I've been desperately trying to get back to answering postings by Ed Weick,
Tom Walker and others of the past week or so but have been too busy.
But there is one point I'll make separately here before pushing off to
hospital for my daily X-ray session. This is about the accountability of
those responsible for important services.
Very briefly, here's the background. In the UK we have four severe crises
-- the railways, foot-and-mouth disease, the National Health service, and
State Education. All of them are either caused or exacerbated by
incompetent management. The first is a (recently) privatised service, and
the others are State run, each with large civil service departments.
I won't go into details of any of these crises, save to say that
public/consumer opinion is worked up about all these to a degree which I
haven't observed before in the last 50 years of taking an interest in these
matters. Every day in the papers, radio and TV there is intense discussion
of the deficiencies in each case.
The big difference is in accountability.
In the case of the railways, journalists and commentators regularly grill
the managers of Railtrack (the "master" system which supplies the track and
signalling to the other regional operational companies) on matters of
safety and bad timetabling. That is, it is those who are operationally
responsible who are questioned. And they are questioned rigorously,
sometimes mercilessly.
In the case of the others, it is Ministers, Junior Ministers, and other
Government spin doctors who are questioned. These people, of course, are
not operationally responsible. To a lesser or greater degree they are
constitutionally responsible but they have no clear idea of what the real
management issues are. They are at least one remove from the system.* The
people who really run these systems -- the senior civil servants -- are
never questioned. They refuse to to speak publicly.
In fact, "refusal" is too strong a term for this practice because it is
never disputed. Quite simply, this has been the policy of the senior civil
servants for over 100 years ever since the formation of the civil service
as a unified power bloc. (Middle and junior administrative ranks don't dare
give their opinions in public, of course, because they have had to sign
secrecy documents when appointed and can easily be dismissed.)
That's all. I will attempt to discuss this matter in a little more detail
in replying to Ed Weick's message of 28 June (Re: Shorter Reply . . . )
later today.
Keith Hudson
P.S. *Here's a little story that illustrates this. Twenty years ago, when
my home town, Coventry, faced an employment/industrial crisis (which
subsequently deepened and didn't start to lift for another 15 years) I put
forward some ideas for a Coventry Investment Fund to the Council. I was
actually invited to speak to the small, but important, policy-making
committee of the Council. Although I received the support of Coventry's
Chief Economist who also attended, I didn't get anywhere in persuading the
Councillors to initiate such a Fund. (My proposal envisaged a Fund similar
to the Boston Investment Fund, and would have involved the University of
Warwick also.) (The latter actually started the first "Science Park" in the
country seome years later, very similar to part of what I was proposing.
But I had no direct inputs to this, so I don;t take any credit. It was more
likely to have been an idea that was in the minds of many others besides
myself.)
However, one of Coventry's MPs, himself a past member of the Council, had
also attended, and suggested that I should speak to senior civil servants
at the Department of Industry. As he was Junior Minister at the Department,
this was an opportunity I couldn't resist, so he fixed up an appointment
and a few weeks later I travelled to London and turned up at the House of
Commons, met the MP and we set out for the Department. . . . . . Except
that he didn't know where it was!!!! True, the Department of Industry --
huge, of course -- is/was located in many different buildings in London and
he was not to be expected to know it all. The Junior Minister had been
given the names of the senior civil servants we were to see (those with
responsibility for regional indsutrial policy) but he had never met them
before! He suddenly realised that he didn't know where their particular
"sub-department" was. It took several phone calls before we finally set out
for the right place. (Needless to say, I got nowhere with the civil
servants either and Coventry continued to descend into recession.)
I am sure that my MP friend was not an exception. This story illustrates
that even Ministers know little about the workings of the Departments they
are supposed to be responsible for and yet have to answer for when
questioned by journalists, etc.
KH
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Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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