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Agile Government response

2:11pm Tuesday, 30th October 2007
While in Australia doing research for the Agile Government project, we held a roundtable of public administration experts, academics,  and senior civil servants.

At the event, Professor Geoff Gallop, Director of the Graduate School of Government at the University of Sydney and Premier of Western Australia from 2001 to 2006, presented a formal response to  our Agile Government Provocation Paper.
It's an excellent piece and well worth a read. It's available to download here.

Comments

1
I think the main challenge for 'agile government' is balancing individual initiative for public service staff and managers, essential for rapid innovation and response to changed circumstances, with the need for democratic oversight. From my experience in smaller organisations, the more democratic a decision making process is (up to the point of consensus decision making) the longer decisions take, and the more conservative (lowest common denominator) they are likely to be. Thus democracy would seem to be a substantial check on implementing agile government bureaucracies.
Posted by Michael Janda  at 2:19pm on Wednesday, 7th November 2007
2

I disagree with Michael's point. A benign dictatorship is probably the most efficient form of government, but it cannot I believe be an effective form of government in the long run, particularly in the more diverse communities we now live in.

One thing from my past working in the private sector was that Japanese consensual decision making was slower than western managers habits but they then executed slicker because of greater understanding of what had actually been agreed.

So Consensus is slow and hard won but effective. It's delivery not deliberation that creates the bottle neck in my experience

Posted by Chris Yapp  at 3:03pm on Thursday, 15th November 2007
3
Chris - I think that's precisely right. The Fabians used to make the case that social democracy would become more efficient than the market by centralising the power to manage the economy and allowing for economic planning and the reduction of waste.

But Hayek hit them where it hurts when he said that this kind of efficiency could be quite disempowering and undemocratic. That's one of the many reasons why the postwar state imploded.
At Demos, we keep trying to make the argument that democracy and collaboration are inherently efficient. While they may be slower than simply instructing someone else, they are capable of really changing people's minds, cultures and behaviours in non-conducive ways.

And that gets you effective and sustainable change, which is the only kind that matters.
Posted by Simon Parker  at 12:58pm on Friday, 16th November 2007

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