Bury's future in outsourcing?

Bury Council's putative transformation strategy hints at the sheer scale of change that will sweep though local government as a result of the public sector spending cuts, including an assumption that the council will no longer directly deliver services to its citizens. 

What that probably means in real terms is a massive uptick in outsourcing, although no decisions have formally been taken to date. What has happened so far is the publication this week of a consultation document which outlines the current predicament the Tory-run council faces and suggests some possible options and courses of action. 

"This Transformation Strategy sets out to undertake a fundamental review of the  council, what it does, how it does it and what it could do differently in the future  to meet community needs and deliver its strategic vision," explains Council Leader Bob Bibby in the document. "It is about recognising and assessing the whole range of challenges and opportunities we face and  ensuring we are in the best shape to address them and get the best results for  Bury. 

"Asking ourselves searching questions and developing new solutions is the  only way we can make sure we can continue to make a positive contribution to  people's lives and be proud of who we are and our future role in supporting our communities," he adds. 

Reluctant provider?

What is immediately interesting about the consultation document is its positioning of the council as a somewhat reluctant direct provider of services, often in areas where it doesn't need to get involved. It cites litter as an example. The document notes: The council does  not drop litter, but is constantly criticised for not keeping the streets clean  and often there are calls for more street cleaners to be deployed. The  costs of these services are, in effect, an extra and avoidable cost on local  tax payers. The real long term solution is for littering to become an  unacceptable practice and in that way, littering would reduce along with the cost to the local tax payer."

It's a fair point of course. But the wider service ethos of local authorities is also called into question with criticism of what seem to be allusions to an excessive dependency culture. "There is also an unreasonably high expectation of the range of council services available to  communities when local interventions could prove to be more successful and sustainable in the long term," complains the council.

"For example, in very localised cases of 8 low-level neighbour anti-social behaviour incidents where individuals  could, but haven't, tried to resolve matters informally between themselves  having automatically turned to the council to resolve the issue.  There is a  need, therefore, to appropriately re-balance responsibilities and rights between the individual and the state."

The current perception of what a local authority can be expected to deliver is not a balanced one, suggests the council, with people drawing on their experiences of service in the private sector as a template for expectations. "Being  able to communicate to your bank 24/7, book holidays on-line and have  groceries delivered to your home, has meant that individuals have the  same expectations about access and how they can transact with public  services," notes the council. "It is right that we set out high standards of customer service,  but they have to be deliverable, affordable and proportionate to the needs  of customers.  There is little to be gained in promising much and delivering little."

Mindshift

From these downbeat words and their weary tone, the citizen of Bury can only assume that the council is paving the way for a mindshift: "These challenges to the traditional way and types of services that are offered to people and communities mean that the time is now right to  define what a 21st century council should aspire to be to best serve its  many and diverse communities as we look to residents and communities  to do more, for example in encouraging and enabling community groups to self manage a range of existing key services and develop new approaches."

So with that set down as the underlying philosophy, the question becomes what are the ICT implications? Here things get a little vague. There will be a "new ICT strategy to support new ways of working", it seems. The old way of running ICT is on borrowed time: "For many years the council hosted major IT applications on its mainframe.  The mainframe no longer exists and many new server-based applications have been  developed covering key applications, eg finance (Agresso) and human  resources (Trent).  Development and enhancement of these systems is an  ongoing process. Having invested in IT systems, it is essential that business processes are reviewed to streamline processes, remove  duplication, and ultimately offer residents a better service and deliver savings for the council."

Pushing more and more service interaction online is a clearly defined goal: "Communication channels are shifting; where residents would have communicated with the council by letter or phone, web-based contact is now a preferred option for many. The council has invested in this area for a number of years, developing web-forms, council information  points and a customer contact centre. These initiatives mean that transaction costs have reduced and customers are receiving an improved  service. The council is currently rolling out web-based self-service to a  wider range of services, utilising the opportunities offered by the development of the new council website."

To market, to market

A key indicator of the way service delivery may evolve is contained in a paragraph outlining the council's role as a Commissioning Organisation: "In recent years we have made great strides forward in the development of commissioning in certain areas. Commissioning means, quite simply, securing the best outcomes for our residents.  It offers great opportunities, but needs to become the way we work right across the organisation. Commissioning enables us to focus on securing improvements. Commissioning, and decommissioning, will lead to services being delivered differently, by the council or other organisations or, in some cases, based on sound evidence and assessment, not at all."

That means outsourcing - and lots of it - although the word is never used in the consultation document. Rather there are references to "New opportunities for working with partners and investing public  money in different ways".  

There's also a clear indicator that tapping into existing service provides is an option on the table: "Does [the council] take an entrepreneurial approach, and seek to compete with other providers, even when a mature market exists? This is  increasingly difficult given the fixed overheads a local authority carries." In other words, why are we doing this ourselves when we could hand it over to a third party to do it more cost effectively?

All of this is a sound enough rationalisation of the expectations placed on 21st century councils and their commitment to deliver public services. But it's equally clear that the underlying message is one of significant cultural and organisational change, whereby the council works from a radically different public services agenda: "We will start with the assumption...that the council will not directly deliver services." 

It concludes: "The need for change is clear. We cannot rise to the challenges of the  future in our current form, nor can we continue to function in the way we have always done."