The corporate planning of the public sector, notwithstanding mandate or legislative function, has increasingly to take on network forms to enable coordination take effect within a multi-level policy environment. This is the result of public policy bodies having to operate in conditions where policy spill over is increasingly the norm and the reliance on non-governmental actors to implement policy is clearly determined. Such thinking is now at the heart of much public service reform internationally as evident from the current UK Government reforms. Networks, often informal in corporate terms, can be seen as the means to deliver public services within horizontal and vertical governance frameworks. Critical contributors such as Perri 6 for example, have acknowledged that such forms can be seen as central to creating whole of government responses, notwithstanding the informality of service delivery through local efforts and the increasing specialisation in public administration which we associate with New Public Management.
Increasingly, however, given the cross-institutional effect of public policy, such reform efforts alone will not resolve the challenge of achieving joined up government in a multi-level environment. This is particularly the case for a public service such as Ireland’s, where the shock of the early retirement programme will very shortly begin to bite. The current organisational form of the public service must move beyond even the current limited application of hierarchical and vertical policy development and service planning to allow for the development of diagonal governance. This is particularly the case for thematic based, multi-competence bodies (such as health and social services as well as local services) operating within national policy arenas. Policy such as the National Spatial Strategy, for example, cannot possibly be expected to succeed if implementation is to be left solely to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government along with the local authorities. The NSS has application across all layers of government and not just one department. A local policy body such as a local authority, dealing with education provision, health care, housing and transportation, has to structure its policy framework to allow for cross over in its own multiple mandates. In national policy terms, most of the aforementioned are actually outside of its actual regulatory mandate. The need to coordinate with the national or European policy arena will also often be spread across different ministries, thus reinforcing the need for diagonal integration.
If diagonal integration across departments and local bodies is not put in place public service accountability becomes impossible and determining just who is responsible is a challenge to even the most informed among us. The current local operational environment means that local policy bodies have a multi-institutional environment which is vertical, horizontal and diagonal. This means that such bodies can no longer be simply focused on a particular policy arena emanating from a single ministry. In the absence of agreed institutional arrangements both formal and informal networks could provide the policy-maker with the necessary flexibility to address the many problems confronting communities at local and national level. There remains the challenge of determining where the initiative for creating such networks will be.
National institutions therefore, can no longer be the mechanistic corporate bodies directed by a singular political view that Weber suggested in 1947. Rather, they have to be a part of a dynamic form of governance. The important factor is not the determination of who does what or indeed who holds the resources per se. Rather the challenge is about ensuring that the central government is equipped to interact with a policy framework which has the necessary flexibility to influence the policy choices associated with public management at local level. The creation of the capacity to think through policy impact becomes a key requirement, particularly within a multi-dimensional policy process. This becomes even more significant when policy is being determined through the administrative process at central levels, but will be delivered locally with probable implications for the local electoral process.
National institutions are having to be part of an organic form of governance which is inter-linked with the local policy process as well as driven by political practice. This brings with it the challenge of accommodating central leadership alongside local initiative. A key feature of such accommodation is the need to manage the direction of future economic and physical development. This is so given the pressures on both political and administrative leadership to sustain inclusive communities, deliver enhanced quality of life and better standards of living. These pressures are among the most critical confronting leadership at all levels of policy-making and are particularly evident in the spheres of spatial development and territorial governance. Addressing this requires the integration of government so that within a networked policy, the horizontal, vertical and diagonal layers of public administration can interface. A failure to appreciate this thinking will merely result in continued confusion about who is responsible and who is accountable… a feature of public management in Ireland in recent years and something that requires immediate consideration on the part of a joined up Government if it is to achieve its objectives it’s parties so clearly set out in their reforming programme.
