The cuts are coming in. It is not a question of if; it is more a question of how deep. Central Government Departments have been running modeling to determine the impact of differing levels of cuts. The worry is that specific figures are being addressed and whilst this can be a useful mechanism to achieve cuts it can lead to short term decisions that could damage the long term delivery of
Public Services. A prime example of this was the 20% cut “levied” on what was the Defence Logistic Organisation (DLO) in the late 90s. A figure the DLO had to aim for but it saw some bizarre decisions taken that subsequently had to be overturned or re-examined years later.
My concern is that the same mistake will be made this time around. The forthcoming General Election has meant that no formal reviews can be undertaken as we enter the “Purdah Period” – when bad news is not permitted. The reality is that reviews are underway and savings have already been identified, it is just that the redundancies cannot be announced. The Senior Civil Service is too large, shared services need to be introduced and programmes need to be shelved.
What is actually required is a series of major short, sharp reviews that are predicated on Government Policy. A Strategic Defence review that is aligned to the delivery of foreign and home policy and a number of end-to-end process reviews to examine service areas, again predicated on the delivery of policy. The silo approach of Departmental cuts will deliver savings but this misses the bigger opportunity to shape the services to deliver policy which will see even greater savings.
A prime example of short term behaviors will be the inevitable guidance issued across Departments to cut costs by reducing the reliance on external assistance. This course of action looks good if redundancy programmes are underway, but misses the point about actual delivery. Any number of NAO reports make clear that Departments are failing to deliver projects. Current executive teams do not have the bandwidth to deliver ‘business as usual’ let alone change initiatives and major projects, so how are they expected to cope with less resources, which is what will happen. Delivery will suffer but savings will be achieved. This meets the short term imperative, sends the right message to the workforce but will not pay dividends in the long term.
Process reviews are urgently required not Departmental reviews and % targets.