Tag Archives: public value

31 – Measures, targets, KPI’s, KRA’s and CSF’s. What are we talking about?

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Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                                              740 words

There is a lot of talk in the public sector about measurement. Some people say that you ‘can’t manage what you can’t measure’ or, ‘what gets measured, gets done’. There is no doubt that measurement is inextricably linked to the pursuit of better performance and greater accountability. In local government, we seem to be desperately looking for things we can measure that will tell us how well we are doing. But are we measuring the things that count? Continue reading →

15 – Interested in local government management? Four books you should read and why. Part 1

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I like to read. I know that not everyone else does and when you know someone who reads and likes to talk about it that it can be a bit painful. Nonetheless, I am going to do it again. This post is about the books that I discovered and found interesting in 2014 – books that should influence management in local government. I think they contain relevant and useful ideas to improve what we do. Ideas from all of them feature in posts.

1. Recognising Public Value by Mark H. Moore. Published in 2013, this book expands on the thinking in his earlier book Creating Public Value (published in 1995) in which he described the aim of managerial work in the public sector as ‘creating public value for the community’. This is the equivalent of managers in the private sector creating private value for shareholders.   He says “… it is not enough to say that public managers create results that are valued; they must be able to show that results obtained are worth the cost of private consumption and unrestrained liberty forgone in producing the desirable results. Only then can we be sure that some public value has been created.”

In his latest book, he takes this idea further to show how public value can be recognised and measured. The central idea is that the public sector can create an equivalent to the ‘bottom line’ available to the private sector. To achieve this, Moore has developed the ‘public value scorecard’, based on the idea of the balanced scorecard, containing a ‘public value account’ (a clear, explicit and measurable statement of the public value they have created and the costs involved in creating that value); measures of the organisations standing with the stakeholders providing social legitimacy and authority; and measures of the organisation’s ability to deliver the outputs required to achieve the desired public value.

In developing his case for the public value scorecard, Moore covers a wide range of issues, including discussion about private and public value; arbiters of value; costs of using public authority; sources of accountability for the public sector (very interesting reading); the public value chain; and the importance of performance measurement. Both of Moore’s books use case studies to illustrate his ideas, which makes the practical application of his thinking easier to understand. This book should really be compulsory reading for anyone in a leadership role in the public sector because it provides a practical, high-level framework for thinking about why a public organisation exists, what it intends to achieve, and how that can be measured.

2.  The Whithall Effect by John Seddon. Published in 2014, this book consolidates much of John Seddon’s writing about the public sector. If you have read his earlier book Systems Thinking in the Public Sector (published in 2008) you will be familiar with many of the ideas. There are five sections in the book. The first covers the ‘industrialisation’ of services and the many misconceptions that Seddon believes are evident in current service design and improvement, especially those borrowed from manufacturing. The second covers his approach, including his ‘Vanguard Method’ used to understand the current situation before improvements are made. The third section is a critique of government ‘reforms’ of public services that have not produced the results expected. The fourth section addresses current ‘ideology, fashions and fads’ in public services. The last section has his recommendations for change in Whitehall to improve public services in the UK. Overall, the book covers a lot of material, much of it supported by case studies.

Seddon is highly opinionated and critical of failings in government policy and action. This doesn’t detract from the fundamental messages in this book; services need to be understood as a system and there are (more) effective ways of doing this; interventions in service systems should be planned and use knowledge of customers, demands and work flow to inform them; measures must be relevant to the customer and used by the people delivering the service.

In a very practical way, Seddon provides tools for taking Moore’s ideas about public value into action. Seddon is much more focussed on private (customer) value, or the customer-defined purpose, and would no doubt argue that fulfilling purpose is a form of public value. In a way, I think ‘public value’ is just ‘purpose’ writ large. This book should also be compulsory reading for all leaders in the public sector. The ones who read, anyway. Firstly as a tale of what happens when changes to services are predicated on political, and not customer or public needs; secondly to provide a way to understand services as a system; and lastly to reinforce the importance of effective measurement of performance.

More books in Part 2.

Lancing Farrell

7 – ‘Why this obsession with cutting public service jobs?’ The Age, 2 January 2015

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I have often wondered this myself. It seems to be part of our culture to get stuck into public servants every now and then. The author says that cutting public service budgets it is politically attractive because ‘everyone hates public service workers and cutting their budgets seems to help balance the budget by removing public sector waste’.

However, in doing so, they are achieving a false economy according to the report cited from the Centre for Policy Development (CPD), False Economies: Unpacking public sector efficiency.

‘Every Australian needs to understand what politicians are talking about when they speak of the ‘efficiency’ of government. Why should we care? Because this is our money, being spent on us and the things that matter to us.’

This report completes a body of work on productivity and efficiency completed by the CPD Public Service Research Director, Chris Stone. Some of his key messages are;

  • A sound understanding of efficiency is needed in public debates on what services to fund, and whether their delivery should be outsourced or not, in order to ensure we are getting public value for public money.
  • There are significant difficulties involved in comparing the Australian public sector performance with the private sector, but the evidence available indicates that the two sectors have a similar level of efficiency.
  • Although Australia’s public sector is comparatively efficient, there is scope for improvement.
  • The government is identifying the public services that will be affected by cuts, but does not appear to be guided by any underlying rationale of what services government should be providing.
  • The heavy focus on cuts without sufficient consideration of the value of services means that other strategies for increasing efficiency are neglected, in particular innovation and professional accountability.
  • Two significant barriers to public sector innovation are an overly risk averse orientation within organisations, and a lack of resources invested in developing and implementing innovative ideas.
  • The current method for managing performance does not provide clear guidance to public servants on how they can work toward their organisation’s goals.

It is a report of more than 70 pages and should be read by every public service manager. The discussion in Chapter 1 about different types of efficiency is enlightening.

The connection between value, public value in particular, and reducing resources to achieve greater ‘efficiency’ is important. When there is a lack of clarity about what is meant to be achieved it is difficult to measure performance and easy to cut resources with a clear conscience. The consequences are only immediately evident to an informed few and may become evident to everyone in the long term. Defining the public value to be created is an essential activity. Then the arguments about efficiency can be held in the knowledge of what impact on value will result from changes to resources.

Colin Weatherby

Stone, Christopher 2014. False Economies: Unpacking public sector efficiency (http://cpd.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/CPD-OP37_False-economies_-compiled_EMBARGO26June.pdf)

6 – Customer, client, citizen, resident or ratepayer. Who are we dealing with?

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In previous posts I have talked frequently about the customer. It is fundamental to the way I think about my work. At this point, it is probably important to explain what I mean when I use the term ‘customer’. In simple terms, a customer is someone requesting and receiving a service. Typically, this occurs in a ‘transactional’ setting where the customer pays for the service when they receive it. This happens in local government for some services, for example entry to an aquatic facility. When the payment has been made at an earlier time through taxes, and the service is free at the point of consumption, the relationship changes. In these circumstances, it is not uncommon for people receiving services to be called clients. Sometimes they are referred to as end-users or service consumers.

In local government, these people can also be citizens of the municipality. They may be franchised to vote (if they are over 18 years of age) and then they are constituents of the councillors who represent them. They may be resident in the municipality and receive property services paid for by the ratepayer. They may also be the ratepayer. As you are probably starting to see, an individual can be a fee paying customer, and a client, and a resident, and a constituent, and a ratepayer, and a citizen. Or they could be only one of them. This might be starting to seem like an esoteric discussion. After all, why does it matter who we are dealing with?

I think it is essential to understand the capacity in which you are dealing with a person. Depending on what the person wants, they may have different rights and responsibilities. They may be after different forms of value. If you believe that the purpose of local government is to create and provide value, then understanding the type of value being sought is integral to success. Mark Moore describes ‘degrees of publicness’ regarding value, which change from essentially private value sought by individuals, perhaps as a customer or client, through to public value sought collectively by ratepayers or citizens. I have reproduced a version of his diagram below.

Moore degrees of publicness

A key point is who the arbiter of value is. This is also picked up by John Seddon in his writing. He doesn’t refer to value directly and uses ‘purpose’ instead. It is the same concept. People have an expectation of what will happen when they receive a service. There is a need to be met. In Seddon’s view, it is essential that the service deliverer is not the arbiter of value. Everything must be described and managed from the customer’s point of view. Councils deciding that they know what is best and what constitutes value for their community or customer unfortunately happens too often.

When dealing with someone on an issue, I always try to work out what capacity they think they are dealing with me and the value they expect. Then I work on helping them to understand some of the other points of view about the service they are after. Mostly, people get it. They understand that what they want is sometimes in conflict with broader community needs or expectations. Often, they are prepared to modify their request accordingly.

Lancing Farrell

Moore, Mark 2013. Recognising Public Value.

2 – Why do we provide the services that we do in local government?

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For some practitioners this is a question that is unasked and, therefore, unanswered. For me, the answer is critical in developing my practice and managing for high performance. This is my attempt to provide an answer applicable to any local government.

To begin with, we have legislative guidance. Former local government CEO Catherine Dale, in her thesis for her Doctor of Philosophy, says the functions of a Victorian local government include advocating; planning for and providing services and facilities; providing and maintaining community infrastructure; undertaking strategic land use planning; raising revenue; and making and enforcing local laws. These functions are mostly very broad and open for each municipality to implement according to their community’s needs and preferences. It is a starting point for understanding why services are provided.

Specifically in relation to public services, Mark Moore argues that governments provide public services to create public value. He defines public value as the collective view of the public or community about what they regard as valuable, especially with regard to the use of public money and authority. He says that public managers (i.e. elected representatives and bureaucrats) need to try and understand what constitutes public value for their community so that they can set out to deliver it through their operations and be held accountable for their performance. Moore sets out four key requirements of public managers in creating public value. They must:

  1. Articulate a clear, complete and compelling idea of the public value to be produced.
  2. Develop a set of measures to record performance in producing that value.
  3. Invite and embrace external accountability for defining and creating value.
  4. Create management systems that distribute internal accountability for value creation across managers and employees so that they feel motivated to perform in the short-term and to innovate and learn over the long-term.

A process is required to determine what constitutes public value for each community that includes ways to check in periodically to stay in touch and be responsive to changes in needs and expectations. This could be one of the key objectives of community engagement programs. Too often, community engagement seems to occur so that the council is seen to be doing it, or to consult over a single project or plan. A serious focus on public value would help determine the operational capability required to deliver valued services and to design those services to meet expectations.

In contrast to Moore, John Seddon is less directly focussed on the concept of public value or value in general, and says that ‘purpose’ should be the main focus of services. He argues that it is in the interests of all taxpayers when services are delivered in the most efficient way to meet needs.  Accordingly, Seddon says that understanding the customer or citizen purpose in interacting with the organisation is the key to ensuring that services meet customer needs and expectations. In this model, the services offered and the way they are delivered would be determined by the service consumer and their private value expectation. Seddon places significant emphasis on the worker delivering services and their role in responding to customer–introduced variability and tailoring service delivery.

I think local government is expected to deliver whatever services are required for the community to be safe, healthy and fulfil its potential. This is expressed in many different ways. One council says that its mission or purpose is simply to make the municipality ‘a better place’. Obviously there is an inherent community expectation of value. People are paying taxes and giving authority to the council. They want something in return. As Moore explains, understanding what they want and how it constitutes public value is essential to high performance and success. It should determine the policy settings for services. At the point of a customer receiving a service, understanding their purpose in seeking the service becomes paramount if they are to be satisfied. As Seddon points out very effectively, failure to fulfil purpose leads to ‘failure demand’ and inefficiency.

In a nutshell, the services offered by each local government need to fit within legislated requirements, be responsive to the broader community needs and expectations, and meet the individual purpose for each person receiving a service.

Lancing Farrell

Dale, Catherine 2008. The Role of Local Government for a Contemporary Victorian Community.

Moore, Mark 2013. Recognising Public Value.

Seddon, John 2008. Systems Thinking in the Public Sector.