In defence of Intelligent Commissioning

I’ve just seen The Argus article about Brighton & Hove’s Intelligent Commissioning programme, criticising work done to reform the way the City decides what it spends its money on. To me it’s a very one sided article, and makes a very common mistake.

Commissioning refers to the whole cycle of understanding needs, deciding how to respond to those needs, deciding who should provide the service, and assessing how effective it is. The diagram to the left shows this neatly (thanks to Leeds Voice).

It’s not just about saving money – it’s about doing things better, targeting scarce resources more effectively, and involving all agencies or organisations that might have knowledge about needs and ideas about improvements in the decision-making. It’s about creating a better way of working, using all the expertise we have in the City.

Central Government policy for a number of years, Labour and Coalition, has to been to open up the delivery of services.  So it might be that a charity, or a social enterprise, or a private company runs the service rather than the council. This has been happening for years with waste disposal, for example, and many youth and children’s services are run by charities. So its unfair to equate the Intelligent Commissioning programme exclusively with outsourcing.

It certainly is fair to ask questions about progress on Intelligent Commissioning though, and indeed since the change of administration the pace of progress has been slow.

But the programme has pretty broad support in the voluntary and community sector in Brighton. This is partly because it gives us the opportunity to compete to run services for our beneficiaries, but also because it gives us a voice in decisions about how to respond to local needs. This is really important, especially at a time when so many in communities are struggling. I believe that we should be working with public sector partners to drive and contribute to positive change.

“We don’t measure impact as it’s too difficult” – Brighton & Hove Council

I have just received an email which has astonished me so much that I want to share it. It concerns the rhetoric of measuring impact, and why just not bothering is good enough for the local authority Economic Development Team.

Context: the Green administration in Brighton & Hove has made it’s budget setting process more open than in previous years, starting 2 months earlier. This is a welcome move, and the budget document is here, if you fancy reading 232 pages of it, or 118 depending on which of the two page numbering schemes you follow.

We are currently in the middle of Scrutiny, a voluntary sector representative elected via the Community & Voluntary Sector Forum reps system attended and asked some very sensible questions. She didn’t appear to get any real information in the answers, but one response was just mind boggling:

QUESTION: [On the work of the Economic Development Team] – How do you measure the impact of your teams work on improving the local economy?

ANSWER (Officer): We don’t measure the impact as it is too difficult. It is too hard to know if your work has had the effect, also if there is a bad outcome, we wouldn’t want the blame. We do collect feedback from local business community, we do satisfaction surveys. Impact is just too difficult to look at. 

While I fully understand that economic development probably IS very difficult to measure, the same can, and is, said about measuring impact in any other field.  Early years preventative services, for example, or supporting older people to stay in their homes, or community development. There are usually many other factors going on, some outcomes need to be measured over a very long period of time to be truly accurate, and of course, in small organisations, working on measuring impact can be difficult if it takes your focus away from your front line services.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try! And it doesn’t mean that there should be one rule for the internal Economic Development Team and quite another for voluntary sector or small businesses providing services on behalf of the Council.

In an authority that is not only attempting to shift toward Intelligent Commissioning, that is investing in training some (around 25) of its commissioners ,who are trying to move contracts and commissions onto an Outcome Measures footing, and who have been loudly talking about needing transformative change, this is not only shocking, but depressing.

Either this really is just rhetoric and what is sauce for the goose is unpalatable to the gander, or officers further down the food chain from the, publicly, very committed Chief Executive John Barradell don’t get it and aren’t being helped to get it.

Making Open Data Real – my consultation response

The consultation questions are unclear, convoluted and somehow simultaneously too specific and too vague. So, this response below brings together the key issues from the DataBridge project, my own policy and practice experience within the voluntary sector, and wider conversations within Brighton about becoming and Open Data City.

Please see also, Chapter 4 of the DataBridge report, available at www.databridge.org.uk

Overall I am supportive of the principle of open data and believe that there is much to be gained by published more and different types of data from central and local government. I also believe there are big opportunities to bring together engagement & participation work with data, including open data. 

Key points for consultation response:

1. Government should be aiming to stimulate social innovation and public service improvement through the release of open data – and this will require a different approach to opening data for commercial purposes

2. Open data does not automatically equate to transparency or accountability. Open data does not automatically result in improved services. It is a means to an end.

3. Open data in its raw form is not accessible for the majority of people – therefore careful thought about what is published, in what format, to what end and to what audience.

4. Open Data is not cost free

5. Much of the work around opening data will take place at a local level – this is almost entirely absent from the consultation. Leadership on the local element is key

6. Open data and the potential benefits (and risks) are not well understood

7. We need to make better use of the data we have – and in some cases, support people to do so. A signposting and support resource would be exceptionally useful here.

Gaps in the Government’s Open Data policy thinking

There is little in the consultation document about:

• non-commercial uses of data

• how this will play out at a local level

• specifically how open data is to link with open public services

1. Government should be aiming to stimulate social innovation and public service improvement through the release of open data – and this will require a different approach to opening data for commercial purposes

Stimulating commercial markets is different to stimulating social markets. How can government support social innovation and public service improvement uses of open data?

Resource it: Obviously. Funding ‘front-runners’, linking with organisations like the Nominet Trust to enable public sector and third sector to test out their ideas – with strong emphasis on evaluation. Develop work such a NESTA’s Make It Local.

Structural/policy levers: use ability to set the policy landscape to proactively stimulate the market for social/public service improvement uses of open data. E.g.

• explicit statement that open data is intended to contribute to public service improvement and social change as well as stimulating commercial uses

• significantly strengthen the expectations around social value (Chris White Bill, new Best Value Guidance, strengthen Duty to consider social value)

• use central & local purchasing power to shape the market for use of open data to focus on social improvement

• specifically, embed these three in local commissioning & procurement structures or frameworks

• include supporting social use of open data in new funding mechanisms such as SIBs or payment by results

• use government’s connecting power to link technical people with voluntary sector organisations with ideas

• promote the excellent examples and resource evaluation and dissemination of the exemplars

• When seeking to open data from all public service-providing organisations it is important that all suppliers are treated the same but that requirements are proportionate and reflected in funding arrangements

Additional question: How can government support the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector to make the most of open data?

• Commission a resource that both identifies (signposts) existing data sources, and provides support to users on how to make effective use of the data to underpin funding bids, demonstrate impact etc. This would support policies on devolving power to communities, in particular the Community Right to Buy, Community Right to Challenge, Neighbourhood Planning and Participatory Budgeting.

2. Open data does not automatically equate to transparency or accountability. Open data does not automatically result in improved services. It is a means to an end.

Simply publishing swathes of data will not, alone, result in transparency or accountability – the vast majority of people will not be able to use data as it is, and relying on ‘people who can’ to translate, interpret and share the data more widely is likely to be patchy, biased and focused on a specific interest rather than an overall objective view.

There will be a tiny percentage of ‘the people who can’ that will be motivated to use open data to hold government to account. This can be part of your accountability strategy, but not the sum total of it.

Open data could indeed enable better research, greater innovation and stimulate public service improvement but this may not happen simply through the publication of an increased amount of information alone, even if in machine-readable format.

The evidence from open data services at national and local level is that there is little impact as yet on mainstream public service delivery. Unless the benefits for local agencies and services to publish their data can be better demonstrated and supported, the risk is that open data becomes identified as a duty, and not seen as providing a benefit. The evidence from small-scale pilot projects such as the NESTA Make It Localwork is useful in “banging the drum” for open data, but more could be done to demonstrate the benefits in practical terms.

Different stimuli will be needed to ensure that open data can help produce public service improvement, as well as the transparency and commercial opportunities which have been focused on. See bullets under point 1. In addition there needs to be a really clear understanding of what government means when it talks about open data and accountability – including the limitations of this approach.

3. Open data in its raw form is not accessible for the majority of people – therefore careful thought about what is published, in what format, to what end and to what audience.

Presentation matters. Being clear about why you are publishing data matters.Data users are important. The emphasis on getting large quantities of data out into the open is welcome, with notable successes being the spending data. However, there is a relatively small audience for raw data (for example, VCS groups are unlikely to be direct users of JSON or other open-format data), and it is not a given that the energies of commercial developers will go into providing tools for public service providers and/ or commissioners.

One group that should be better engaged in the open data process is “data users”, by which we mean those public (e.g. economic development teams), commercial (e.g. research organisations), academic and third sector groups who are primary users of data and information for improving services.

• These groups provide a critical link in the chain from raw data through to service improvement– and would be able to provide additional useful input into what information exists, what is useful, and how it can be used.

4. Open data is not cost free

Open data is often touted as a no-cost solution. However although technical costs are low for publishing and hosting datasets, this radically underestimates total costs. For example, the US www.data.gov service reportedly costs $4M per year1, and when assessing the burden of collecting data, the LGA estimated LAs were in many cases spending more than £1M per year on collecting monitoring and regulatory data to report to central government2. In other words, data is not free, even if the technology to disseminate it is effectively free. Local Authorities and other public bodies are under immense financial pressure, so may struggle to prioritise releasing open data.

The same is true in central government. From my experience working in one central government department, data will be held in hundreds of different ways, in hundreds of different formats, by hundreds of different people (who will also be constantly changing). The time and effort required to collate this information and ensure that it can be kept up to date is absolutely massive.

• Again, priorities will need to be set, and careful thought given to what is published and why before this can be tackled.

Opening up data from other public service-providing organisations. For VCS there is a big challenge around resourcing, capacity and skills – groups acknowledged that there would be extra work needed both to share or open their own data and to make good use of other published data and open data. For groups that do not already have significant data collection, management and analysis in their operational model this is likely to be the biggest challenge. And at a time of increased demand and reducing income, the benefits to the frontline delivery of any additional work need to be much clearer.

• When seeking to open data from all public service-providing organisations it is important that all suppliers are treated the same but that requirements are proportionate and reflected in funding arrangements.

• And the additional costs will need to be reflected in funding and commissioning arrangements.

5. Much of the work around opening data will take place at a local level – this is almost entirely absent from the consultation. Leadership on the local element is key.

While understanding the principle of Localism, it is extremely telling that there is little or nothing in the consultation about the local element of this, and that CLG’s Guidance on Local Government Code of Practice on Data Transparency came out separately to Cabinet Office’s consultation.

• It is essential that CO and CLG work better together on this issue.

Areas like Brighton are embracing the open data agenda, but, more is needed on clarifying what we mean locally by open data, setting out a collective ambition and starting conversations on how to get there. We should also remember that this is not separate to existing work on understanding our local areas and neighbourhoods, and to improve services.

There is a need for local leadership to turn general commitments into a strategy that complements work on city-wide intelligence or data stores, broadening sources of data for needs assessments; uses local government leadership and purchasing power to stimulate social uses of open data, and links the VCS and communities to the tech and developer community.

• Clear and ambitious leadership from the Local Government Group, and from CLG on this is essential. SOLACE, LGIU, and many other local government think tanks could also contribute.

6. Open data and the potential benefits (and risks) are not well understood

Awareness: Most of the groups we worked with on the DataBridge project were aware of the concept of open data in terms of opening-up access to additional data held by public bodies. However, there was a disconnect between this general perception, and understanding how the open data agenda might help their work specifically.

Groups tended to list all the information they believed that local government holds that would be useful to them, plus a longer list of information they wished local government held. There is a limited understanding outside of local government of what specific datasets exist within local government. Work emerging from Department of Communities and Local Government on a Code of Recommended Practice for Local Authorities on Data Transparency includes ‘an expectation’ of a local Inventory of Public Data.

• Local level creation of a useable, accessible local inventory of public data will be useful, but must bear in mind a range of users and levels of technical skill.

• This could build on existing local work e.g. the Brighton & Hove Open Data list and Brighton & Hove Local Information Service. As well as listing published data, it would be helpful to list the main data-sources held internally that are not published.

Some groups were sceptical about the value of open data at all because of the problems they see with existing datasets. For example, the issue of LGBT disclosure, recording of LGBT status and consistency of approach between services.

Risks: Loss of advantage or independence – questions were raised about sharing data in a more competitive environment, especially in terms of competing with other organisations or private providers. This is made more complex by a commissioning environment which is in some cases moving towards preferring collaborative or consortia bids. In this situation, sharing data is seen by some as giving away one of their key assets and potentially risking the independence of the organisation.

7. We need to make better use of the data we have – and in some cases, support people to do so. A signposting and support resource would be exceptionally useful here.

Using what’s already available - The groups we worked with on this project often struggled to find existing data sources. For example, several groups requested data on populations they work with. In many cases, they are aware that information is available, but is difficult to find (and some highlighted that it is was complex to use).

• There is a dual need here, for better awareness of existing sources with support to use them, and for the VCS to focus more on data and analysis as part of their core business planning and management.

Local Information Systems exists in most areas as a repository of local data, but are of varying quality and in many cases do not currently serve VCS audiences very well and does not include VCS data.

Data held by VCS - each group in the project highlighted data they held that could be useful for other organisations in the city, and potentially be published. While there is the option that this can be included in any data store or platform established by the City, there will be a great many questions to be worked through in the development phase.

These will include:

• understanding the benefit to organisations and beneficiaries (of the data being made available);

• teasing out issues around impact on organisational independence and competitiveness (does the data provide useful information to potential competitor organisations)

There will always be differences between quality and robustness of data, but it is important for decision makers to be open to understanding and using all the data we have, especially for service planning and commissioning. For example, information on emerging or future needs is inevitably going to be less robust than historical information on service use, however both are important in the context of commissioning.

• CLG should consider commissioning a support resource to help voluntary organisations make better use of the data and research currently available.

1 Quoted in http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/apr/05/data-gov-crisis-obama.

2 LGA (2010). Single Data List Consultation: LGA response.

LA Code on Data Transparency

The Communities department have today published their Code of Recommended Practice for Local Authorities on Data Transparency. It’s intended to drive greater publication by local authorities of a swathe of data from spending, to contracts, to performance. Currently ‘expected’, Ministers are ‘minded to make it legally binding’.

The political narrative behind this is that greater transparency = greater accountability, and that having abolished ‘top down inspection’ government is now leading the way in being open about it’s spend and decisions, and that local government should be doing the same.

A lot of LAs are publishing much of this information already (apart, we are told again, from Naughty Nottingham who are resisting Uncle Eric), but having a clear idea of what your data LA has published in a consolidated Inventory of Public Data will potentially be useful. I’m not too sure how different this is to what exists already, so it may just be a window dressing exercise on the part of Government.

So my initial take on this (caveat – this may change with further consideration and discussion with knowledgable folks) is:

* Transparency is important and useful, but is not analogous to accountability. “An army of armchair auditors” are no replacement for high quality, consistent and independent analysis such as that has been provided by the shortly to be defunct Audit Commission.

* Focussing the comms on data on spending and salaries are political devices to maintain in the forefront of the public’s mind the Government’s claim that public services are uniformly wasteful.

* What’s actually more interesting and useful is data on delivery, performance, outcomes, decision-making. In particular, thinking about publication of contracts, this could be useful if it also includes publication of the process, the PQQ, the ITT, decision discussions etc.

Questions that need more consideration:

* Publication of data will not in and of itself provide transparency or accountability, so how to use data to engage with communities (the DataBridge project has some ideas on this).

* Pickles says “we shouldn’t have to be data experts to see and understand it”. This is a good point, but there is a lot of work required to turn a raw spreadsheet into something that the majority of people can easily understand and use. Who’s actually going to do this? What will their interest be? Doesn’t interpretation automatically mean that someone’s applied their values to information? 

* The stated aim of ‘publication of data to open new markets for local businesses and voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors’ is, perhaps, laudable, but more will be required to ensure that local organisations are able to play in this game and that local communities really benefit (see blog on Best Value Duty to consider social value)

* Being expected to publish ‘objective, factual data on which policy decisions are based and on which public services are assessed…’ could mean a wider involvement for external partners in providing data and information and contextual understanding to, for example, needs assessments. If LAs are making decisions on poor or incomplete or skewed data, being require to publish their ‘workings’ could expose that, but it will require detailed engagement of those willing to wallow in data and who also understand the local context.

* It may indeed push local government to open up not only the needs assessment processes, but also the scoping of commissions, the commissioning decisions themselves including all non-data based factors that influence spending decisions.

So, overall, this could be useful if it is set in a context of a local commitment to:

• improving quality not just cutting costs
• considering social value
• developing local business and voluntary sector access to public service markets

But we cannot assume that opening more data automatically means:

• transparency
• accountability
• intrinsic value
• equality of access & use

Blogging against the clock

Can I do a blog in 13 minutes about the recent Best Value Guidance? If so, will it be coherent? Let’s see…

The best Best Value image I could come up with at short notice

CLG published new, ultra short Best Value Guidance on 2 Sept, NCVO published a useful report from their legal folks a couple of days ago. I’ve been mulling it over, in particular the Duty to consider social value.

For me, this is an important addition to the Best Value guidance, because of the possibilities it opens up within the context of Open Data, openness and Transparency (I always feel a little bit like I’m writing a Regency novel when I capitalise in the middle of sentences, but that’s possibly just my Georgette Heyer complex coming out…).

You can see a situation where greater access to open data, about not just spend, but service delivery, service quality, outcomes and so on provide a great deal more information for those interested in providing public services. And for the larger organisations, possibly predominantly private sector organisations with the R&D capacity to invest, this will provide significant advantages in terms of how you pitch your bids, what your service design is and who you partner with.

However, there is the risk, discussed at length by many commentators that the private sector providers (who we must note are by no means all evil and after world domination at the expense of communities) will force out smaller local providers, whether SME or local voluntary sector or social enterprise sector organisations. This would be bad for a number of reasons, local jobs, community cohesion, building big society, Tescoisation of public services etc etc.

In this situation, the commissioning context becomes critical and the Duty to consider social value especially important. It will be important for all partners in local areas to have a proper discussion and agreement about what they consider social value. To agree how they will measure it, and how these definitions and (hopefully) commitment to social value will be reflected in the everyday practice of commissioners, procurement officers and strategic staff across local government. There is value in this, monetary as well as social, for local authorities, as well as the more obvious benefits for SMEs and VCS providers, and ultimately, the community.

A little bit of politics, Denmark style

I happened to be in Denmark on election day last week, and was lucky enough to have some Danish friends to both show us around and talk politics. A few things struck me strongly from dipping my toe into Danish politics.

Danish elections - queuing to vote

Firstly, turnout – Deep in conversation about what polling day is like in Denmark (much like here), how long polling stations are open (much shorter than here) and how long it takes to count votes (about 4-5 hours) and how people feel about politics (strongly, in most cases) we got to turnout. My friend was fall-on-the-floor shocked that turn out in UK elections is so low.

Turnout there was 88% this time around, slightly higher than in 2007. In the 2010 UK elections it was 65%. Denmark has very high turnout, even though it doesn’t have mandatory voting. A quick glance at turnout in the UK for the last 66 years shows that we’ve not been anywhere near that high since the 1950s. Turnout was at least over 70% between 1945 and 1997 – what happened after that? It can’t be simply a reflection of who’s in power can it? And the litany of political and economic scandals and crises are of course depressing, but not really anything new. Obviously there are whole careers and branches of social science devoted to psephology, but I wonder if the explosion of the web, latterly, social media has actually had a negative effect on actual, physical voting?

Second thing: Young people are engaged in politics, both in terms of voting, being informed and discussing it with their friends, but also being involved politics itself. Much has been written about ‘the new Queen of Red-Green politics’ (or ‘the Communist Princess’ as my friend called her) Joanne Schmidt-Nielsen. Impressive leader among the Red-Green Alliance of left wing parties at only 27, she’s well respected for her intellect and her debating skills. (In 2007 she participated in a debate for party leaders on TV 2 on the evening before the election as the youngest candidate ever to participate in a nationally televised debate for Danish party leaders.^[14] It’s not all laudatory though, according to Wikipedia, prior to the debate, the leader of the Conservative People’s Party, Bendt Bendtsen, mistook her for an office girl and asked her to fetch him coffee).^[14] Stella Creasy experienced a similar reaction from the Male, Pale & Stale oldguard in Parliament here when she was ticked off for using a MPs Only lift.

However, Schmidt-Nielsen is just one of a host of younger people who are a part of political and civic life in Denmark. In the UK young people in politics are something of an anomaly, seen as a bit square perhaps, although politicians are constantly trying to seem relevant, young and vital. [Insert your own favourite cringe inducing politician-wears-baseball-cap moment here]. The youngest person in the House of Commons is called the Baby of the House, currently the baby is Pamela Nash, who at 27 is the same age as Joanne Schmidt-Nielson. Former luminaries of this quaint and rather patronising title include Tony Benn, John Profumo (twice), and Davids Steel and Lammy, who perhaps don’t have much else in common.

Thirdly, Coalitions are normal – Denmark has coalition politics as a matter of course, so the fact of a coalition is not unusual. There was excitement among those we met about a change of government, and in particular, pleasure that the extremist Danish People’s Party would finally lose influence. In terms of process, it was interesting to learn that the parties are required so say who they would prefer as Prime Minister, so voters know who they’d get as a leader, while still being able to vote with their convictions for the party that best matches their beliefs.

Two theories abounded about how things will pan out, one that new Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt (coincidentally married to Stephen Kinnock) would find it very hard to build an effective coalition with such a slim majority of the Left Bloc which is not so much a bloc as a loose and prickly bundle. And that this would be exacerbated because she is given a very hard time in the media for being ‘hard’ and ‘icy’, not characteristics that are approved of in a woman, whether or not she’s leading a country. Secondly, that the previous government have succeeded in shifting national beliefs to the right, as reflected by the loss of overall seats in the Left Bloc, and that this will undermine the new coalitions attempts to roll back some of the less liberal policies of the last ten years as well as their chances of agreeing on policy. Both groups were glad to have change, but were not optimistic that they wouldn’t be voting again in a couple of years.

Give Local!

I went to the launch of CityForum Brighton last night, and have just posted this very quick summary of an idea I had the other day. It’s a project based around making connections: 

• Enabling people to give small monthly amounts to local organisations (supporting local giving) and
• Enabling businesses to give in-kind or cash support to local organisation (supporting local CSR)

by providing for charities and givers:

• the mechanism for setting up monthly giving (local organisations are usually not set up to solicit small regular donations and don’t have chuggers)
• a way of identifying local organisations for your support (post code or key word searchable database)
• a way for local organisations to mount a campaign (charity profile page managed by them, front page featuring specific charity or campaign each month)
• data about the issues in brighton and about the organisations (based on public, charity and open data – focusing on factually provable trends, issues, etc and giving detailed information about charities to reassure givers that they are kosher, this would be both in terms of registration and accountability, but also ‘you gave us £500 and we did X with it’ type feedback)

by providing for businesses as givers:

• use the same back end to provide a way of linking up local businesses with organisations that ‘fit’ them – in terms of age, profile, geography, lifestyle
• enable charities to search for businesses that may ‘fit’ them in terms of support for specific awareness or fundraising campaigns
• provide a more human ‘matching service’ as part of a programme encouraging CSR among local businesses

 

I know there has been talk about things like this in the past by the Directory of Social Change who were looking to use GuideStar data for this, that the Community Foundation Network run something similar where donations go direct to Sussex Giving who then distribute the funds, and some work on linking local traders to local organisations, but do not know how far any of these got.

It seems to me that Brighton people really relate to Brighton as a place, however much they are or are not involved directly in their community and that this is a very good basis on which to build a Brighton Giving project.

Back end tech could be provided by e.g. Virgin Money Giving or Just Giving or similar. 

Development in conjunction with both the Community & Voluntary Sector, the Business sector and potential givers would been needed to make sure it serves all people well.

• Potential local partners:
• CVSF and / or other infrastructure organisations locally
• Brighton Chamber of Commerce
• Brighton & Hove Council
• local tech / web company
• others?

 

 

If there is any mileage in this suggestion we could bid into the new £10m Innovation in Giving fund being managed by NESTA but would need firm commitments from partners on design, their contribution, support and ideas on long term sustainability.

Who would like to work on this with me? Who else should we talk to? What could this idea look like when finished? What other examples of this kind of thing exist? Does the whole thing already exist?! What are the pitfalls? How can we design it so it is effective and cost-effective?

All comments welcome!