Whether in the UK or Uganda, governments across the world face a universal challenge – delivering real impact for their citizens.
Last week, Downing Street announced 10 implementation taskforces to track the government’s top priorities; David Cameron knows he will be judged not on his pre-election promises but on his ability to deliver them.
From overstretched hospitals to underperfoming schools, from low wages to high crime rates, people around the world have no shortage of reasons to feel disillusioned with their political leaders. Rarely has there been a time of such widespread public dissatisfaction with the political elite. This bad feeling is on the rise in the UK; a YouGov poll last year found just 10% of the public think politicians actually want to do what is right for the country.
In my own experience from leading the prime minister’s delivery unit in the UK and advising governments around the world, most politicians want to do the right thing. The crucial question is usually not one of good intentions or even good policy. Rather, it is a question of how to deliver policy effectively so it has the positive impact intended on the ground.
This is where governments are falling short. The private sector has raised the bar and the public sector must follow. Governments need to put delivery at the top of their agenda or they will never regain the confidence of their citizens. This is one of the greatest challenges they will face in the 21st century.
Even those on the inside appear to agree. In a survey released this week by the Centre for Public Impact of the more than 1,000 public officials polled in 25 countries in five continents, 92% said governments could do better in achieving impact. The findings were consistent across all the countries surveyed.
There was also surprising uniformity in the centre’s survey about obstacles to improving impact. In these challenging financial times, it is no surprise that lack of funding was seen by officials as a major block. But what is most striking is that the top reason cited for failure was poor coordination rather than lack of resources. Governments, even in comparison to large businesses, are highly complex organisations which have to balance a vast array of often conflicting interests. Mastering the machine can become so time-consuming that impact is often forgotten.
Political considerations are also high on the barrier list. Of course, politicians will think in political cycles – that is the nature of democracy – but we also want them to level with people about the challenges ahead.
Concerns over leadership are also cited as a key issue. Too often, political leaders lack the courage to take a long-term view and create space to make the big changes they think are necessary to deliver impact for citizens.
Another part of the solution is better measurement of the impact of government programmes. Remarkably, the survey found that a quarter of public officials do not use project management tools to measure the impact of any of their projects.
It is not all bad news. There are some governments with a good reputation for focusing and achieving results. These tend to be nations such as Singapore, New Zealand or the Nordic countries with smaller populations and more cohesive societies.
But even in much larger countries, there are administrations that can point to a good track record. US presidential candidate Martin O’Malley’s data-driven approach (pdf) to delivery during his time as governor of Maryland is one example. His StateStat programme used real-time information to prioritise scarce resources, resulting in the relief of childhood hunger, slashed healthcare costs and a bigger reduction in serious crime than in any other city in the US.
Malaysia’s impressive government reforms in recent years were rooted in its delivery unit’s highly transparent system of specific targets and reports. And in education, the OECD’s Pisa league table introduces a healthy dose of competition between different countries vying to outperform each other.
Digital technology also offers exciting possibilities. The explosion of open data over the past decade provides opportunities to measure impact like never before. Look at the private sector: not a day goes by without a major supermarket knowing what is selling well, what is stuck on the shelves and where its resources are best allocated.
Big data also helps design and deliver services around the needs of individual users. Governments are slowly taking this on board: Australia’s myGov service and New Zealand’s Result 10 programme are both pioneering in this respect.
Making the most of this best practice requires us to share ideas and experiences. Yet while there is now no shortage of channels for sharing policy ideas and experiences internationally, the same cannot be said about the successes and failures of implementation and impact. It remains very much the poor relation. The Centre for Public Impact is designed to help correct this oversight.
Encouraging discussion on how governments can maximise the positive public impact of what they do is essential to improving the lives of their citizens. It is also at the heart of rebuilding trust between the governed and government, which has fallen to worrying levels.
It is a task we can’t afford to ignore any longer. What is at stake is far more than the popularity of our political leaders.
Sir Michael Barber was the chief adviser on delivery in the UK government from 2001-2005 and is the author of How to Run a Government So That Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don’t Go Crazy, published by Penguin.
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