8 March 2004

Re-Wiring Decision Making for Local Government, Not Local Administration

By Dr Perri 6

Councils in England have the chance for the first time in a generation to become local governments, not just local administrations. If ready to rise to the challenge, they can become strategic decision makers about the big issues facing their areas, and not simply purchasers of services specified by Whitehall. The new power to promote community well-being, the 'flexibilities' on offer in the Local Public Service Agreement system, their role in Local Strategic Partnerships and the new emphasis on local leadership all mark real opportunities.

Exercising the role of community strategy maker will require new capabilities for local authorities. In particular, it will mean new ways of working for elected members and chief officers; especially for those with executive responsibilities. And there is a lot to learn from elsewhere: the choices available; what to experiment with; and what to avoid.

In the USA, some systems in use in the private sector are now being used by local authorities. Despite the different legal basis of local governments' powers, there is much to be learned from their experiences. Of course, UK local authorities have yet to experiment with new techniques and technologies of decision making to the same degree. But at least they can learn from the mistakes of others.

In the next few years, councils are likely to face pressure to invest in their decision making capabilities. One danger comes with buying systems that, however fashionable, do not fit the political and organisational culture of particular local authorities. To be sure, there are certain kinds of information - financial, socio-demographic, economic, geographical, performance related - of which every council will need to make some use. But not every council can or should make use of that data in the same way.

We must avoid systems that bombard councillors and chief officers with more information in the misguided belief that this equates with better informed decisions. The scarcest resource in the public sector is the attention of senior decision makers. Their challenge is to work out what information to ignore, not how to find time to read more. Systems to support decision making must enable them to make intelligent choices about what information to reject.

Every group of elected members and chief officers needs to ask itself three critical questions

The next biggest challenge is to design systems that cut with the grain of the political culture. Putting in a system that will only work if everyone involved in decision making is prepared to share everything they know is not realistic in many councils. Every group of elected members and chief officers needs to ask itself three critical questions: 'Who trusts whom with what information?'; 'Who wants to keep what information private from their peers?'; and 'Who regards what types of information as most and least relevant for each of the main types of decision they have to make?'.

The organisational and political culture of councils differs greatly according to the degree to which responsibility is individualised or grounded in teams. In the US, Mayor O'Malley of Baltimore, uses the CitiStat programme to make both performance management and also strategic decisions in relation to services. His is an authority in which responsibility is individualised at every level, with the sole exception of the CitiStat team. In the 'Star Chamber' room, which O'Malley had set up for the use of geographical information systems (GIS), satellite photography relay, and access to other software to support his adversarial style of decision making, every map of the city put on the screen displays the faces and names of the area managers for the services under discussion, and some summary performance information.

Contrast all of this with the system operating in Fairfax County, Virginia. Here, teams take collective responsibility, there is no star chamber, and GIS is used in much more collaborative ways. Moreover, the county government uses a group decision support centre that would be difficult to fit within the culture of Baltimore.

Members and chief officers need to be candid about the kind of political and organisational culture they have, and get information systems designed to support that. No amount of 'change management' can be relied upon to make people trust each other with information when they have good reason not to; or to place more weight on a particular type of information than they believe is necessary. In rewiring local decision making, it is important to start from where we really are.

If councils are genuinely to be local governments, supporting their capacity to make policy intelligently is at least as important as supporting the quality of service provision. For once, this agenda is not a matter of meeting targets, such as those for electronic service delivery. It is about the most important thing that politicians and chief officers can do - exercise political judgment.

Dr Perri 6 is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Public Policy at the University of Birmingham. Rewiring local decision making for political judgment is available from the New Local Government Network at network@nlgn.org.uk or 020 7357 0152.

www.nlgn.org.uk