Joined-up government no joke in Wales

Friday, August 15, 2008

The UK government could learn a lot about cooperation and partnership by studying how the Welsh Assembly goes about its business, Dame Gill Morgan tells Alison Thomas

Though parts of Whitehall may still be struggling with the concept, Wales really is another country. They do things differently there. And for Dame Gill Morgan, the new Welsh Assembly Government permanent secretary, its distinctiveness is summed up as hwyl – a word perhaps best translated as a combination of spirit, zest and enthusiasm.

In Wales, geography, history and social tradition combine to give the opportunity of creating a distinctive system of governance, says Dame Gill, former NHS Confederation chief executive, who also sat on the Beecham Review, which examined the functioning of the assembly and Welsh local government and their relationship to the wider public sector.

The ambition of that mandate was inspiring, she says. "It asked us to take into account all the organisations that have to be involved in the governance of a small country and how we put it together in a way that really gets the maximum benefit.

"The key issues included how we work together effectively across and within organisations to get more bang for the buck, how a small country creates an enterprising and innovative public sector which crosses organisational boundaries, with the aspiration to improve, and how we know what we are achieving, measure success and performance and communicate that to the citizen.

"The breadth of the ambition together with the enormity of the opportunity is why I am here, and it’s exciting. We really do have the opportunity to make Wales a beacon of success in terms of how you govern countries."

And in governance, small can be beautiful, says Dame Gill, who was born in the Rhondda Valley.

"We all tend know each other, which is an advantage because effective partnerships depend on how you know people, in how many different contexts; also we are very close to what delivery is. The citizens who are affected by what goes on in the assembly government are our friends, our families and we are very tied into what it feels like to be a citizen in this country. So getting the best out of that connectivity is a real opportunity."

Partnerships have to be chosen with care, however. "Too many partnerships can become talking shops," she says. "We need to use partnership for those wicked issues that cross organisational boundaries and that can only be solved by putting people in a room to think differently and think across boundaries. The assembly govern ment has a key role in helping identify what those issues are but also in helping to set the standards and the expectations that enable people to come together and enable them to deliver in a transparent way."

Coalition government in Wales also involves a new partnership approach, which Dame Gill says is proving "a very positive experience".

"There is clarity about the agenda that the parties have signed up to and mutual com-mitment to delivering that agenda. I have sensed a willingness to solve problems and there is some real learning coming out that I think is about political maturity.

"Because of its political nature, its population, its scale, Wales has to be based on partnerships. We don’t have enormous amounts of money to throw at having duplicated systems and processes so we have to live the mantra of connectivity and actually make it hap-pen in reality – and that starts at the top with the coalition."

Though the current model of 22 unitary councils in Wales has been criticised for producing some very small local authorities, and consultation is under way on consolidating the 22 local health boards into eight bigger bodies, Dame Gill says there is no magic size of organisation to get results.

"I think we worry about size far too much," she says. "If you are small then your task is to work collectively, to keep costs down, to get economies of scale, and look at sharing. If you are large, the first question is how do you work locally? If you are small you have more emphasis on collective action, if you are large you have more emphasis on getting local action, and the search for the perfect size or the perfect scale can be the enemy of actually delivering effective public services."

There’s a lot to be said for working with what you’ve got unless there is a very good reason to change, she argues.

Is this a lesson from her days of grappling with constant reorganisation in the English NHS? She replies with the diplomacy of a civil servant: "The two countries are starting around health and a lot of other things from a different philosophical base. You have to make sure that the underlying principles are appropriate to the place you are serving and Wales is a very different place, in terms of its geography and history, from England. It has a much stronger history of social solidarity and policies have to resonate with those cultural differences."

Also, the English emphasis on competition and choice simply doesn’t work in much of Wales because of the geographical barriers to exercising that choice, she points out.

She concedes that there are lessons – or warn-ings – from England, in health and other sectors, about the pitfalls of frequent structural change, and "what not to do" on target setting.

"You can distort activity by being unsophisticated in how you set and use targets and Wales has avoided some of those mistakes. On the other hand, there are also are some good lessons from England on how information can be shared with citizens and make them feel more empowered and influential."

But Wales has plenty to be proud of in the way it is tackling issues such as regeneration and entrenched problems of social deprivation and poor health, she argues. "There are things we are doing that people in England should be running down to see, because actually we can knock the best in England into a cocked hat. I have never seen anything as good as some of the community development programmes, the work around regeneration – not just in terms of the buildings, but regenerating the spirit, the hwyl, of the community.

"We have real strengths here of which we can be proud and one of the frustrations of coming here and seeing so much excellence is that people aren’t trotting across the border to have a look at it. Part of the challenge is about how we shout about our successes. As a nation I think we are perhaps too diffident and too much influenced by the more in-your-face English attitude. We ought to be talking about our excellence much more."

As a former GP, hospital physician and director of public health, Dame Gill says she sees her new job as being about creating a healthy society in the broadest sense.

"That’s about raising aspirations and expectations, education and skills, good jobs, good quality health services, transport and a wonderful environment all coming together so that people can live healthy and fulfilling lives. And that’s what Wales can do, deliver, feel and see much more immediately than you would in England. What makes Wales special and unique is that all those things that come together around communities can be influenced from here. Therefore the onus is on us in a way that it isn’t on any other government to really make joining up and working together succeed. In England joined-up government has always been, certainly within the health service, a slight joke. In Wales there is nothing else.

"We have to capitalise on our ability to join up, and the excitement of that for the civil service and the public service in Wales is just enormous. We can get that connectivity; we can really tackle the problems that are almost insoluble for other parts of the country. For us, they are within our grasp. I don’t know what the solution is today, but I know that around this organisation there are people who do, and I know that they can get into the same office and sort it, whereas you would be completely lost if you were sitting in Whitehall."