Category Archives: decision making

294 – If the Vendor Won’t Bet on Savings, Why are you?

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700 words (3 minutes reading time) by Tim Whistler

‘The IT Wager’ by Tim Whistler (with the assistance of ChatGPT)

Carole Parkinson has put together a compelling and well researched post on how Councils can avoid gambling on IT investments – or at least how the risks in the bet can be understood.

I asked some experienced IT managers what they thought and they said the post was useful but didn’t go far enough.

I asked them why.

Why the IT bet feels safer than a service bet

The first point made was that the post should have explored why CEOs prefer to gamble on an IT bet than a service review and improvement bet. It was suggested that perhaps they didn’t understand how to make the service review and improvement bet. Or it was simply easier to bet on an IT product from a big vendor. It is a way for the CEO to outsource risk. They pass on the responsibility for organisational service improvement to a Big 4 consultancy and the software vendor.

One suggested that CEOs don’t have a choice because they are caught up in the race to digitise simply because their councils and communities expect them to do it. It is the new service standard. Non one wants to be left behind. Whilst this may be true, I have never seen a business case with a justification of ‘they are doing it, so we should too!’.

Why business cases mislead

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293 – IT investment: Dangerous Enthusiasm or Due Diligence? Use evidence to decide.

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2200 words (20 minutes reading time) by Carole Parkinson

Podcast option:

Credit: ChatGPT

In a nutshell…

This post explores the risks and pitfalls associated with large-scale IT investments in local government. It argues that councils often rely on technology and automation to fix financial deficits or service inefficiencies without first optimising their underlying processes. Drawing on expert theories, the post suggests that these ambitious projects frequently over-promise and under-deliver by ignoring the complexities of human-technical systems. To avoid failure, Parkinson recommends that leaders adopt a skeptical mindset, demand evidence-based service studies, and implement incremental project stages. Ultimately, Parkinson emphasizes that improving service design from a resident’s perspective is more effective than simply digitising outdated methods.

Introduction

“I voted for the IT project because the business case promised the budget would balance by year four. But no one told us what we’d do if the savings didn’t arrive. In the end, we automated our inefficient services instead of fixing them. It has now cost us more money than we have saved!

We should have demanded a service study to improve services first, limited the project scope, put a ‘kill-switch’ in place, and made sure the CEO had an effective early warning system in place for failure.”  

Councillor

The lesson?

Big IT doesn’t fix services; it just automates them. You can make governance improvements to reduce the odds of an expensive disappointment.

Why councils are betting on IT

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292 – Check–Plan–Do or Plan–Do–Hope?

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600 words (4 minutes reading time) by Tim Whistler

When reading local government plans, you could be forgiven for thinking that The Secret (2006) was a management manual: “ask, believe, and receive”. It is hard to see how some councils think they will make a difference from the way they plan.

To be fair, I agree that councils usually aren’t intentionally stupid or reckless. They’re juggling rate caps, grant uncertainty, ageing assets, and a community that wants more of everything. They are under pressure, and when it comes to their long-term plan, the temptation is to plug the spreadsheet gaps with “efficiency dividends” and “future asset sales” and hope it all works out.

But that doesn’t make it strategic. I call it Plan–Do–Hope.

Council plans

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281 – Reframing the reframing…

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800 words (8 minutes reading time) by Tim Whistler

Whilst Lancing Farrell has penned an interesting , and no doubt useful, piece on reframing, I think it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Councils are going to remain on a downward trajectory to crisis while they fail to make major changes in the way they think and act.

I have a much shorter list of changes that councils could make and should make. If they don’t, I fear that there will be massive financial failure and the sacking of councils and their CEOs, mainly because they are unable to make decisions where there are no winners, followed by the imposition of State control through the appointment of administrators and forced amalgamations.

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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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272 – What is the big deal about the Wigan Deal?

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1200 words (13 minutes reading time) by Lancing Farrell

In his post on the Victorian local government enquiry, Colin Weatherby mentioned the Wigan Deal as an example of how councils can avoid the politics of sacrifice – i.e. being forced to give up what you have today – and instead move to the politics of transition – i.e. finding better ways in the future. It seems like a no brainer to me and I am sure every elected representative would agree that this would be better politics. Unfortunately, they are not necessarily getting to make the decision – or, if they are, they are being given limited options by their bureaucracy about the decision they can make.

Strategic versus operational decisions

As an aside, this has been a point of contention in Victoria where the Local Government Act restricts councillors to making ‘strategic decisions’, while the CEO and staff make ‘operational decisions’. The definition of each type of decision seems to be quite flexible. For anyone wanting to see how this plays out, watch the Mornington peninsula Shire Council meeting on the 28 May 2024 at the 4 hour and 25 minute mark. Fascinating.

In contrast, the Wigan Deal was created and implemented with the commitment and direction of both elected representatives and the organisational leaders.

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267 – Professor Joseph Drew – Analysis of Financial Results

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880 words (10 minutes reading time) by Lancing Farrell

The mean and median of the data set for all NSW councils

Professor Joseph Drew has posted another enlightening video on his YouTube channel. His analysis of 15 years of council data in NSW shows worrying increases in expenditure on staff, materials and depreciation. In fact, ‘worrying’ is an understatement. The situation is becoming catastrophic. Yet, no one seems overly worried in the Premier State.

Professor Drew has committed to producing the same data for Victoria. Maybe there will be more of a response from the Garden State. As every gardener knows, you have to observe what is happening and make timely interventions for a garden to succeed.

One of the challenges Professor Drew’s video has highlighted for me is the relatively low level of executive financial literacy and knowledge of statistics and data. This might explain the lack of response to the data from local government. Professor Drew goes to great lengths to explain the importance of measures of central tendency and the difference between the available measures. In particular, he is looking at the mean and standard deviations of the data set, and the median .

Are you digging out an old text book or searching on Google yet?

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256 – Navigating the Reductionist Loop in OECD Decision-Making

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580 words (7 minutes reading time) by Lancing Farrell

In a thought-provoking post titled ‘OECD Solutions,’ Colin Weatherby examined decision-making by those suffering from OECD, shedding light on the prevalence of single-loop learning over its more nuanced counterpart, double-loop learning. The implications of this choice, as Weatherby suggests, go beyond the surface, hinting at a deliberate oversight of systemic causes.

Image source

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254 – Hacking your bureaucracy

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850 words (9 minutes reading time) by Colin Weatherby

As regular readers will know, we are partial to a good book that throws some light on the issues facing local government. The idea that knowledge of theory should underpin practice, or that learning how others have solved the problems you face can provide useful insights, is, unfortunately, not always valued as much as it should be

My latest read is an interesting book.  ‘Hack Your Bureaucracy – Get Things Done No Matter What your Role on any Team’ is presented as a ‘how to manual’ of tips and tricks to work within bureaucracy to, unsurprisingly, ‘get things done’.

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249 – OECD solutions.

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870 words (10 minutes reading time) by Colin Weatherby

I was talking to a former colleague recently and she described the decision making by her new CEO as ‘OECD’.  I asked her what she meant. She said that when faced with any decision, the CEO would look for solutions that are:

O = obvious (i.e. he won’t have to explain the decision because it will be obvious to everyone).

E = easy (i.e. easy to act on the decision and within his capability to implement it).

C = cheap (i.e. it won’t cost any more money to act on the decision or it will immediately cost less).

D = done (i.e. when action has been taken, the result will be obvious to everyone).

I asked her how this was working out for her.

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