It’s been a few weeks since the Government published its Spending Round 2013, which draws heavily on ideals that are close to our hearts here at Alliantist – innovative, low cost services that enable change, help to cut duplication and encourage local authorities to work more effectively together. We couldn’t have put it any better ourselves.
And in a few weeks’ time, Parliament returns from recess and the business of delivering towards the Spending Round commitments will start. Here’s one we’ll be paying close attention to, which we believe summarises the Spending Review:
- One of the best ways to maintain the quality of service while reducing the cost to the taxpayer is for the Government to encourage and help public service in a local area to work more closely together to cut out duplication and invest in reducing demand for costly services.
Innovation funds, pooled budgets worth billions and service transformation – just three buzz phases mentioned in the Spending Round 2013. Overlay those with changes already happening in the police, probation and the fire services and you begin to realise that behind the Spending Round rhetoric is a plan to open-up a previously closed public sector to a wider marketplace and to transformative ways of working. These form part of what I’d call the rational perspective for change.
As a small to medium-size enterprise that is eager to help innovate and transform public services, this is music to our ears. If central government is showing this kind of leadership, then we can only hope local authorities and agencies of all kinds across England and Wales will take note and follow their lead. Our own experience shows that innovation is happening. Many existing probation trusts, police forces and criminal justice agencies are showing an appetite to be the pioneers in their sector. We’re proud to be supporting them through pam, our platform for achieving more.
But pick up a copy of the Daily Mail or The Times over the last few weeks and seldom has a day gone by when there hasn’t been a report of public service failure, neglect or incompetence. Take the historical cases of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, Fiona Pilkington, Baby P. Compare those to more recent examples of spectacular failures that led to the death of Daniel Pelka, the appalling abuses at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust and operation Yewtree – the investigation into abuse by Jimmy Savile and his associates. These are the emotional reasons that should drive change.
I discussed these drivers (http://youtu.be/ZGrJwm8x31o, http://youtu.be/vGNlbNEG5DQ) for change at a presentation I recently gave at a G-Cloud event hosted by SCC, the first pan-government secure cloud hosting provider for IL3 data. We need our public service providers to think differently and to work collectively to prevent the failures and abuses of the past happening again in the future. But what the historic and recent examples show, is that we have been slow to make progress, which continues to have fatal consequences.
Our platform for achieving more – pam – is but part of the solution. Used effectively, it will help authorities and their partners to save lives and to cut cost. It is an example where the private sector can play a role in delivering more efficient and more effective public services. And it does so not by fettering the trust the public place in its service providers. But instead by helping public service providers to change their culture, to share information and to collaborate together, for the benefit of the communities and public they serve.
Trust is going to be an essential part of the delivery environment in order to keep it lean and delivering on its promises, with trust needing to move beyond personal relationships into the whole system. We have earned our trust and the platform we have built enables that to be harnessed for much wider use elsewhere. In the period leading to the 2015 general election questions will continue to be asked about the validity of the private and voluntary sector delivering public services. I hope pam and the team at Alliantist will continue to be held in high esteem, as good practitioners, innovators and pioneers who can be trusted to help organisations to work differently, to prevent the failures of the past and to transform and deliver cost effective solutions for the future.