Author: Nick Booth

15th October 2010

Eric Pickles switches from local government targets to a list of data they should share

No great surprises in here, but a rough transcript of what Eric Pickles is saying:

We don’t need to waste time defining localism, it will strangle it.
Don’t salami slice, the old patterns of spencing wont return
Put everything under the spotlight and ask we do we really need the money to do.
Do we really need separate, planning, comms or chief executives?
Waste has shown a lack f respect towards the public and public money.
Greater transparency will revolutionise the way government works.
It will say to suppliers that the government is no longer there to be fleeced.
The public can judge public spending for themselves and perhaps public servants will take greater care when they know there will be an army of armchair auditors checking their working.
Much more radical:
Re-examine how every council works. There’s no point in wasting time on restructuring layers of authorities.
Birmingham is saving £430,000 a year sorting its own post
Worcestershire has counted 24 agencies working with young people and is looking to cut this down.
Tests – does it need to be done, does it provide value for money, are we the best people to be doing it.

It’s not my job to sit behind a desk like a puppet master pulling strings, instead I want to cut away those strings,
Hammersmith and Fulham came up with 100 bureaucratic burdens they are working against.
If councils working with residents want to set themselves goals that’s up to them, but National Targets mean councils are working ion this that matter to Whitehall. I’d rather councils tackle local issues.
A conservative estimate of the total for one local authority area is £7 million across 1500 indicators (including health policing etc)
Today I am scrapping Local Area Agreements. It’s up to local councils to keep or dump the indicators as they see fit.
We will just have one list of every bit of data the government needs from you.
We will give council’s freedom, power and responsibility. Stronger say on planning and a central role in the health service.
The localism bill will go further, through a general power of competence they will be able to do whatever they want to do. I want to make sure councils can take charge of their own money, borrow against future income, pool budgets across the public sector to tackle social problems. We have freed up £1 billion of ring fenced money.
I don’t want council’s checking with me on everything, some councils feel they cant do anything without my permission. We need a new culture of action and decisiveness.
There is going to be a lot less money. I will make sure that you have what you need to tackle problems with new powers. Local Governments natural instinct is to use innovation to adapt very quickly, most of the smart way to deal with deprivation or housing comes through local government.

11th October 2010

Stuff I've seen October 9th through to October 11th

These are my links for October 9th through October 11th:

Machine written sports reports Projects – Stats Monkey – By analyzing changes in Win Probability and Game Scores, the system can pick out the key plays and players from any baseball game. Second, the system includes a library of narrative arcs that describe the main dynamics of baseball games (as well as many other competitions): Was it a come-from-behind win? Back-and-forth the whole way? Did one team jump out in front at the beginning and then sit on its lead? The system uses a decision tree to select the appropriate narrative arc.
Too much money plays against government 2.0 – government 2.0 is more interesting – and useful – where the are scarce rather than abundant resources.
The Great Transition: what it means for Local Authorities « Nat Wei’s Blog – make cuts intelligently rather than in a knee jerk fashion, safeguarding effective and connective local community projects and other external suppliers rather than avoiding to make savings closer to home or spinning out functions as mutuals or social enterprises – at least until many of them have been able themselves to transition to a more diversified financial position.
Community Media Activist: The Spectre of Community and the Big Society – The Big Society, if there is such a thing, or spirit, or programme, will most likely emerge from the evolution of community, and community development, rather than the ideological urgency of a cutback-driven Little State.
Thriving too: Big Society: Exploring Sustainable Collaborative Service Models – "Collaboration between equals is difficult, between disciplines more so… but between paid professionals and unpaid volunteers very hard indeed. On paper it sounds like ‘just the sort of thing we should be doing’…. But in real life situations, such as the one described, it presents challenges that we don’t know how to overcome…. Yet.
The challenge is not organisational or even financial… but about how we create frameworks that sustain the *relationships* that are required for collaborative services to flourish."

9th October 2010

Stuff I've seen October 5th through to October 9th

These are my links for October 5th through October 9th:

‘Big society’? Let me explain | Ian Birrell | From the Guardian | The Guardian – "At its core, the big society is an attempt to connect the civic institutions that lie between the individual and the state – and these range from the family and neighbourhood to churches, charities, libraries, local schools and hospitals. It is born out of recognition that our centralised state has become too big, too bureaucratic and just too distant to support many of those most in need of help, and that it deters people from playing a more active role in public life."
Why Facebook’s New Groups Will Change the Way You Use Facebook – the new feature offers an improved signal-to-noise ratio, increased context for communication and a big improvement in user privacy, thanks to respect for the contextual integrity of conversations.
HyperLocalGovCampWM 1 – How organisations can use social media for internal communication | the albert memorial is still there – "…if you think about it, a workplace blog is effectively a hyperlocal blog – or depending on the nature and size of the organisation, a series of workplace blogs."
Snowblog – Reflections on Birmingham – "By the way, now that the British Waterways quango is to go, who will sustain the magnificent canal system here?"
YouTube – Harvey Milk Speech – Harvey Milk Speech