Paul – we already outsource some policy development. This is where we get consultants to undertake reviews/develop strategies etc. You will find enormous numbers of KPMG, PwC etc projects on the lists of consultancies prepared by Departments. In fact, those firms are now a key interchange place for executive public servants.

Of course we retain control over the process (after all we may be unelected but we do report to the elected Minister). We also often happen to be the experts not only in some of the content but also in what will work in the existing system.

Furthermore any reading of history (from colonial or even Roman times) shows the continual remaking of the public service (the 90s were a particularly vivid example).

That all said, I would be rather interested in some actual examples of this new paradigm at work.

Your analysis is all pretty black and white. Life isn’t like it is in the models – it really isn’t. Of the things you’ve written, I guess I agree most with the stuff about risk aversion. As for the inevitability of fiefdoms, well it’s a tendency I admit, but often bureaucrats don’t want fiefdoms. Many are genuinely not into empire building. They are broadly speaking trying to a good job – but certainly that’s as confined by ideas of due and proper processes being followed. Often doing a good job involves solving problems that are served up to them. Thus the endless expansion of regulation – as the problems mount up from the media the pollies etc.

If we redefine the way problems are served up – or encourage those more thoughtful bureaucrats to respond to the problems that are served up in a way that is more open and facilitative rather than prescriptive – we might make a bit of progress.

You’ll note in Tom’s comment that he’s suggesting something pretty incremental – not the development of a new breed of human.

The only way to have flexibility in terms of policy space would be to have unattached civil servants who are not interested in running fiefdoms and are quite happy to see their niche disappear when the societal need for their particular service disappears. Thats what real flexibility means: being without a departmental home and without any task you have some implicit territorial feeling about. That comes at a cost though: if you do away with the loyalty to the local fiefdom, you do away with the benefits of that loyalty, such as team spirit, institutional memory, long-term specific investments, and a sense of accountability to the beneficiaries of ones actions. It would then all be about appearances. What Tom in my interpretation seems to want to see is a new kind of human. Someone who feels no unhelpful loyalties to the department he or she happens to be in, but is nevertheless fully committed to the public cause and thus willing to take risks, be innovative, and change jobs all the time. Are we thinking about genetically engineering a new human to be like this, or do we think that people nowadays are better able than before to quickly shift local loyalties when ‘super’ loyalties dictate this? If not then how are we going to mould such a new human?

As to risk, the usual political science story seems to apply: political masters will take credit for what you as a civil servant do well and blame you if things go wrong, creating the incentives for you to be extremely risk averse. That basic asymmetric incentive structure cant be broken without taking politics out of it and giving property rights over an aspect of the bureaucracy to something else. That’s undemocratic though so getting rid of risk aversion is another no-goer without major upheavals. Innovation is not something a bureaucracy would necessarily oppose, but when innovation is inherently risky it of course does become opposed for the reason cited above.

Hence I find myself in the camp of the sceptics. I have trouble seeing how risk, flexibility, and innovation can be brought into the civil service without radical new governance models. The usual suggestion of the economists to these standard issues still applies though: outsource as much as possible because you can change the people you outsource to relatively quickly and its easier for the outside organisation to take risks and innovate since they can charge for the improvement in productivity. Youll never get that kind of flexibility within a bureaucracy because of imperfect property rights. And if the outsourcing itself runs into flexibility problems like Angharad suggests, then you may want to think about outsourcing the whole thing a level up by outsourcing the whole area of policy rather than a specific project. Rent a transport department for 20 years rather than just a transport firm for one particular bridge. Now, theres an idea.

The current status quo is super-departments and large bureaucracies are not noted for their flexibility. The key will be resolving the tension between central control (/ responsibility?) and allowing agency flexibility.

We will see.

However, as I read this thoughtful article I reflected on a couple of things that happened to me in the last couple of weeks. Both of them show to me that the people within government, and probably the culture within which they work, are ill-prepared to support innovation and collaboration in the future Tom describes.

I went to a (nameless) State government department pre-tender briefing for a largish community service project. The tender process they proposed was an Expression of Interest, 3 agencies short-listed, all to go away and prepared a detailed response to brief including the amount of capital they would bring to the project. The department would pick the proposal they liked best, or even meld two of the proposals and then put the proposal out to open tender. They genuinely could see no reason why we wouldn’t give our IP away for free. This is a environment where most community services now go out to competitive tender and the sector has been warned against collusion.

Keating brought competition into our sector and I’ve seen it be the enemy of collaboration. I’ve also seen government bureaucrats in social services unable to come to grips with governance in the not-for-profit sector. And that’s often because they have no experience of what good governance is. I agree with Jonno – I’m not sure the skills are there and, even though the macro policy is there, it’s not supported at the interface.

I must confess that I remain rather cynical about the chances of success in much of this (a healthy cynicism being an essential tool of a public servant). The changes appear to rely on flexibility, risk and innovation, not something bureaucracy is known for.

What will be the drivers to implement this? It looks hard and risky. Are there some successful models where this has been done?