"Strategy - Policy" what is that? Only something from consultants.......

[John Short]

In a report published today, Tuesday 24 April 2012, the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) calls on the Government to publish an annual 'Statement of National Strategy' in Parliament, to underpin the annual spending round and the run-up to the budget.  PASC concludes that a clearer expression of the nation's strategic aims is vital to ensure that short-term decisions are made in the context of the long term national interests.
 
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-administration-select-committee/news/strategy-report1/
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpubadm/1625/162502.htm
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpubadm/1625/1625.pdf

Report: Strategic thinking in Government: without National Strategy, can viable Government strategy emerge?
 Inquiry: Strategic thinking in Government
 Public Administration Select Committee
 
In the light of recent concerns about a strategic vacuum at the centre of Government, this Report explores the capacity of Ministers and officials to carry out long-term strategic thinking to tackle the complex, diverse and unpredictable domestic and global challenges the country faces.

The Report
 
The Report sets out the Committee's concern that Government policies are not informed by a clear, coherent strategic approach, and that poor strategic thinking also undermines clarity of presentation to the public. PASC also found that an absence of clear and precise definition of terms meant that policy and different levels of strategy became muddled, leading to unintended and unwelcome outcomes. Drawing on the evidence it received, the Report sets out clear definitions for national or 'grand' strategy, operational strategy and policy.
 
PASC have produced a number of recommendations to overcome the barriers to working strategically in Government. The Report states that the Cabinet and its committees are accountable for decisions, but there remains a critical unfulfilled role at the centre of Government in coordinating and reconciling priorities across departments, and of long-term and short-term goals.

The report concludes that the government’s six strategic aims as provided to PASC are "too meaningless to serve any useful purpose".  The strategic aims of the Government, informed by public opinion, should reflect the UK's national character, assets, capabilities, interests and values, and provide an indication of the objectives which policies must achieve. 

Recommendations
 
The Committee recommends that the Government should publish an annual 'Statement of National Strategy' in Parliament which reflects the interests of all parts of the UK and the devolved policy agendas. This would be a snapshot of how National Strategy has developed providing an opportunity for reassessment and debate about how tax and spending decisions should support the Government’s national strategic aims. 

If published in late spring or early summer, it could mark the start of each new spending round and budget process. The Budget process should provide clearer links between long-term objectives and specific budgetary measures. The report also highlights the importance of a public discussion about how public spending is divided between entitlement and investment priorities.
 
PASC also recommend a focus on working strategically across departmental silos, driven by a stronger centre of Government, would provide the Government with the capacity to deal with current issues, as well as strengthening resilience and the ability to respond to the unexpected.
 
The challenge of National Strategy is to ensure that the Government's aims and policies reflect the values and aspirations of the public as well as addressing the long term interests of the nation. The Government must also have the imagination to be prepared for what cannot be foreseen.

In support of Ministerial commitments to open up Government, the Committee also recommends that Whitehall should be more open to the ideas and policies of expert stakeholders such as academics, civil society groups and think-tanks. 

Comment from the Chair
 
Bernard Jenkin MP, Chair of the Committee, said:


"There is no doubt that today's Government is presented with very severe economic and political challenges. This makes coherent National Strategy all the more vital in order that there is clear process by which policy, and the tax and spending decisions that underpin it, should be aligned with the nation's long-term interests, public values and identity. The Government presented us with six strategic aims, such as "a free and democratic society", but these are so general as to be meaningless, and we have invited the Government to formulate aims which indicate more clearly what policies its departments should pursue as a consequence.
 

In the UK, too often the annual Budget appears to determine strategic priorities but this does not necessarily lead to coherent national strategy: this is the wrong way around. Tax and spending decisions should be the consequence of a more visible National Strategy, aligning spending and tax decisions with the national strategic aims of Government.


Public opinion and strategy can work together in either a vicious or virtuous cycle; success can reinforce public values and aspirations but the wrong aims or "muddling through" undermines them. National Strategy must be informed by a coherent assessment of the public's values and aspirations. This is not about abdicating policy making to opinion polls, but National Strategy must appreciate what sort of country the public aspires for the UK to be.
 

The complex, diverse and unpredictable domestic and global challenges facing the UK mean that strategic thinking is both increasingly difficult to sustain, and yet it is more vital to do so. Failing to do so in the long term undermines national self-confidence and in the short term could have catastrophic consequences."

[petagny]

Maybe the Government and Cabinet Office would benefit from reading the PFM Board's 'Fireside Chat' with Gord Evans!

The defence 'strategy' is a clear example of what the report is going on about. Developing a strategy begins with a realistic analysis of the existing context/environment and long term trends. There is no evidence that this has been the starting point for the formulation of UK policy. Making policy on the basis of 'keeping up with the Joneses' - the French have an aircraft carrier and sea-launched ballistic nuclear weapons - and open-ended promises to a very small town in the South Atlantic is ridiculous.

The Cabinet Office response to the report was:

'The truth is the government has a very clear objective to bring down the deficit and get the economy growing again...'

As we (and the rest of Europe) are beginning to find out, in the current economic circumstances, these are two contradictory objectives.

[STONE]

I was browsing the evidence to the PASC report and found that Jim Scopes, former Director of Strategy at HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) recommended http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/scotPerforms worth a look.

[Gord Evans]

Not being overly familiar with UK politics (assume that you are trying to out-obese the Americans with that aspirational “big society” priority), I’ll confine my comments to generalities.

The parliamentary sub-committee’s objectives to implement a longer-term perspective based on national consensus and, a strategy-driven budget process are undoubtedly honourable and might actually prove beneficial if it were not for a noteworthy obstacle: modern democracy and human nature.
But first a brief digression: As someone who often finds himself being asked to assist with long-term national strategies in developing countries, I have always found it curious that such exercises and documents rarely if ever exist in developed countries.  It is equally curious that the development establishment repeatedly foists such exercises on their clients as a “best practice.”  I would be interested to know where exactly this best practice is practiced?

But back to national strategies.  20-30 years ago in places like Canada and the UK, there was this thing called “policy” which, along with occasional sector strategies, were developed by civil servants and vetted by decision makers.  Then, a few years later, it became necessary to attach a communications strategy to the policy (fair enough; no harm there).  Then, a few years later, it became necessary to justify every policy in light of commitments made in the detailed political campaign manifesto of the victorious party.  Then, a few years later, an umbrella communications strategy was developed to deliver the campaign manifesto into which policy proposals were force fit to justify each of the strategy’s key themes or messages.  So yes, we have strategies, but they are for the most part elaborate PR documents.  Since consensus or, worse, evidence-based exercises such as national strategies would inevitably produce “off-message” conclusions, they are non-starters.  Modern democracy; le voila.

Simon’s reference to the Scottish performance document is an interesting one.  There are similar documents in Canada and New Zealand that are worth a look as well.  Overall, these present evidence, albeit at a high level, concerning the long-term direction of economy and society.  Fortunately, for the political spin doctors, the dots that could be connected if anyone gave it some serious thought (why is this indicator going up or down) rarely are. 

Human nature.  Well, we like to predict things and like to think that there is some value in our predictions.  But sometimes we get carried away and shoot far beyond the vaguely realistic world of 3-year time frames (shoot far enough and you could have a national strategy).  But did anyone foresee the Wall Street crash and European collapse two let alone seven years in advance?  It would be interesting to go back and read all of those National Development Plans from 2006 and test their prescience. 

So, what to do?  Well, we could always shoot for reversing the communications-policy dependency, putting together a decent (i.e., somewhat informed by facts) 3-year budget, and developing a crisis response capacity that relies more on bringing the facts in than on getting the message out.  Now that would be a fine national strategy.       

[STONE]

Gord,
Ah yes facts and human nature.  I recall a piece by Partha Dasgupta that pointed out that we argue less about policy (he was comparing Castro Cuba and Pinochet Chile, I seem to recall) than about what the 'facts' are.

The spin-doctor approach is coming under severe scrutiny in the UK just now under the Leveson inquiry into relations between politicians and the press - with the reputedly arch spin-doctors now saying they would have been better advised to have focussed on policy over the message.

When we really start matching the PFM cycle to the democracy cycle we might indeed get somewhere.

Connecting dots - I recall you saying once that planning and budgeting systems would begin to work when the PM/Parliament robustly enquired why the targets Ministers had signed up to had (not) been reached with the implicit sequel being that the next time the Minister got out the signing pen they might first read.

The irony of no (poverty reduction) strategy examples from OECD states is deep.  I was tempted to write to the chair of the select committee to give some good (never best) examples of national strategy processes from er, 'other' countries.

[John Short]

The Government welcomes the Committee's second report of the session on strategic thinking. The Committee has produced another detailed report, and the Government thanks the Committee for the time and consideration that has gone into developing its recommendations. The inquiry heard a range of evidence, which raised interesting questions and discussion on how Government makes strategy, and how we ensure our strategy is both long-term, and is genuinely in the national interest.
The Government's response to the Committee's Report addresses each of the recommendations in turn. However, in reflecting on the Committee's recommendations, the Government felt there was a degree of contradiction, and misunderstanding of the principles on which Government strategy must be developed.
Principally, the Committee's report repeatedly raised two key issues - 1) is strategy being developed with enough long-term foresight? and 2) the UK should have a "National Strategy" - a form of Grand Strategy which endures changes of administration.
Read it all
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmpubadm/573/57304.htm

and

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-administration-select-committee/news/end-of-term-report/

and

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/public-administration/PASC%20End%20of%20term%20report%20written%20evidence.pdf

[John Short]

Unfortunately the embargo is designed to miss the Sunday Papers

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-administration-select-committee/news/spads-report-to-be-published/

but courtesy of Yahoo
Ministers have been urged to be more careful about who they appoint as special advisers to ensure smoother working relations with civil servants and avoid resignation situations worthy of The Thick Of It.
 
The hit BBC sitcom satirising the inner workings of Whitehall and the so-called spads contains "more than a grain of truth", the head of the cross-party Public Administration Select Committee warned.
 
Bernard Jenkin, a Conservative MP, said that special advisers - taxpayer funded but personally appointed by individual ministers - should be neither "shady characters practising the political dark arts" nor "political bag carriers" for politicians.
 
In a report entitled Special Advisers In The Thick Of It, the committee called for greater transparency about their appointments, their qualifications for the job and the specific remit they have been asked to fulfil.
 
It called for ministers to take full responsibility, rather than just accountability, for the activities of their spads, pointing out that no minister in living memory has resigned over an advisers' behaviour, despite some "astonishing" instances.
 
The committee highlighted the resignation in April of Adam Smith as special adviser to then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt. It came after the disclosure of extensive contacts between Mr Smith and a News Corporation lobbyist during the company's attempt to take full control of BSkyB, on which Mr Hunt was meant to be taking a quasi-judicial decision.
 
Despite the controversy, Mr Hunt has since been promoted to Health Secretary.
 
The committee urged the Government to explicitly state in its guidance that special advisers must not be involved in quasi-judicial matters in future. Spads are temporary civil servants who, unlike keenly impartial career civil servants, are usually loyal to one particular minister and provide party political assistance.
 
The committee called for ministers to ensure that their special advisers are people of "standing and experience" - as recommended by the Fulton Committee during Harold Wilson's first premiership - and who can make a meaningful contribution to the Government's work, justifying their expense to the public purse. It also urged that they be given better training and support for the roles that they are being asked to undertake.
 
A Cabinet Office spokesman said: "We welcome this report from the committee and will study its recommendations carefully before replying. In June the Government laid out the first steps in its programme of reform for the entire civil service. This Government publishes more information than ever before on special advisers, and is now examining formalising the induction and training process for them".


When it is on the PAC site I will post!

Here is the link


http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-administration-select-committee/news/publication-of-spads-report/
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmpubadm/134/13402.htm

[Napodano]

For the ones who have not watched the BBC sitcom yet, 'The Tick of it' http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qgrd.

'Yes, Minister' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/yesminister/) was a good laugh. The 'Thick of It' is a realistic portrait  of the wheeling and dealing in politics. When you go to the field to work  in a Ministry of Finance and you do not understand why your good, sensible policy advice is not taken, well that's it!

[harnett]

Mauro

You are developing an Irish accent:  "It's the Thick of it".  Well posted anyway - it's excellent if a bit aggressive at times!!

[Napodano]

Mauro

You are developing an Irish accent:  "It's the Thick of it".  Well posted anyway - it's excellent if a bit aggressive at times!!

OOPS!

Have a good one in Bishkek (I mean tha weekend  )

[Napodano]

Another great series (this time a political drama) is House of Cards. An insight on American politics, with excellent actors.

I, in particular, liked episode three when they discuss the new bill on education with the unions behind closed doors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(U.S._TV_series)
'House of Cards is a wonderfully sour take on power and corruption'
'...cinematically rich, full of sleek, oily pools of darkness'.