Monthly Archives: July 2024

276 – Synchronicity, systems, facts and accidents…

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1300 words (14 minutes reading time) by Lancing Farrell

I have been doing some diverse reading recently, some of it inspired by world events. Serendipitously, it has led me to an insight that I thought I would share.

Why we’re Polarized

The first book is Ezra Klein’s international bestseller ‘Why we’re Polarized’. He says the book is an examination of the American political system and that it is unlike most books on American politics, which he says tend to focus on the individuals.

“Let me be clear from the beginning: This is not a book about people. This is a book about systems.”

Ezra Klein, ‘Why we’re Polarized’

Klein is an American and says two decades of reporting on American politics has shown that it has predictable cycles and patterns that repeat. He sets out to explain the failure of the political system, which he says occurs despite it being ‘full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face’. He describes it as a collection of functional parts that combine into a dysfunctional whole.

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275 – My council’s value for money statement

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680 words (7 minutes reading time) by Tim Whistler

Some of the posts on this site really test your patience. There can be just too much idealistic thinking.

Personally, the idea of a Value for Money Statement seems to me to be the latest invention of councils trying to find a new way to pretend they are doing something that they are not. The name says it all. If this is not an example of John Gall’s ‘operational fallacy’, I don’t know what is. Along with Financial Sustainability Strategies, it is a distraction from the serious work councils need to do to fundamentally change what they are doing.

Anyway, it started me thinking about my local council and what they could write about their way of providing me with value for money – assuming they were prepared to be honest. Here is my attempt to describe what I can discern about the principles behind how they actually think they provide value for money:

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274 – The Wigan Deal and Value for Money

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1500 words (17 minutes reading time) by Carole Parkinson

The Wigan Value for Money Statement

Lancing Farrell’s post on Wigan and the Deal 2030 explains how a council has successfully decided to make a radical change in the relationship with its community in response to austerity measures imposed by central government. By all accounts the Deal 2030 has been successful in reducing the resources needed for the council to deliver its services, in large part by reducing demand for those services by helping people to do things for themselves or to access services provided by the VCFSE (voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise) and private sectors.

It is 10 years since the Deal 2030 was launched. As with any big organisational change, it is hard to evaluate its success from the outside. To help us, there have been several reviews of the Deal 2030 since it was implemented, including the King’s Fund (2019), the Centre for Policy Impact (2019), and a Corporate Peer Challenge (2017). All have reported favourably on both the success in implementing actions in the Deal, and the impact of those actions on the Wigan community. Therefore, it was with some interest that I saw Wigan Council has recently released a Value for Money Statement.

Perhaps everything is not what it appears?

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273 – Can councils learn from the local football club?

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1300 words (14 minutes reading time) by Colin Weatherby

 Great Coach 2.0

Some time ago I wrote a post about council performance measurement being like a dashboard on a car. I used the image of a dashboard like the one on my 1962 Morris Mini to keep it very simple. I noted that the car dashboard had evolved over many years and been refined to be a distillation of information to the minimum required for a driver to be in control of their car. It didn’t tell the driver where they were going or if they were on track to get there. I was hoping it would be an example councils could follow. Lately, I have turned my attention to sport.

Australian rules football and statistics

It is football season in Australia, and I was reading about how footy clubs, professional and amateur, are using data and statistics to measure and improve their performance. It started me thinking. Every council in Australia must have a local footy club. Perhaps they can learn something from them?

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