In Praise of Third Parties

(Two interiors: The entrance to the building which houses the Council on Virginia's Future; and the lift lobby in the former Greyhound bus station, which houses the US's Partnership for Public Service)

I’ve already posted about the fact that some successful collaborations have deliberately appointed a non-partisan organisation to take a ‘whole system view’, in addition to the leader. I think there’s more to be said, though, about the role of third parties in supporting those who are doing successful collaboration across government agencies.

By third party, I mean someone that has no responsibility whatsoever for directly delivering the services in question, (I’m thereby cutting out groups like the Corporation for Supportive Housing in New Haven Connecticut, who do also build housing).

They seem to perform two main roles. One is a ‘secretariat’ or ‘steward’ function. Examples I've come across in the last five weeks:

• The Toronto-based Institute for Citizen Centred Service (ICCS), provides the secretariat (including agenda planning) to the Public Sector Service Delivery Council, that is a forum for Service Delivery Chief Executives to come together to plan collaboration. The ICCS is a non-profit outfit, funded by fees from member organisations, from ‘all three levels of government’ in Canada: federal, provincial, and city. It also supports a parallel body, a Council of Chief Information Officers.

• The US’s Partnership for Public Service is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works “to revitalize the federal government” and is funded mainly by private foundations. It acts as a secretariat (and catalyst) for two networks within the US Federal Government - one for Chief Information Officers, and one for Chief Finance Officers

Their second role is as a ‘data provider’. More examples:

• The Richmond-based Council on Virginia’s Future produces an annual report on the performance of the State of Virginia, against a set of indicators. The Council is a creature outside of the executive, deliberately taking an advisory role and reporting to members of the legislature and local community and business leaders.

• The Institute for Citizen Centred services (ICCS), mentioned above, has been running client satisfaction surveys for government bodies since 1998, and provides both public and private (benchmarking) data to key government agencies to inform their operational and strategic plans for service integration. It does this - and its secretariat function - with only 11 staff!

What’s the advantage of their independence from Government? My impressions are:

• More trust by the public, politicians and even frontline staff, in their data. After a period in the early 2000's of departments publishing a lot of their own data, the UK media became very suspicious of the way it was presented. The National Audit Office now has very strict protocols about when and how statistics are published in the UK. I think these third parties are given a similar, independent, credence.
• More challenge back to the Government about the speed at which they are providing better services. Those who work in these third parties have good knowledge about what is going on and can often see the links between agencies in a way that those inside them don't always notice.
• They are able to act as an independent ‘witness’. It reminds me of those anthropologists who get nervous about their subjects behaving differently when they know they are being watched. When governments know they are being watched by someone externally, they behave differently.
• They can use their position to influence across the Executive, and they are not bound by hierarchical considerations (one government employee a few weeks ago mentioned a barrier to collaboration being his grade - because his partners didn't know if he was worth talking to because he was quite junior, and he couldn't get access to very senior people), or by whether someone is in the executive, legislature or a community organisation. They can talk to anyone, and influence systemically.
• Their existence is not threatened by changes in political administration, so they provide continuity of insight.

Customer centricity - and the PSSDC, a long acronym that made a difference.

I spent Friday writing up most of my interviews with those I met when I was in Canada. Revisiting the material reminded me what an impressive journey both Service Canada, and Service Ontario, had made.

Both are based on the idea that a single organisation runs a front counter that faces the public. The citizen can go in to the same office, to sort out their pension, their employment insurance (Jobseeker’s allowance), get their social insurance number, renew their passport, their driving licence, and so on. The back office processing part may happen in more than one agency - like the Passport Service, or the Tax Office - but the front office is a ‘one stop shop’ for the government. Compare this to the UK - where you go to the DVLA for your driving licence, the Identity and Passport Service for your passport, HMRC for your national insurance number, the Job Centre for your jobseekers allowance, and the local authority for your housing benefit, and you can start to see why this seems surprisingly rational.

Canada's service integration is still work in progress. For example, from what I could see,

• The ‘Bigs’, like health insurance, and the Revenue, haven’t come on board completely yet, though that’s looking more and more likely in the Canadian Administrative Services Review, which is underway at the moment - which is being run by a former Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada, who has the service integration bug.
• There are still divides between the Federal and the Provincial level that don’t quite make sense from the citizen's point of view
• Each new service integration creates lots of technical issues to iron out, like whether the right legislative authorities are in place, differing “proof of identity” requirements for different services, and different management information and computer systems coming together, all bumping up against each other in the one front office.
• They may, eventually, hit a real cultural reluctance to have government sharing an awful lot of data on citizens, between different Agencies.

One official described what he called a necessary cycle - “Putting it all together, making it make sense, then resuming growth. The second phase, making it make sense, can feel like it’s all cobbled together with duck tape and string at the back. That’s why you need to spend time on that one.”

But there are such rational things going on! For example, they organise services by life event. On the front page of the Service Canada website, it invites you to click on options like ‘finding a job’, ‘raising a family’, having a baby’, ‘retirement planning’ and ‘starting a business’. They then aim to bundle the services together around the life event. One bundle Service Ontario was very proud of, was getting the birth certificate issued at the same time as the social insurance number. They also managed to get the turnaround time for a birth certificate down from 9 months to 8 days. Oh, and did I mention? They saved money at the same time.

What made it work? Lots of things, including being very attentive to customer feedback, strong leadership and soforth, but almost every single interviewee I spoke to (and I met about 6 or 7, from very different parts of the business), mentioned three things.

1. A simple vision: putting the customer at the centre.
2. Attention to creating a citizen-centric culture, from the ‘service agent’ at the front line, right through to the leader at the top. There's loads more to say about this, but just one example is, when they set the 8 day target for the birth certificate, they promised the citizen their fee back if they didn’t make the turnaround time. I wonder whether we could do that in the UK!
3. A body that met twice a year called the ‘Public Sector Service Delivery Council’ (the PSSDC). This was for ‘Deputy Ministers’ (our Chief Executives, or possibly Permanent Secretaries) of delivery agencies.

The first couple of times the PSSDC was mentioned, I noted it down on my handy cognitive map and moved swiftly on. It sounded like a dull old get together of important folk, a talking shop. But as I reviewed the cognitive maps last Friday, I started to question my lack of interest. Five or six people had mentioned the PSSDC as being one of the 'how's', getting central government agencies collaborating more. It actually seemed to be a significant ingredient in the success of service integration. Not the only factor, for sure. But it was referred to as the place where joint projects were initiated, where trust was built between Agency heads, and where the desire for collaboration grew, was nurtured, and was actioned. It didn’t just happen that way by chance: it was set up with the mandate of fostering collaboration.

Where is the UK’s version of this, I wondered? When do the Chief Exec of the DVLA, Job Centre Plus, the Border Agency, and HMRC, come together and pursue joint plans? I think of the work that the Cabinet Office has been trying to do recently, to work with Agencies to integrate their website interfaces, and my impression is that it has been slow going.

Last week, Ian Duncan Smith launched his new ‘universal credit’ , which will incorporate Income Support, income- based Jobseeker’s Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Housing Benefit, Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit. That list of benefits implicates Job Centre Plus, Local authorities, and HMRC for a start.

I think the Department of Work and Pensions would do well to pay attention to Canada’s experience. Why wouldn't the Universal Credit only be the beginning of an effort at increased service integration? As part of that path, Britain might need its very own clunkily named Council of those that lead organisations doing public sector service delivery.

I’ll be interested to know if my Canadian interviewees agree with my impression of the PSSDC!

And what was the point of it all again?

I’ve taken some time at the end of this part of my fellowship to reflect. I’m ensconced in a wooden cabin in Arizona, with just WiFi, deer and squirrels to distract me.

It's the spiritual aspect of 'wholeness' that has caught my attention in the last few days. The picture, by the way, is of the rocks at Sedona, which I visited on Wednesday. Sedona has all sorts of spiritual resonances.

I’m staying on the land of a very interesting gentleman called Bodhi, who has travelled a lot, and read a lot, exploring ideas about spirituality and human consciousness. A couple of nights ago, Bodhi pointed me in the direction of the text, ‘I Am That’, the Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. This text encourages the seeker to go beyond the mind and experience the self, to focus on the question, “Who am I”. I am summarising something I haven’t finished reading (and indeed something I don’t entirely understand. Though that, apparently, is the booby prize compared to awareness!), but let me have a go.

Maharaj says that pain and pleasure are just an endless source of either indolence or restlessness, a cycle where you cannot know your true self, which is joyful awareness of universal consciousness. If you come to the ‘now’ rather than the past (memory) or the future (desire based on memory), then you can hope to find pure joy. The sense of separateness between oneself and another is an illusion. Pain and pleasure come from the mind, rather than true awareness of consciousness. There is only oneself in the present moment, and “I” and “another” are actually the same thing. We are all one.

Eckhart Tolle seems to be getting at something similar in his book, The Power of Now. You surrender to the now - whether that be suffering or joy - and just be, rather than do.

Is the implication of all this, therefore, that you should just let the world ‘be’ as it is? That you can’t possibly assess the 'appropriateness' of someone else’s joy or suffering, and you shouldn’t try to influence it?

Although much of the advice in these texts I find very compelling (certainly release from fear is very attractive!) I find myself resisting as well. Where does helping another come in to this? Is that just dismissed as ‘doing’ as opposed to ‘being’? If someone is suffering, is their suffering an illusion, something for which one should not take responsibility? Is my yearning to improve the lot of those in the world an unnecessary and pointless ego trip? (I do wonder!)

I want the world to be a better place. I want children to have excellent education so that they can express themselves and be healthy and happy and care for each other. I want us to conserve energy to allow us to sustain our existence on the planet, that we can continue to enjoy our environment, deer and sq

uirrels included. In particular I want people at work to feel that their work is meaningful and they are free to do it well. We all desire autonomy (the desire to be self-directed), mastery (the urge to get better at stuff) and purpose ( see the RSA animated lecture for a compelling exposition of this). I so want to be an instrument of these things for others. To me, tackling these challenges require us to engage in a complex world, which in turn means they merit understanding, collaborative work, joint effort. Certainly all those I have interviewed are passionate, keen to change the world so that it is a better place. Is it worth it?

Maharaj says, possibly not:

Whatever work you have undertaken -- complete it. Do not take up new tasks. Unless it is called for by a concrete situation of suffering and relief from suffering. Find yourself first, and endless blessings will follow. Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of profits.... The only help worth giving is freeing from the need for further help. Repeated help is no help at all. Do not talk of helping another, unless you can put him beyond all need of help.

I reflected with Bodhi about all this today. As I described various experiences I had had in the last year, he kept bringing me back to what that meant for my fellowship.

I started by saying, "I had an experience, earlier this year, of working on the question of self-love for a weekend," I said. "In the process, I realised I had to welcome and love all of me - even the bits I considered pathetic, unimpressive, weak, unpleasant, bitter, selfish. It was difficult."

Bodhi said, "Some people say that to criticise yourself is to criticise divine perfection! Now, from that space of self-love, what would that mean for collaboration?"

I thought for a second. I remembered being in that place of acceptance, of big-ness and lack of fear. "It's almost like, you wouldn't need to "collaborate". A formal effort at collaboration would be unnecessary. Everyone would just come and be whole, and offer their gifts. Things would change just because you were being at your most expanded."

Then my thoughts moved on. "I feel like I've been looking for something these last few weeks. A sort of holy grail. I want to find a partnership , or a constellation of organisations and people that exists like that, where people feel welcomed in their wholeness, and they in turn see from the whole. It doesn't have a guiding mind, it's sort of organic, although I'm guessing it may need some sort of container to make it safe. Service Ontario felt like it was the closest to 'nirvana', so to speak, but there was still a huge amount of change management effort going in. I'm looking for something more creative and less imposed. People know what to do inherently, and they feel like they're creating something bigger between them.The closest I've come is hearing about Tonya's model at Toronto's Centre for Social Innovation. But that's for nonprofits and even then it could verge on the 'guiding mind' bit if you weren't careful. It's too scary for a bureaucracy. You'd have to give up so much power."

Bodhi, 'Well that's the edge then. What is scary for a bureaucracy? Maybe that's what is worth doing? What would it like to be in a big organisation, 'being' rather than 'doing', noticing where those connections, those authentic exchanges between people were, and giving them attention? Following the joy?"

Now that made me think....

Is it only the person in charge that sees the whole picture?

It’s election time in the USA. This morning, the state of New Mexico (where I am at the moment) heard that its Democrat Governor was making way for a Republican. Some of the officials I’ve been meeting this week aren’t too sure if they’re going to have a job once the new Governor settles in. The extent of political appointees for executive functions is much greater here than in the UK.

As far as ensuring that government agencies work successfully together, my impression is that this isn’t exactly a recipe for success. I’ve heard the same story a couple of times from my interviewees who are involved with State government, or indeed with New York City.

A very senior leader, maybe a Commissioner or Special Advisor, is appointed by the Governor or Mayor or First Lady. They’re an enthusiast for collaboration, and they set up a structure whereby they force agencies to start coming together. In addition, the Governor or Mayor makes a point of challenging their commissioners at Cabinet level over how successfully they’re working in collaboration. They even get agreement on a set of data that shows the extent to which the City or the State is achieving a particular outcome, and they use this to further challenge what is really going on, and collaboration improves. Further down the food chain, key officials work out technical compromises between departments.

(One of the ones I like, which is a good example, is where those planning prisoner discharge in New York City were very reluctant to let the Child Support Agency people near their ex prisoners. They didn’t want to ‘give up’ their convicts to child support, thereby leaving the ex prisoners with even more debt on leaving prison. But the Commissioner saw a win-win, so persuaded Child Support to offer very gentle repayment schedules to the former prisoners. The key officials made sure this worked in practice, and that the discharge planners were bought in to the process.)

So, this is all well and good. What does collaboration need? Strong leadership. A commitment to working collaboratively. Creativity in the face of conflict. Holding people’s feet to the fire.

But then the collaboration enthusiast moves on. Maybe, like in the State of Virginia, the Governor’s term of office is only limited to one term of four years. Or maybe the leader gets to thinking, I’ve been doing this for 6 or 10 years, and I need a change.

What then? In one place I visited, they were clear this had been really problematic. “Performance, and the collaboration, went on a plateau.” Another said, “We did stick with it, even without the leadership. We’ve had regional roundtables. But it’s easy to forget, easy to get in to silo’s again.”

That left me thinking, there has to be a way to sustain the desire to collaborate. It has to be more than just strong leadership that makes this happen. How do you embed it into a culture?

The first clue I got to how to answer this came in my visit to the Corporation for Supportive Housing in New Haven, Connecticut. They talked about a collaboration that had been going for 15 years, trying to prevent homelessness in ex-offenders. A key success factor had been having a number of actors who ‘saw from the whole’, who weren’t just the key commissioners of service. For them, it was what they calle

d the OPM. I think this is the Office of Policy and Management, and it seemed to perform a similar function to the UK's treasury, in that it co-ordinated budgeting. It therefore incentivised agencies to co-operate through funding structures. They also had an independent, non-profit agency, the CSH themselves, sitting on the collaborative and looking at the big picture.

Aha, I thought. So along with the convening power of the leader in those earlier examples, what the leader is doing is ‘seeing from the whole’. And to try and embed that in to your culture, you can ensure that its in other actors’ job descriptions that they have to ‘see from the whole’ as well.

I then started wondering about the holy grail. Would it be possible to have the whole system seeing from the part and the whole at the same time?

In the UK Border Agency, my caseworkers would often be asked to do several things at once. They’d need to conclude a case quickly, and needed to make sure that the ‘control’ aspects were suitably attended to - background checks, following up intelligence, etc. As far as possible we tried to prevent putting productivity and control in conflict with each other. But it isn’t always easy. I popped in on the UK's visa office in New York when I was there, and this was definitely a live issue. Of course it’s easier to set a target for turnaround times than it is to set a target for preventing undesirable people coming to the UK. So sometimes the system can get a bit biased in favour of the simple metric rather than seeing ‘the whole’.

How do you do get every actor, including frontline staff, to see from the part and the whole, I wondered to myself?

Service Canada’s answer was to put service and the citizen at the heart of their junior staff’s work, rather than just administration. They re-trained over 5000 staff, re-classified their profession as service rather than administration, changed the competencies that they were promoting people on, and had a massive engagement and communication effort on the part of senior managers, ensuring that the vision of being service oriented was embedded.

I saw another fascinating example in the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto, which has a constellation approach to organising non-profit groups when doing joint advocacy. Tonya Surman turned the idea of who's in the lead, completely on its head, and deliberately set up a structure to honour 'chaos and complexity'. Her guiding principles were to 'break rules', 'be provocative' and 'have fun'. (The picture below is of one floor in the Centre for Social Innovation, a place where lots of different organisations can rent a hot desk, or an office, and work from the same shared space.)

In her model, there would be one 'magnetic attractor' - an issue that pulled lot

s of different organisations and people towards it. (In Tonya's case, this was toxicity and children's health). Those that were attracted would be in the 'ecosystem'. You couldn't choose who was in that ecosystem, or who your partners were, it was simply whoever was interested - so it might include the producers of the toxins as well as those campaigning against them. Then self-organising action teams would coalesce around sub-themes. In Tonya's case they'd had an action team on 'mercury', one on 'education' and one on 'policy', and others too. From each self-organising action team, there would be a representative on a stewardship council. The stewardship council was deliberately charged with 'looking after the ecosystem'. So people who served on it would have their own partial view of their action team AND be charged with looking at things from the whole. There was a secretariat for the stewardship council but this was deliberately in a third party and was not attached to any organisation in the ecosystem. The Secretariat's role was to incubate and support the stewardship group. You can read a lot more about this model in Tonya's article.

So, my mind spun with whether you could apply this to a government collaboration. The attraction? All the people who are interested in a theme self-organise. There is a significant group of people who are charged with 'looking after the ecosystem', and they are not all the people with power or money, they're just the people that care the most and have the expertise. Those people are spread liberally around the ecosystem. The downside? As government, you'd be highly reluctant to 'let go of the power' and let the self-organising principle do its stuff. What if they didn't focus on the minister's (aka the public's) priorities? What if you had to work with people that you really didn't want to work with, who were angry and undermining?

But what a lot of food for thought!