Fashions change in confusing ways. We have a government that is preaching Localism and the Big Society: the devolution of choice (and responsibility?) to the lowest levels and the involvement of all in those choices. On the other hand, much of the decision-making is being increasingly centralised. So what is the best solution?
The present thesis is that the country will lift itself out of recession when bright, sparky entrepreneurs create dynamic new companies and organisations. Small companies display a lightness of touch, creative passion and an ability to grow and adapt quickly. Big companies, in this narrative, can be slow and cumbersome, as difficult to turn around as an ocean liner.
The stock market does not always agree with this analysis. When a large company swallows up a smaller rival the share price goes up: efficiencies will be made behind the scenes, more will be obtained out of existing customer lists, the smaller company will benefit from the wider experience and access of the larger.
On the other hand, when the asset stripper comes along and separates out a large company, then this will provide focus, allow people to concentrate more on their core business, cut out wasteful communication costs. The share price goes up.
The public sector is going through a similar exercise at the moment. Quangos were created as arms-length units which could focus on specific issues and which could do things at arm's length from ministers - thus protecting fragile posteriors from the need for real understanding and from flak over unpopular decisions. Perish the thought that quangos were also a way of getting around civil service head count.
Small, light-footed quangos are no longer flavour of the times: no, we must get rid of as many as possible. The result has been a series of super-quangos. Their share prices, if they had one, would immediately go up, never mind that they are now likely to be further from their real customers and less sensitive to their needs.
We can make savings from putting quangos together, say ministers. We need to cut their expenditure budgets and demand administrative savings.
Doing these two things at once was a cute political move. Cutting the budgets of existing quangos by say 10% would have produced howls of protest from the special interest groups concerned but tell a quango that it is to be abolished and combined with another and magically the special interest group is left isolated, concentrating so hard on ensuring that the 'work should continue' that they completely miss the fact that the budget is being cut by 50% in the process.
What is the consequence of this change? The new quango is intended to be smaller - leaner in public sector jargon - than the previous two or three. With a net reduction in head count, the quango staff are even further from the action than before. They are less able to give time to a proper consideration of what is going on: there is simply too much of it.
Because budgets have been cut there is less money to spend anyway and therefore there are likely to be more disgruntled clients but never mind, they are out in the sticks and their individual loss will not rock the ship of state.
So how do they react to the new world in which they are separated further from their clients or interest groups, in which they have fewer informed staff and less money to share? There are two obvious strategies: find an organisation at 'the next layer down' or re-introduce the famous challenge fund.
The challenge fund
Organisations need to be more focused (on our agenda - unspoken). We cannot go on giving money across the board. We need to stimulate targeted change. Let's create a challenge fund.
This suits the centralists of course and produces a centripetal force with descions spiralling inwards to the centre, quite the opposite of Localism. Centralists can choose the projects and announce them - nothing like an announcement for getting publicity for the giver - while the recipient's agenda is tortured off track by the need to respond to the often weird requirements of the new scheme. We want to you make a real and sustainable change in the number of people of Lithuanian origin that you attract to your museum/visitor attraction/sports fields. Given that this is the only money available, we, the clients, simply say yes to the absurd request and hope that everyone will have forgotten the original purpose by the time the scheme is over, hoping that we can cream off enough money from the the targeted grant to pay the electricity bill for that is what is really needed.
The next layer down
We need someone to do the work we used to do but can no longer do because of a shortage of staff: enter the 'bridge organisation' as the code for Localism. This is typically a small charitable body with an enthusiasm for some part of the quango's work. Its pitch to the quango is along the lines of 'You provide us with funds and we can deliver your BlahBlah agenda'. The poor overworked, under-resourced quango is all too grateful for such things and signs a cheque. The bridge organisation rushes around the quango's former clients, looking for people who will do their bidding. So they create a new mini-quango. The clients have their agendas disrupted and are even further from the funding body while the bridge organisation takes the credit for the excellent BlahBlah work.
There used to be such things: they were called 'regional offices' but many of these were abolished in the last round of slimming down quangos.
How much better if the money did not have to cross a bridge.
Another solution is to preach partnership to a group of disparate bodies: if you all worked in partnership to a single agenda then ... The unspoken agenda completes the sentence we would have fewer people to deal with therefore might just about be able to cope.
No one asks whether partnership is a good thing. It is the thinking of the acquisitive company which hoovers up small entrepreneurial businesses to create a conglomerate. set your clock for the moment when someone suggests breaking up theses behemoths in order to give greater focus, allow people to concentrate more on their core business, cut out wasteful communication costs, allow greater freedom of local decision-making.
As Augustus De Morgan - I always thought it was Hilaire Belloc - said:
'Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
