Delivering better services and a better relationship with citizens: challenges for the next decade

Geoff Mulgan, Hong KongNovember 2010

Give them enough food and arms and the people will have trust in you. If you have to give any up,

give up the food and arms ... when there is no trust the common people will have

nothing to stand on

Confucius

A century of public services – as the key to trust

In the West, over 30 years of reform to improve efficiency – responses to the fiscal and trust crises of the 1970s

Privatisation, deregulation, marketisation, agencies, new public management, performance management, targets , service guarantees, incentives....

The delivery model, partly drawn from manufacturing: linear; precise specification; economies of scale and scope and flow ....

What happened?

Trust crises were contained but not solved.

The public remained sceptical; efficient governments weren’t necessarily loved.

So what can be done?

The relational state

– addressing the quality of the relationship with citizens directly , with engagement, feedback, co-design, co-

production and continuous improvement and innovation

1.

•Automation where possible ....

Tax, licensing, fines, applications, self-diagnosis and management,

border controls, utilities, policing...

2.

•But one to one relationships where necessary ...

Personal advisers, teachers and coaches

with higher skills and more time in more

personalised services

3.

•Transparency – information outside as the default

Public contracts, milestones, deliverables all on the web – to improve performance, reduce waste and corruption

4.

•Public service as platform rather than deliverer

Sundhed in Denmark – promoting self-management in health and saving

money

The School of Everything – a platform linking teachers and learners but with no involvement of schools and colleges

Spice – a platform enabling people to exchange time

5. • Collaborative public

service – open to society and business

Mobilising the community to help with care

Social Entrepreneur in Residence (SEiR) accelerating design and

spread of better ways to cut obesity, smoking

http://www.sicamp.org/

"Government 2.0 … represents a fundamental shift… toward an open, collaborative, cooperative arrangement ….“

Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce

http://groups.google.com.au/group/gov20canberra

6. • Ultra local (as well as

global)

Neighbourhood websites becoming key tools for organising public services, engagement, self help

Smart travel schools projects and others promoting walking, local activity

7. • Government that’s

skilled at relationships

Google’s personnel and incentives policy

Patient Opinion : feedback to hospitals, doctors and nurses

Website that tells people what happened; what others are saying, positive as well

as negative feedback

8. • Embedded

innovation

1 Prompts

2 Proposals

3 Prototypes

4 Sustaining5 Scaling

6 Systemic change

Innovation made natural and normal –

extending R&D from science and technology to services, processes

and governance

A new generation of innovation funds – focused on services, improving relationships as well as delivery

Stimulating Innovation

Prototyping

Challenge prizes

Small business research

Removing barriers to innovation

Payment by outcome

Health impact partnerships

Adapt and Adopt

Investing in Innovation

Staged grants and investments using loans, equity, quasi-equity

Dragon’s Lair models

£220m Health Innovation Funds in the UK

September 2010:

70 billion Euro to be invested in social, public and technological innovation – ageing, carbon reduction, youth

9. • Employees and the

public as participants not bystanders

NATO’s Policy Jam

3,800 people with expertise or interest in trans-Atlantic security issues from 124 countries logged in over five days for thematic conversations led by senior officials and scholars in Europe, Russia, China and the United States.

Produced recommendations that call for NATO to develop a civilian arm and the European Union to create its own intelligence agency.

4,000 participants

10,000 logins124 countries

5 days10 streams

26 online hosts75 facilitators

“We have grown used to the centre taking more and more of the decisions, despite the fact that in almost all cases the knowledge,

expertise and experience required to inform those decisions are at the

edge.”

Beth Noveck, author of Wiki Government and Deputy CTO, Open

and Transparent Government, The White House

10.

• More rigorous assessment of what works and use of knowledge for smart targeting

11. • New measures of

success

What gets measured:...

• Patient satisfaction as well as health outcomes

• Fear of crime as well as crime

• Wellbeing as well as GDP

•Social wealth as well as economic wealth

Proportion of Americans with no-one to talk to about important things

200425%

198510%

12. • Able to act fast and

slow to sustain a strong relationship

Speed in crisis to preserve public confidence

Speed of testing, piloting – to accelerate learning

Slow and steady at cultural change, systems change

Always explaining why as well as what

The relational state – addresses the quality of the

relationship with citizens directly, and manages relationships

alongside delivery, strategic goals and performance

Where next - adding the relational dimension -

Feedback rich services with co-design and co-production

To get there – conscious innovation and experiment

Ethos of collaboration with the public – service with as well as service to

Thank you!