Peter Lightbown

Comment on: Walker v Seddon - the debate goes on

Peter Lightbown's comment 22-Jul-2009 4:56 pm

David Walker is a perfect example of why public sector services will never improve. His outdated views and support of a regime of compliance is laughable and lets be honest, if the Audit commission model worked so well why aren't we now enjoying top quality services after 12 years of this governments management. He accuses JS of not understanding the political context etc in which many public sector orgaisations operate. David, wake up, thats the problem. Politicians who are involved in specifying the kind of regime you support and enforce are in most cases completely devoid of any real work place experience, how can they possibly know how to manage complex public services effectively. Politics is one of the very few 'professions' where you can rise to a place of phenomenal power having spent not a second understanding anything about the work being carried out. As for Mr walkers views on economies of scale etc he displays the breathtaking ignorance displayed by many senior staffers brainwashed in to believing something because they hear it enough times. A few years ago i worked on the planning of the implementation of the 101 'non-emergency' number in a region of England. The premise of the contract was on a service being managed locally with the Home Office paying a certain fee for every call taken. They predicted each yr that the number of calls would rise and therefore service costs would rise also. The service would take calls 24 hrs per day but filter them to other service providers e.g. local authorities who did not operate those hrs......result, lots of callers ringing back to find out the progress of their service request, surely an obvious outcome?? Home Office had no concept that they were proposing to introduce a service that would result in no service improvement, no motivation for the service provider to reduce calls by improving service and an ever increasing bill. Economies of scale don't apply!! (U)fortunately, after hundreds of thousands of pounds had been spent in planning the implementation the Home office realised they had no money to fund it! I rest my case.