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.