The initial inversion is important. If public services are by default provided by people for each other, then need is defined by users, by providers and by what works. The inversion is to allow small amounts of public money to flow to anything that works, rather than battling through a political allocation process. As you point out, Russell, a public service is not necessarily a service provided by government whose parameters must be authorised and negotiated centrally. Lets try to map this out.

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Hi Russell, I agree with your post. Although I retired from public service last year it was under stressful circumstances that I suspect may be more typical than unique. I have also been researching the literature but only for personal interest. I can make significant time available for a collaborative venture. Good wishes David

—–Original Message—– From: russellgundry Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2015 10:43 AM To: modelreport-tUTs2X9ZMP@model.report Subject: Reinterpreting the governance of public services [Events] [People] [Question] [Economy] [Education] [Healthcare] [Society]

I’m interested in reinterpreting the governance of public services through systems thinking.

The basic hypothesis - successful organic systems (examples include the human body and the ant colony) do not require project managers or layers of bureaucratic management to tell them how to exist sustainably. Could the same be true of a public services ‘system’?

A lot of literature exists on this subject and John, Ben, Aidan and I shared some initial thoughts. A question arose - could we explore this topic further through a targeted working session?

I’d venture that the provision of more effective, efficient and efficacious public services may, as a topic, generate sufficiently broad interest but not cause participants to feel railroaded.

As problems we might consider statements like: “A large, inefficient public sector is not a prerequisite for social benefit, and private sector organisations do not need to be solely motivated by profit” “Public services (as opposed to public sector) can be a mixed ecosystem that requires minimal regulation and interference” (as a service relied upon by the public, financial services could be included within scope) “Only a systemic response can enable public services to deliver better outcomes” (with all kinds of caveats around the word ‘better’)

A principle could be: - To utilise the collective experience and knowledge of a group of experienced practitioners to the utmost benefit

I’m keen to hear what others think.

Best,

Russell

Vote: https://model.report/s/4mhuju

comments via LinkedIn (Alec Fraher): Alec Fraher A brave question, and proposed discussion. What of the principle of solidarity, what of trust and what of rule making/breaking? btw the I live in a self organising community.

Alec Fraher this maybe of interest? https://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eacademia%2Eedu%2F11783472%2F_New_Public_Governance_or_Complex_Governance_Networks_&urlhash=BhAN&_t=commentUrl

Alec Fraher see Bojan Radej work on LinkedIn for commentary on such programmes in the Balkans https://si.linkedin.com/pub/bojan-radej/15/276/490

Based on the comments it seems there is sufficient interest in taking this discussion forward…

Tom, Philip and I held an informal design meeting to consider how we might make that happen. The suggestion is to run a lightly structured collaborative working session, targeting a short Sunday in London, in early July.

To provide a reasonably congruent starting point, we could introduce a few provocations, along the lines of: - Current images of organisation will fail catastrophically - We have an onus to repatriate existing forms of organisation - The only way to design better outcomes is to design better forms of organisation

…and see where the discussion goes from there, albeit with modicum of structure.

Still interested?

Best,

Russell

Russell,

I can support this, although not taking on a central role, the things I could probably do are:

• contact like minded folk and let them know about the event (If I have a URL/flyer or such)
• post up relevant material here on MR
• potentially help on the day
• maybe design ideas for the day or looking over designs for comments.
• I have a few commitments which are yet to be finalised with dates so cannot yet confirm anything.

I think you should get a date and go ahead then ask for help along the way, there are at least 3 others who have offered help here so I think you will be fine.

Best

Tom

Russel,

It is a tempting reasoning:

successful organic systems (examples include the human body and the ant colony) do not require project managers or layers of bureaucratic management to tell them how to exist sustainably

But we should be careful when assuming that organic systems and social systems, although they have some common properties, are regulated in the same way.

Regarding public services, they have a different nature depending where in the policy cycle they are provided. When it’s in the beginning, at policy formulation, they are in political domain which works according to its norms, and there is a big delay in the feedback loop, hence the adaptation mechanisms work differently than they would in a private company. Then public services provided within policy execution phase also have their own nexi, for example a public service in Healthcare is quite different than a service provided by the Local government.

I’m interested to join in the exploration of this topic.

This sounds like a very worthy and interesting inquiry!

My perspective on this would include these observations:

• systems require organisation. Organisation always has overhead costs, risks, imperfections, blind spots, and the potential of the organising system to stop serving the system and start serving itself
• organic systems can be elegant and beautifully designed, and have also emerged to be that way over aeons of random evolution, mutation, failure, and extinction. Organic systems can also fail
• humans designing a system that learns from and mimics organic systems are starting from their own intentionality and planning and proposing that this is superior to the previous (organic?) development of the existing system
• many systems of public services exist even in our own relatively homogeneous society, few of which are provided by government with parameters authorised and negotiated centrally. They include ‘families’ and ‘businesses’
• I have never seen or heard of a private sector organisation solely motivated by profit
• if politics didn’t exist, human societies would invent it These are, I think, all interesting points arising from the original question :-)

We will have to be /extremely/ careful not to be stating our terms in ways which predetermine our answer because they arise from theory or dogma. You may say that this is always the case!

One of my enquiries in our discussion was: should we run a special SCiO open day on ‘systems thinking and social justice’? Do you see this as part of the same conversation, or as a different conversation?

In response to both questions, we might do worse than examine Tony Benn’s ‘five questions to ask of power’: - what power do you have? - how did you get it? - in whose interests do you exercise it? - to whom are you accountable? - how do we take it away from you?