Comments on: A wake up call for the public sector

By: The writing is on the wall for the public sector « Flip Chart Fairy Tales

The writing is on the wall for the public sector « Flip Chart Fairy Tales — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:08:42 +0000

[...] in his latest post on the subject he expresses some frustration that many executives in the public sector just don’t get it: [...]

By: matthewtaylor

matthewtaylor — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:59:22 +0000

Thanks Officer. Sounds like we are both short of reliable evaluation. There’s no point trading good and bad anecdotes. Anyway a system like this is bound to take time to bed down and – more controversially – some would argue the whole point about the payments is that you can spend them on what makes you feel better (and if homeopathy has a placebo effect or makes it less likely to get depressed who are we to quibble?). I agree about market making (vital but difficult) and also about data sharing. I wish the civil liberties people (and I am genuinely glad they are there making a noise) would be a bit more balanced about things like data sharing, which may have real risks but are genuine attempts to improve services and efficiency

By: matthewtaylor

matthewtaylor — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:51:44 +0000

Thanks Karl. But would much prefer not to think about football at the moment. Tony Mowbrey is so obviously a decent man with a commendable commitment to play the beautiful game but we are going down and after failing ever to get more than 35 points in 4 Premiership seasons I’m not sure we’ll have the heart to want to come up again

By: Direct, and other, Payments « The Local Government Officer

Direct, and other, Payments « The Local Government Officer — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:33:27 +0000

[...] new jargon, Personal) Budgets. This was sparked off by a post by Matthew Taylor (RSA, not Truro) here, and picked up at Stumbling and Mumbling. A simplification for those new to the terms, these [...]

By: Karl Hallam

Karl Hallam — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:26:43 +0000

Matthew has been saying this sort of thing for years. It’s simple really, but maybe the media has a vested interest in not engaging with this question. It is so much more fun to blame Ministers and individuals like Sharon Shoesmith or Fred Goodwin for the recession or the broken society, rather than see our collective abdication of responsibility for many of the symptoms of current social concerns.

Matthew talks about more sensible ways of moving to, for example, 2 weekly bin collections. A similar argument could be made for better debates about reducing congestion or decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Much of Cadence’s work with clients is directed towards focusing on untapping the knowledge at the front line that is so often neglected. Strategy-speak and delivery chain mechanisms often obscure the fundamentals of what, who, how, when and especially the why.

Matthew’s blog is essentially optimistic and reminds us why.

We could probably all learn alot by Nigel Clough’s approach at Derby County too, but ulitmately I suppose he will be judged by results too …