Concerns about being penalised by central government for failure are stopping councils from fully sharing their experiences of redesigning local services, according to a new study by the Institute for Government.
Researchers looked at how local authorities exchanged insight on their service integration work with peer organisations and found that in some cases a fear of being judged harshly by Whitehall departments contributed to a reluctance to acknowledge mistakes that others could learn from.
The study looked at examples of integration in social care, health, and welfare and found that barriers to openly sharing details of failures as well as successes risked a repetition of past mistakes that could stall government plans to rein in public spending.
Public sector staff more worried about jobs after Brexit vote — survey
Public service failures need system-wide response – Institute for Government
Ignore the frontline at your peril, former perm sec Sir Peter Housden warns public sector reformers
The report authors said interviews with practitioners found that local areas were particularly keen to hear “messy” evidence about pitfalls that authorities had encountered which they could then learn from — but that such information was often hidden.
“Interviewees explained that they can be reluctant to share progress, challenges and frustrations in forums convened by central government, regulators or national arm’s-length bodies, because of concerns that the information could be used to assess and sanction performance,“ they said.
“This is particularly the case when it is unclear whether a national or central government team is playing an assurance or support function.
“We heard that one particular learning scheme had low take-up because local areas were anxious that any information shared could be used to criticise performance, even though reassurance that this would not occur was provided at the outset.”
The report, “Public Service Reform: Supporting learning to integrate services and improve outcomes”, says it is vital that government departments and regulators encourage peer-led learning models that deliver real-time insight on challenges and setbacks faced by practitioners.
It says such a result would be best achieved through face-to-face learning opportunities that are peer or sector-led.
And it urged central government to use the resulting insights to make changes to the national policy and regulatory, legislative and funding frameworks that currently hinder local public service integration.
IfG programme director Dr Jo Casebourne said that, at a time when capacity in local government was declining, it was more important than ever to ensure that useful information on service redesign was shared between councils.
“Better collaboration between local organisations is crucial to improving public services,“ she said.
“But those on the ground still don’t have the support they need.
“Particularly with money and resources so stretched, the government must invest properly and only fund programmes that we know actually work.”