COLLABORATIVE CAPACITY AND STRATEGIES IN AREA‐BASED INITIATIVES

Despite considerable evaluator investment in examining partnership activity in UK public policy initiatives, little attention has been paid to the role of strategy in supporting the generation and harnessing of the resources necessary to collaborate effectively. This paper focuses on one of the first New Labour initiatives – Health Action Zones (HAZ) – and draws on national evaluation findings to delineate local strategies, assess their application in practice and reflect on their contribution to collaborative action. The paper argues that even within nationally constrained policy initiatives there is sufficient flexibility for local actors to select strategies to steer collaborative effort, but these strategies are informed by their operating context and are liable to change in response to experience and changes in context. In addition, the evaluation findings suggest that effective strategies are those which harness collaborative capacity across a range of dimensions. The paper concludes by identifying implications for theory, policy and evaluation.     

CAN GOVERNMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS BE INFLEXIBLE TECHNOLOGY? THE OPERATIONAL STRATEGY REVISITED

Recent failures of government information systems to achieve their objectives have highlighted the risk involved in large-scale information technology projects. This article looks at one example, the computerization of the UK social security system, in the light of recent discussions of large-scale technologies and the particular problem of inflexible technologies as defined by Collingridge. It is argued that large-scale government computing projects can fit the criteria of inflexible technologies, although this is not an inherent feature of information technology. There are always more flexible alternatives available: this is illustrated using examples from both private and public organizations.     

Old and New Labour Narratives of Whitehall: Radicals,Reactionaries and Defenders of the Westminster Model

This article argues that throughout its history, the leadership of the Labour Party has chosen to embrace a benign view of the Civil Service, as part of a wider acceptance of the constitutional status quo reflected in the Westminster model. There has nevertheless been a long tradition in the wider Labour movement that has questioned whether Whitehall is capable of working for a government with radical aspirations. This article examines Labour's historical approach towards Whitehall, before reflecting on the extent to which the present Administration, while appealing to radical and reforming rhetoric has, like its predecessors, continued to embrace the status quo. It concludes by arguing that a contemporary and credible narrative capable of challenging the Westminster model has yet to emerge from the broader movement.     

IS Success and Failure—The Problem of Scale

In the midst of Implementing Electronic Government (IEG), the almost knee-jerk reaction of our political elite seems to be to embrace hugely ambitious Information Systems (IS) solutions to public-sector operations. Problem after problem has been viewed as solvable by throwing some big IT at it. However hindsight and a wealth of evidence and examples shows that overly large-scale public-sector IT projects do not work and persistently end in failure and costly waste. In this article we consider IT projects 'failures' and the combination of social and technical factors that contribute. We illustrate our argument with more detailed reference to the Connecting for Health agenda, part of the NHS National Programme for IT. We suggest 'think local, think modular' to build on good practice and advocate use of the government's own 2004 eGovernment Interoperability Framework (eGIF) to learn lessons from past IT project catastrophes.     

ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY,EXTERNAL REGULATION AND PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE

We test the separate and joint effects of strategy and regulation on public service performance. Strategy is measured as the extent to which service providers are prospectors, defenders and reactors. Regulation is assessed on the basis of the number of inspection events and service managers’ perceptions of the supportiveness of regulators. We find that, controlling for prior performance and the level of service expenditure, prospecting is a more successful strategy than defending or reacting. In addition, inspection events generally disrupt the relationship between strategy and performance, but regulation that is supportive reinforces this relationship. The evidence suggests that the impact of organizational strategies in the public sector is contingent on the characteristics of regulatory regimes.     

THE COMPUTERIZATION OF SOCIAL SECURITY: THE WAY FORWARD OR A STEP BACKWARDS?

The Department of Social Security is one of the largest government departments, consuming 30 percent of public spending and employing around 10 per cent of central government StJ. Before 1980 there were no computers in its local administrative centres. The Operational Strategy was a plan to change this, involving the construction of largescale computer systems and the installation of 40,000 terminals in 1,000 local offices and unemployment offices. It is the largest programme of computerization ever undertaken in Europe. Full national coverage is expected in 1991. But the project has been plagued with problems: costs have soared from £700m. to £2, CCXh-n. and rising, planned savings have fallen, expected benefits seem unlikely to be achieved and implementation errors have caught the public eye. What caused these problems and are they as serious as reports in the press might lead the public to believe? Computerization has the potential to make possible many far reaching changes to administrative functions and working practices. It is important to study the decisional implications of these changes before the computers themselves become embedded in the structure of the organization.