One of the perennial challenges confronting public service providers is that of answering the question…just how do we facilitate greater access to our services? How easy do we make it for our citizens?
Fingal County Council has been among those in the forefront of public service delivery with initiatives such as the Fingal Data Hub. More recently the Council has begun to pilot an initiative in Blanchardstown which has at its core the idea that public service providers should be trying to make access to services easier. Novel thinking or a recognition at last that service providers in the public service should be as concerned about access to services as much as private providers have to be? Private sector companies know all too well that if their customers cannot access their products or services they will go out of business. This has had the effect of driving private sector service provision towards more client orientated provision based on both virtual applications such as social media, and the physical re-orientation of client focused activities such as retailing. In some ways there has been less pressure on public authorities, right across the OECD, but the current financial environment now seems to be providing the impetus across many countries to deliver better, client focused services. These services increasingly have to have an eye to efficiency as well as being more effective.
So just what is going down in Fingal? One of the better aspects of the “Celtic Tiger” (and yes there was a lot of benefits we still have from that era) was that considerable effort was put into finally garnering real data about the social, economic and environmental condition of our cities and towns. A remaining challenge is centred on just how this data can be used in a really practical manner to improve the quality of life of our citizens, particularly in an era of cost efficiencies. Is it possible to use this data to achieve higher quality service provision and save money at the same time? In Fingal it seems that at least this question can be partially answered in the affirmative. The Council has totally re-orientated itself towards area based service planning and delivery. Alongside this process it is using its highly developed data sources to focus in on designing services to help improve access to services which were traditionally organised, as in much of the public service, on a departmental basis. This type of organisation has, in the past, driven silo-like decision-making, not just in Ireland but generally across public services in all advanced economies. The effect has been that there was much duplication of working practices, equipment usage and service provision which was confusing for the citizens and clients of such services, not to mention an associated high cost of provision.
In a clear effort to address these aspects of duplicated service provision across departmental arrangements, Fingal has come up with the novel idea that the people of Fingal live in communities and not silos. The result is that the Council is managing to address the on-going challenge of providing quality public services against the background of huge cuts in the Council’s budget. Usefully the re-configuration of the Council’s services is also pointing a direction for other public service providers in the County e.g. the creation of education facilities which include amenity facilities for neighbouring communities. There is also the simple yet very practical application of thinking on a joined-up basis, when it comes to making it easier for the Council’s customers to get services. These include using desire lines when it comes to accessing public transport, recreation or education. The Council is using it’s data sources on an integrated basis and this, along with the general awareness of its staff, has facilitated the design of the Blanchardstown Initiative. This Initiative is allowing it to think about how services could be configured to achieve ease of movement, efficiency in both service planning and delivery, and in making life somewhat better with limited, if targeted, spending.
A key challenge now facing the Council is how does it translate this early achievement of greater efficiency and effectiveness generally throughout its re-configured services. Can the Council, using the data now available to it, make decisions based on real evidence without the challenge of political influence driving decision-making in an alternate direction. To date the work has been based in a large urban conurbation, are there rural applications? Is there a national lesson to be learned? Can such processes be used to underpin great access to information for the general public while also facilitating more structured consultation on council initiatives?
Questions which may be answered but it has to be acknowledged that the willingness to be innovative and apply out of the box thinking when it comes to service planning in the Council must be welcomed in an era of public service down-sizing.
