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Archive for category Systems Thinking

Public Administration Committee – Twelfth Report on Govt and IT “rip-offs”

Jul 28

Posted by roy in Efficiencies and Savings, IT and geek stuff, Systems Thinking, Technology | No Comments

The Westminster government publishes a report exposing how government is ripped off by IT suppliers. The report isn’t too long and is worth a read.

One perceived failing identified is over-specifying projects leading to lack of innovative solutions. This can be true – the report touches on the belief among many SMEs that there is a culture of “get it done” rather than “get it right”.

Point taken, however I’m not so sure this is quite the attitude in the local government scene where things have been changing significantly and there is a greater understanding that having local and inhouse IT expertise allows innovation while making sure supplier solutions are evaluated in terms of long-term costs and implications. Allowing suppliers to innovate without proper scrutiny would open up the possibility that inappropriate and costly solutions could be implemented: feature-creep (and module-creep and licence-cost-creep) could be more likely.

Also advocated is Agile development methods (I think this is more of a cultural thing than a methodology); open standards; open data;  and personal data ownership.

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Payment for Success – report by KPMG

Jun 9

Posted by roy in Customer First and Service, Ideas, Systems Thinking | No Comments

The KPMG “Payment for Success 2010″ report, advises that a radical programme of empowerment for customers and  suppliers incl. rights-to-bid for any other organisations services, management buy-outs, freedom of budget management will provide enormous savings. This might give an insight into how the Westminster Govt will try to introduce a market economy into public services.

While this is perhaps too radical - or politically motivated - a step it is interesting how they quote reports showing massive savings from Business Process Improvements, for example the Lean approach. To make this work requires realigning not only the business processes, but how budgets are handled as well.

It argues that most UK public service providers currently lack the incentive and autonomy to realise the huge productivity improvements that are possible. The paper entitled “Payment for Success  – How to shift power from Whitehall to public service customers”  identifies seven critical issues in the way public services in the UK are currently provided and goes on to suggest how to change the system by incentivising providers to offer public services in a more cost effective and efficient manner – Neil Rimmer, IDeA

 

The scale of these variations in unit costs is supported by many efficiency studies done across government. For example, the Government’s Operational Efficiency Programme review in 2009 consistently pointed to potential savings of up to 30% – based on benchmark comparisons. It reported that frontline lean programmes had shown in pilots that they could reduce costs by 30% or more, whilst protecting customer service. For example, the NAO has recently said that DWP can reduce costs by 15-30% via its lean programme. Similar figures have been identified by pilots in justice, defence and HMRC. The OEP reports that Government uses 31% more office space per head than good practice and that public sector case studies show the potential for 30% reductions in back office costs. Given that the Gershon review 5 years earlier identified similar potential savings, there is clearly a problem about realising such potential savings.

KPMG-Payment-for-Success-Report-2010

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Systems Thinking book review

May 17

Posted by roy in Systems Thinking | No Comments

A review of John Seddon’s “Systems Thinking in the Public Sector” – recommended by A Nutter!
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A little bird told me there has been a interesting follow up to John Seddon’s book ‘Systems Thining in the Public Sector’ which is being described as ‘proof of the pudding’

Delivering Public Services that Work is a book of Case Studies showing Read the rest of this entry »

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Guardian article on systems thinking

May 5

Posted by roy in Systems Thinking, Transformation | No Comments

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/10/public-manager-inspection-regimes 

As so often, Charles Dickens, in skewering the foibles of Victorian society, highlights something that is still pertinent in our own lives. In Hard Times, here’s what Dickens wrote about the regulation of factory owners: “They were ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined, when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke.”
Read all of this post…

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Lean thinking is a "wicked disease"!

Apr 29

Posted by roy in Systems Thinking | No Comments

  John Seddon of Vanguard Consulting and leading proponent of Systems Thinking decries the way lean approaches have achieved the opposite of what the Toyota Way / Toyota Production System originally intended….

Speaking at the launch of the Swedish translation of his book (“Freedom from Command and Control”) Professor John Seddon launched a broadside on ‘lean’. Rather than energising and invigorating organisations, lean has further industrialised them, demoralising the workers, Seddon argued. He gave a series of examples where lean has led to worse service, higher costs and destroyed morale, attributing the cause to the lean community’s blind acceptance of current managerial thinking.

“’Lean’ has been a fad”, Seddon said, “promoted by opportunists who know that managers think change is all about training and projects. The purveyors of this wicked disease have gone about as far away from Taiichi Ohno’s teaching as it is possible to get. Instead of teaching that managers should study their systems – as Ohno did – the lean tool-heads assume that manager’s problems are their real problems; the tool heads join with managers in standardising the work, controlling work through arbitrary measures and keeping decision-making out of day-to-day operations. Lean is a travesty of epic proportions.”

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