Tag Archives: news

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emphasizes that improving service design from a resident’s perspective is more effective than simply digitising outdated methods.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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283 – Celebrating 10 years

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Lancing Farrell

117 – ‘Captain Council’. A local government superhero, posted on June 15, 2015

Local Government Utopia is 10 years old.

Yes! Our birthday was in January this year. We have been too busy writing to reflect on what 10 years of commentary on local government might contain. I have looked at the very first post and what we set out to do. I think we have been true to our aim.

See what you think…

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282 – An elegy for local government

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350 words (3 minutes reading time) by Colin Weatherby

Professor Joseph Drew has produced his annual analysis of local government expenditure in NSW. He has also looked at the reasons for the latest large rate increases being sought by councils. Professor Drew gives his usual clear and calm description of the findings.

I think his videos have become an elegy for local government.

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280 – Reframing the challenge to councils

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2000 words (20 minutes reading time) by Lancing Farrell

Introduction

Is the challenge that councils face insufficient revenue to cover costs? Or is it that they are providing services outside their remit? Or is it waste and inefficiency in their operations? Is it all of the above? And, if it is, where do you start to address it?

When you look at the different things councils are doing to respond to the rate cap – arguing for its removal or modification to enable higher rate increases, cutting services and service levels, shaving 10% off every budget to force savings, or implementing an ‘efficiency dividend’ through successive budgets – you could be forgiven for wondering if councils are trying to solve the same problem.

Having a common view of the problem to be solved is a start to genuine and effective action across the sector.

I have been thinking about a simple re-framing of the problem councils need to solve in a rate capped environment.

So, what is the problem?

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279 – ‘Guerilla volunteering’ – a response to risk aversion and red tape?

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1200 words (12 minutes reading) by Colin Weatherby

A recent article in the Melbourne Age by Alan Attwood, entitled ‘Red tape’s strangling volunteering – creating more casualties than you’d think’, is timely in drawing attention to a growing problem in Victorian local government. Risk aversion and red tape are making it difficult for people to volunteer in their own community or even get a job at their council. This focus on playing safe seems to be counterproductive.

As Sidney Dekker and Georgina Poole point out succinctly in ‘Random Noise – Measuring Your Company’s Safety Performance‘, most organisations don’t exist simply to be safe; they exist to provide a product or service. It is unfortunate that many councils seem to be starting to think otherwise. Dekker uses the term ‘safety theatre’ to describe the superficial and often misleading efforts that organisations put into safety. I can’t help thinking that some of the risk management red tape making volunteering more difficult fits that description.

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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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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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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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