Invest In Rad Tape To Save The NHS!

The State of Process – The Process State – Maybe politicians read PB. I do wish they would read @Cyclefree’s headers, though.

So the Chancellor is talking about investing in productivity to save money? Hmmmmm…. 

But before we think of the inevitable comedy of failure, what could we do different?

What is the problem

Chaotic and excessive processes slow work down – staff become a servant to the process, rather than the other way round. Talk to anyone in government service provision – they all speak of being loaded down with excessive and futile processes.

Attempts to “get rid of admin staff” have just shovelled the problems onto the people trying to do the actual jobs.

Why have previous attempts failed?

Big bang changes never work. Over the decades I have participated in a number of doomed efforts of this type
External consultancies are not the problem, as such – it’s buy in from the organisation that is supposed to change.

So what might actually work?

The People

Firstly, we need to get real experts. They cost money. While there have been some attempts to bring in expertise at realistic rates, by giving entrants higher banding, this is not enough. A high end software developer can get £150K. A smaller number of higher quality people is always better. This has been dealt with in the past by using consultants. Apparently, paying £150K would be an abomination, but paying a consultancy firm £2K per day for someone’s services is AOK.

Change is an ongoing process. Improving process is continuous job, that will end when the sun grows cold. We need to employ these people full time. Give these people real power within the organisation.

The Method

You have small teams of experts, permanent employees, with some of the team (at least) having seriously high rank. Think of an internal consultancy, within each department/organisation. A mix of skills, domain, IT, OR, project management. When they need more bodies, they will bring in contractors, so the knowledge generated remains within the permanent team. Collectively, the teams in a organisation come up with a long term plan. The pieces of this are broken down into digestible chunks. So the change is to a few processes/systems at a time. The work is iterative – a steady stream of improvement, which is never expected to end. This builds experience within the team and means a continuous stream of work.

The Goal

– Processes matched to requirements, not themselves.
– User friendly tools and processes that are ergonomic. Simple, self evident inputs, clear evidence of status of work etc.
– Make processes transparent – perhaps use (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Process_Model_and_Notation) implementations to make the processes clear and the state of individual tasks evident.
– Shift admin work to IT systems, backed by better qualified staff to handle the exceptions.

Why don’t we do this?

The major problem is buy in. We are taking about destroying a lot of low end jobs. Shovelling paper in circles builds empires – in much of government your status is defined by how many people you manage.

Unions will see a reduction in the lower paid workers (offset by a smaller number of the higher paid). Higher pay is less corralled with union membership.

Ministers want quick wins. And when the minister is moved, the policy can be carefully lost in the shuffle.

What I describe above requires a change in philosophy – a permanent and fairly expensive investment in productivity improvement. But this one might actually work

Malmesbury