The government wants to encourage more innovation in public services, but there are some potential barriers, writes John Craig
The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills has this week published Innovation Nation , its innovation white paper. It's a recognition that innovation happens not only in science labs but in classrooms and community halls. It's a convincing recipe for success, but the proof will be in the pudding. We all want better public services, but the politics of getting there are far from easy.
The paper argues "attitudes to risk, budgeting, audit, performance measurement and recruitment must be aligned to support innovation". That is absolutely right. The real challenge is to make innovation a participation sport for professionals, public service commissioners, charities and social enterprises. We need, in Charlie Leadbeater's phrase, a bit of "mass innovation".
The white paper seeks to help with that, proposing a Public Services Innovation Laboratory to work with "intermediaries" like my own Innovation Exchange. Intermediaries bring people together to uncover opportunities for innovation and to help make the most of them. For example, public services, charities and citizens can all gain by working together to improve social care, and that's what we're trying to do. That's not new and it's not rocket science, but in recent years too many spaces for collaboration have been lost and it is right to rebuild them.
However, the idea that we are all innovators now is easier to say than to stick to. A world where local politicians are innovators is inevitably one of so-called postcode lotteries. For example, only through strong London government have we have made rapid progress in congestion-charging. Given some success and impending elections, Londoners increasingly acknowledge that's not a lottery but democracy. But had congestion-charging gone wrong, the pressure on ministers to intervene would have been intense. They must learn to resist those pressures where possible and to tolerate the right kinds of failure.
If there are challenges in helping local politicians to be innovators, they don't end there. If professionals and third sector organisations are to be innovators, innovation must not just be an initiative of public services but integral to public services.
For all the welcome measures in this white paper, it is that promise about mainstream budgetary and audit processes that really matters. As we saw this week, while middle-class pupils remain the most economic to teach, only one basic model of schooling will be in play. While prisons are judged by how well they keep criminals out of civilised society rather than how many they return to it, the supply of innovation will be slim. There is much competition between institutions - for innovation, we need to enable competition between ideas.
At the Innovation Exchange, we are doing our bit. On April 30 and May 7, we are bringing third sector innovators, investors and public service commissioners for two Festivals of Ideas around independent living and excluded young people respectively. Yesterday, a public servant told me, "I'm so excited to have something about ideas in my calendar". Only when that is the norm not the exception will this strategy have succeeded.
· John Craig is director of Innovation Exchange
