many teams ambitious to provide schooling to their own local design.
With the general election campaign underway and the result less than a month away, it’s worth asking what will be different this time around. Whether there is a change of government or not, the video above provides some useful reminders. Leaders can promise to make changes, can offer hope and can find their efforts and the efforts of other reformers thwarted. It is clear, from the words of Blair, that delivering “change in the public sector and public services” is not just hard work, but a “battle” of so-called “reformers versus wreckers”.
The challenge facing the next government shall be even greater than that faced by Blair, for the difference is that there shall not be record increases in public spending or public sector pay. In fact any desire to improve public services will be constrained by the pressing need to curb the deficit and get the national debt under control. It is also reasonable to assume that the general economic environment could prove to be far from benign.
It is also the case that the UK, like other economies, faces the challenge of ever-increasing demand pressure on the public services through a combination of socioeconomic and demographic factors. Without new approaches and the triumph of reformers over wreckers, the competitiveness of the UK economy and the welfare of the public and especially those who are most vulnerable shall suffer.
The high-level answer must surely be a smaller state and a stronger society - but the £160bn question that the public is beginning to ask (see Question Time [16m55s]) is how can this be delivered? No answers were forthcoming last night - but it’s a question that won’t and shouldn’t go away. If our politicians don’t answer it to the satisfaction of our financial markets after the election, it will be the men and women of the IMF that will answer it for us.
The report also highlights a number of case studies from across the realms of community safety, young people, health, and the criminal justice system (including our work in the areas of Witness Appeal Mapping and Victim Case Updates on page 20). It was also great to see the Cardiff (non-reported violent crime) data-sharing example receive the recognition it deserves for demonstrating how informational barriers can be overcome to create new insight and unlock value.
If you’re interested in the future of public services the report deserves reading in full, but some highlights we’d like to pull out include:
Digital public services become the norm: “Although many services will continue to support citizens in traditional ways, the default assumption must be that personalised, convenient and cost effective public services should – where possible, and as soon as possible – be delivered online.” (p.14)
Citizens being asked to consent to more data sharing: “The full benefits of open access data can only be enjoyed if at some point the citizens whose use of services is captured in that data allow it to be shared.” (p.25)
Central government stepping back from manufacturing ‘content’: “In terms of developing and applying the appropriate technology to achieve this, we believe that central government should (unless there is a clear case to the contrary) be limited to delivering what the market will not do. This mitigates the risk of heavy government involvement in online technologies.” (p.32)
Finishing the job on Ordnance Survey: “Geo-data from maps is crucial to the benefit open data can provide. In 2010 the Government announced its intention to review the Ordnance Survey’s funding model, with a view to allowing it to offer its valuable mapping data freely. This would allow innovators and businesses to innovate and experiment with it (although larger organisations, like utilities, will still have to pay). The economic and social value of freely available mapping data vastly outweighs the financial revenue lost to the Treasury from providing it for free. It is imperative that this commitment is delivered.” (p.35)
The issues and recommendations raised in the report seem to go a long way to addressing the sorts of challenges all three sectors of the economy face when seeking to deliver more productive and responsive public services. The challenge is particularly acute for smaller organisations in the private and third sectors that are working to make a difference, this recent contribution to the discussion sums things up very well, giving examples from fishing licences to benefits calculators.
It is therefore great to see these issues getting the coverage and articulation they desperately need from an organisation such as the 2020 Public Services Trust, and with politicians of all parties (Labour, Conservative, Lib Dems) beginning to recognise the potential and necessary role of online services in helping to meet the challenges of the years ahead, it’s a timely contribution that really must not go un-noticed.
I meant to post some thoughts last week on the story picked up by BBC News that Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC) had launched an online tool with the same name (MyPolice) as that used by a promising social enterprise. However, I’ve not had a chance to familiarise myself with the detail, so shall simply wish Lauren and the team at MyPolice well and comment on some more general thoughts and observations around a challenge inherent in public sector working and the power of people and markets.
At the very least, and as almost every webmaster will likely testify, the story is a reminder of the importance of securing your online presence from both competitors (however indirect) and so-called cybersquatters. Public sector and project management professionals might also cite the importance of effective “stakeholder engagement and management”. The former is relatively easy to achieve, the latter less so.
Each organisation will typically have their own mission, their own performance measures, their own culture, their own strategy, their own politics (small p), their own set of policies, their own set of new initiatives and their own existing services. These organisations also often have local, regional and national management layers.
The result is a rather complex set of interconnected institutions and individuals. On this basis alone, working within or across the criminal justice system (aka x-CJS) can easily become time-consuming and challenging (and that’s before we start to actually tackle a problem such as reducing offending subject to resource constraints in a political and big-P political environment). Something like the MyPolice case was therefore going to happen sooner or later, has no doubt happened before and will surely occur again.
The Government has itself recognised the challenge of co-ordinating and joining-up service delivery, especially with respect to the development of online services. After a period when it struggled to maintain the integrity of its online presence, it has now taken steps to ensure DirectGov is recognised (by policymakers as well as citizens) as the ‘go-to’ place for accessing online services provided by government.
Jumping ahead a little, it is likely that with the decentralisation of decision-making that may follow the coming election and a move towards a greater role for the private and third sectors, there is set to be a proliferation of new online services - offered by organisations such as MyPolice and others that don’t even exist yet. Citizens will be offered and choose to use the new services, perhaps even in preference to existing government-created channels accessible via DirectGov. This is likely to pose a challenge for the government: they may be hard-pressed to keep track of the various new services offered by non-governmental actors and may be reluctant to implicitly endorse or support them (given DirectGov’s core value of trustworthiness).
However, the expectation must surely be that if government doesn’t make the “right” decision (whatever that might be) or provide the “right” service in response to the challenge, for whatever reasons, then the emerging market of both private and social entrepreneurs will move to correct it (case in point: MyPolice providing a new feedback service for the public or indeed Viscero’s work on victims and witnesses). By the same token, whatever the detail behind the MyPolice case and whatever the eventual outcome, it’s pretty safe to say that “the good will out”. And that, with perhaps a dash of optimism, is the power of people and markets.
It was a busy start to the week, with meetings at the Home Office, Office for Criminal Justice Reform, PwC and the 2020 Public Services Trust at the RSA. Good meetings often have the somewhat troublesome characteristic of begging more questions and generating more work rather than less, and today was no exception. Highlights included learning more about what Cambridgeshire Constabulary have been doing to improve the lot of victims (though they are by no means alone in making progress) and making some new connections across Her Majesty’s Courts Service and the National Offender Management Service (prisons and probation to the public).
The final meeting of the day was with Charlotte Alldritt of the 2020 Public Services Trust. While there, I picked up a copy of the RSA Journal and was reminded of the oft-quoted remarks of President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel:
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste … [it's] an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before… It’s not about big government or small government, it’s about more effective government” - Rahm Emanuel
However, as Mr Emanuel argues, such an opportunity should not be wasted. The challenge for the nation will be all the greater if politicians and senior civil servants shy away from the opportunity that lies before them. They should enable new enterprises and actors, like Viscero and numerous other private and third sector organisations, to play a role in helping deliver “more for less”. The upside for the public, politicians and civil servants alike is clear: helping restore the the public finances while improving the quality of services (or, at the very least, limiting any degradation in quality).
I had the great pleasure of meeting some of the teams involved in CDI’s 
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