Reform of the state has to deliver for people
Speech on reforming the public sector delivered by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden at University College London, Stratford.
Thank you for joining me today.
As you바카라 사이트檒l have seen, on Thursday we set out our Plan for Change: key milestones that we want to reach over the next few years.
They are about what we want to do. But just as important is how we do it, and that바카라 사이트檚 what I want to talk about today.
This question of how is important because for 바카라 사이트 to deliver what it wants there has to be reform of the state itself.
We have to be relentlessly curious about how the world is changing and constantly asking how that change can be applied in the public sphere.
And if we don바카라 사이트檛 display that curiosity and just keep governing as usual, we are not going to achieve what we want to achieve.
I바카라 사이트檓 going to begin by saying something that politicians don바카라 사이트檛 say very often (though they probably should) which is that I haven바카라 사이트檛 got all this figured out from beginning to end.
And of course it바카라 사이트檚 hard to make a speech like this without some echoes of the past.
Too often the debate falls into a distorted debate about whether or not someone is attacking civil servants.聽聽
I work with hard working and diligent civil servants every day. They want to do well for their country and for the public.聽
The people are good but the systems and structures they work in are too often outdated and make it hard for them to deliver.聽
And no one will welcome changing that more than civil servants themselves.
Do we think people like the fact that they바카라 사이트檝e gone to a lot of meetings and feel like they are banging their head against a brick wall?聽
Of course they don바카라 사이트檛. They want to achieve and we have to help them do it.聽 It is right that we expect people to focus on delivery and right that we drive the system towards that goal.聽聽
So I바카라 사이트檓 not here today to talk about what lanyards people wear or to open up another chapter in a culture war.聽
Those are just pointless distractions. Gimmicks from politicians who don바카라 사이트檛 have serious answers to serious questions.
I바카라 사이트檓 more interested in an answer rather than a grievance.
Because reform of the state is about delivering for people.聽
The opportunities are huge. Faster decision making. Cutting waste.聽 The elimination or at least speeding up of repetitive tasks. Use of data to make sure services are more suited to individual circumstances. Better value for money for taxpayers and better services for citizens.聽
But right now, it often doesn바카라 사이트檛 feel like that. We know a lot about the problem because people can see it every day.
To state the obvious, some things just don바카라 사이트檛 work properly. Will your train arrive on time, or at all? How long will have you have to wait for a knee or hip replacement? Can you drive your car down a road without bouncing through potholes?聽
SEND, children바카라 사이트檚 social care, temporary accommodation: none are currently serving people the way they should, while at the same time, costs are going up.聽
Rising costs and bad outcomes is a bad equation all round.聽
Add in a backdrop of too much political chaos in recent years and too many broken promises and something more insidious takes hold.聽
And that something is not an opinion about whether or not a 바카라 사이트 is doing well but a doubt that politics and government can deliver much at all.聽
That is a loss of faith to which we should all pay heed.聽
And it comes against a backdrop where taxpayers have been paying more in, but often feel they are not getting more out.
The old debate was focussed almost entirely on the size of the budget. The only announcement that mattered was the spending attached to it.聽
Any money that wasn바카라 사이트檛 바카라 사이트渘ew바카라 사이트� was thought not to count. And the beginning and the end of analysis was how much the budget was growing.
We need to ask more from ourselves than that. Of course resources matter. You can바카라 사이트檛 pay people for free and you can바카라 사이트檛 buy equipment or buildings for free.聽
But the size of the budget is not the only question. It바카라 사이트檚 what are you using it for, what will the outcome be, how will you organise people to make sure it happens.
At the Budget the Chancellor demanded efficiency and productivity savings of 2% across departments - and there will be more to come.聽聽
As we launch the next phase of the spending review at its heart must be reform of the state in order to do a better job for the public.聽
Twenty years ago, when Tony Blair made a speech about public service reform, Blockbuster Video and Toys R바카라 사이트� Us were still around.聽
AirBnB, WhatsApp and Spotify were not.聽
I바카라 사이트檝e picked on those three new companies deliberately. All three are now used by hundreds of millions of people around the world.聽
All three disrupted the industry they were in, profoundly changing how we think about travel, messaging and music.聽
All three harnessed the potential of new technology to shape and respond to people바카라 사이트檚 growing expectations.聽
And all three worked in radically different ways to the firms they were competing against. By doing so, they created services many people would now find hard to imagine living without.聽聽
What these companies did - along with others who have thrived in the internet era - was recognise a fundamentally different way to address complex problems.聽
In the digital age, you don바카라 사이트檛 have to work out precisely what you need to build at the start, and then start building it.聽
You can start with something small and try it out. Test it on people. Fix the problems. Change the design. Test it again. Throw it away and start again cheaply, if it doesn바카라 사이트檛 work. Tweak it again. And so on, and on, for as long as you provide the service.聽
Suddenly the most important question isn바카라 사이트檛 바카라 사이트楬ow do we get this right the first time?바카라 사이트� It바카라 사이트檚 바카라 사이트楬ow do we make this better by next Friday?바카라 사이트櫬�
Public services are complex. They involve many different interactions between many different actors within a system.聽
They involve people who don바카라 사이트檛 always behave the way the economists tell you, and have an infinite variety of needs which change over time.聽
Their needs often don바카라 사이트檛 finish. They are highly unpredictable, to the point when you can바카라 사이트檛 figure out how to do it upfront, even if you wanted to.聽
Now public servants are often very clever people. They can see around corners, spot and anticipate problems. But they are not all-knowing. And you cannot kill complexity with cleverness when it comes to improving public services.聽
We can바카라 사이트檛 figure it all out at the start, and then set the delivery train running. And the good news is we don바카라 사이트檛 have to.聽
Let바카라 사이트檚 take some encouragement from some things that have gone right.聽
You might remember that a few years ago the passport system was in a mess.聽
My constituency office, like many others, was inundated with requests from desperate families who could not get the system to respond to what should be a simple and basic request - to renew a passport in time to go on holiday.聽
But the state turned things around in three ways. First, by using the power of tech to modernise the system.聽
Second, by putting the user at the heart of that new digital service.聽
And third, after rolling out that system, by looking to improve and improve and improve. Not just implementing the system and saying, job done, mission accomplished.聽
But testing it, and adapting it, and continually improving it, until it does what the public needs it to do.聽
The roll-out of Universal Credit was, in the end, a similar story.聽
And it was very much a story of two halves.聽
In the early years it burned through hundreds of millions of pounds without achieving much.聽
The process was a familiar Whitehall one of a plan of how the system should work, asking officials to build it and then demanding those officials 바카라 사이트済rip바카라 사이트� delivery by writing lots and lots of reports about its progress.
That didn바카라 사이트檛 work and then came the reset, and the second half of the story.聽
They took Universal Credit out of the department and its one-size-fits-all culture, and set up a small team of around 30 people from mixed backgrounds.聽聽
Policy makers, digital people and those in charge of operational delivery, all in one team.
The priority was to get something that would work, start small and start learning.聽
So they started rolling out Universal Credit to a small number of people in Sutton, identifying where the issues were, and then improving the service as they went along.
It was a 바카라 사이트渢est and learn바카라 사이트� culture, and it freed up the team to be more honest about delivery, to make mistakes, but ultimately to roll out a service that actually worked.聽
And this is what we should be doing more of, and it is the approach that the DWP will take now as they set about changing how Job Centres work.聽
In the digital age, you don바카라 사이트檛 have to work out precisely what you need to build at the start, and then start building it.
These experiences show we can make the state think a little bit more like a start-up.聽
The question is why has this kind of thinking not been applied more widely? Why does it feel like the exception rather than the rule?聽
Well, to push it forward, at the Budget, the Chancellor allocated a 拢100 million Innovation Fund to deploy new test-and-learn teams around the country.
And today I can tell you more about what the next steps will be.
The first wave will begin in January.聽
It will be made up of small groups working in Manchester, Sheffield, Essex and Liverpool, in partnership with local authorities, mayors and their teams.聽
Those teams will be a mix of policy officials, data and digital people, and staff from local public services - and at first, they바카라 사이트檒l be tasked with tackling two challenges: temporary accommodation and family support.聽
On temporary accommodation, we want them to begin by looking at how we can reduce costs.聽
And on family support, they바카라 사이트檒l be looking at how family hubs can increase the number of disadvantaged families that they reach.聽
We바카라 사이트檙e not going to dictate how they do that.
The central point of these test-and-learns is that we set them a problem and then leave them to get on with it.聽
Give them the destination, and a compass - but not an exact routemap laying out precisely how to get there.
After that first wave, we바카라 사이트檒l expand the test-and-learns to other parts of the country, and start setting them bigger challenges. Like reducing the need for temporary accommodation in the first place, or finding new and effective ways to help people into work.
Each of these early projects is small, so they바카라 사이트檙e not going to reshape the state by themselves.
But if they work as a concept, they could help improve the way we work across the whole of government. They could start to rewire the state one test at a time.
Most importantly, they could make life a little bit easier for members of the public when they interact with the state - which would be a very welcome thing indeed.
And one other thing about this approach. It needs an appetite for risk. Some things won바카라 사이트檛 work properly first time. But if we are terrified of failure we will never innovate and we바카라 사이트檒l carry on doing what we바카라 사이트檝e always done.聽
The point is are you flexible enough to spot when things don바카라 사이트檛 work, stop and try something different.
We are on the cusp of the next technological revolution. AI is set to transform the way people work and the way data is used. And the state cannot afford to be left behind.
The huge benefits of technology including AI have to be felt in the delivery of public services as well as in the private sector
We바카라 사이트檙e already using AI in parts of government.聽
The Department for Education has funded an AI tool that can help teachers plan lessons; the FCDO uses digital tech to triage queries from British nationals abroad to the right civil servants to respond.聽
We should expand this where possible to make things quicker, easier and cheaper.
And we need the right people. A few years ago there was a call for weirdos and misfits in the system.聽 Whatever term you want to use we do want innovators, disruptors and original thinkers.聽
My message to creative thinkers is this is your chance to serve your country.聽
Use your brainpower and tech talents to fix some of the biggest problems we face today.
Britain needs you.
And if you choose to serve, I want government to empower you to help us deliver better - to move fast and build things.
People can start by applying for the next phase of our No.10 Innovation Fellows programme.
This is an idea for world-class technologists to come into central government for six-to-12 month 바카라 사이트淭ours of Duty바카라 사이트� and use their digital and data expertise to help us tackle a number of challenges.聽
They don바카라 사이트檛 have to have a whole career in the civil service, though they might of course choose to. But we want public service to be open to people who want to serve in this way for a limited time.聽
There have already been two waves of that programme. Recent fellows worked on tools to help the PM and others mitigate riots in real time, for example.
But for the next phase, more of these innovators will spend Tours of Duty working on the missions we have set out.聽
So if they want to apply, people from startups, academia and some of the world바카라 사이트檚 best tech companies could find themselves being asked to use the latest digital innovation to help cut waiting lists or to reduce violence against women and girls.聽
But tech expertise is not the only expertise we want.聽
We also want people working on the front lines of public services in communities across the UK.聽
Prison governors, social work heads, directors of children바카라 사이트檚 services - they are the ones on the ground who can see how things are working, where the obstacles are, and where a policy won바카라 사이트檛 survive contact with reality.
They have looked the people that depend on us in the eye, seen how the system has sometimes been broken 바카라 사이트� they have taken the frustrations home with them each week.聽
We want to give them the chance to be part of the solution.
So first, we will also be bringing in secondees - both frontline workers and digital and data experts - to work on our test-and-learn teams.
But I also think we could do something much more significant to attract talented people from outside of government.聽
I think it바카라 사이트檚 time to overhaul how recruitment is carried out across the Civil Service.聽
Right now, if you바카라 사이트檙e an outsider, the process can be mind bogglingly bureaucratic and off-putting.聽
Applications can take days to fill in, and if you don바카라 사이트檛 understand the civil service process, good external candidates can find it near impossible to jump through the hoops of 바카라 사이트渂ehaviours바카라 사이트� and 바카라 사이트渃ompetencies바카라 사이트� and 바카라 사이트渟uccess profiles바카라 사이트�.聽
Changing this should focus on the right things.聽 If you바카라 사이트檙e a coder, being asked to code is the critical question, not some of the things currently asked.
Let바카라 사이트檚 scrub the jargon and focus on what바카라 사이트檚 needed for the job.聽
As I said, this is just the start of the conversation. There is more thinking to be done on this, more work to do.聽聽
The world is undergoing huge changes around us, and the state needs to change with it.聽
I want the world outside Whitehall to take an interest in this too - thinktanks, business, unions, frontline workers and others.聽
This used to be an area of debate rich in energy and creativity but that바카라 사이트檚 not been so true in recent years.聽
So let us bring it back centre stage and ask some serious questions.
바카라 사이트 is being asked to do more and more, with more accountability. But is that driving a culture of checkers rather than doers?
How do we create a system with fewer and better rules?
How do we make use of the huge potential of AI?
How do we free up people to do the stuff that actually matters?
And how can we do more to attract the best people to come and work for government?聽
Sometimes since the election people have asked me, 바카라 사이트渋s it harder than you thought?바카라 사이트�
But apart from the obvious privilege of public service, the truth is this is a good time to be in 바카라 사이트.
When the world is on the threshold of such huge change, the possibility of using that change to make lives better and to do a better job for the public should motivate all of us in 바카라 사이트.
And that바카라 사이트檚 why this question of reform of the state is so important and why I wanted to speak to you about it today.聽
Thank you.