Risky Business, this Big Society

Rumour has it that Number 10 is getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress on the Big Society.  It turns out that the boulder that is ‘the State’ takes a bit more of a heave than a gentle push to ‘roll back’…

One of the main problems is painstakingly dull, but undeniably important – risk.  I touched on this in my last post on globalisation, but at a seminar at the RSA this morning, Ben Rogers presented his emerging ideas on the topic.  There are certain big ‘tabloid risks’, Rogers argued, that keep managers of public services and government leaders awake at night e.g. child abuse scandals, fraud and embezzlement, avoidable death or serious injury.

In an attempt to prevent these events, ever expanding ‘risk registers’ have become embedded in public management.  As we have become a more risk averse society, so we have created a burgeoning bureaucracy to vet, monitor and mitigate.  Suddenly it’s a lot more difficult to volunteer your time to the local community, and enthusiasm tends to wane at the very sniff of the phrase ‘Vetting and Barring Scheme‘.

The forthcoming Freedom Bill will attempt to address some of these risk barriers to the Big Society.  But other, deeper questions remain.  For example:

• How can we make a cultural shift away from top-down bureaucratic risk (micro-)management?  Is this always desirable?
• What are the alternatives to top-down risk management?  Could you take a bottom-up approach, and what role would the State play in this arrangement?
• What role could open data and transparency play in monitoring and scrutinising more localised, community-led and run services?

The question of information, transparency and risk management is particularly interesting.  Can we – as someone this morning suggested – know too much?  Do we have too much information that makes us fear the worst?  Can we make sense of the information we have?

We know from behavioural economics that people have difficulty processing probabilities and making rational calculations of comparative risks.  For example, we believe knife crime is rife because we can easily recall newspaper headlines reporting rare incidents of stabbings in North London.  Similarly, however, we might campaign vehemently to keep open our local hospital even though it has the highest mortality rate in the area, or kills hundreds of people through neglect of basic patient safety.  But, as I argued in response, data and information provide the basis of a conversation that, reasonably played out  – not hijacked by a sensationalist media – should enable a more reasoned consideration of the risks and uncertainties we face. 

The Coalition is discovering that it is more difficult than they thought to roll back the centralised State and let Big Society fill in the gaps.  A bureaucratic web has built up in the management of public services.  Fear of operational failure, of catastrophic events happening ‘under their watch’, or of misspending our scarce tax revenues makes public officials wary of letting go.  Our media and centralised political culture (e.g. the Baby P case was on the PM’s desk ‘within minutes’ we were told) also help to keep the State supremely accountable in the funding, purchasing and delivery of public services – whether it is directly responsible or not.   There are some important reasons for this tangled web of accountability and risk aversion, but the landscape will have to change considerably if that stone is to be rolled anytime soon.

7th April Update

***RED TAPE CHALLENGE*** PM Cameron has launched a new site to crowdsource ways of cutting bureaucratic red tape.  “Excessive regulation” he says, “is burdening businesses, hurting our economy and damaging our society.”  Every few weeks the Red Tape Challenge website will focus on a new industry sector.  First up, retail.