OUTSOURCING: WHY CHOOSE IGNORANCE?

The other day I was expressing sceptism about the launch of yet another strategy by Government to make a better go of outsourcing. I commented on the almsot total lack of proper objective evaluation of the success or othewise of outsourcing,  which has gone much further in England than in any other country. I was asked what I thought such evaluation would look like. As the LinkedIn post has vanished, here is my answer:

That is an extremely good question.

A proper objective evaluation would have to be carried out by someone both expert and independent of both commercial and union interests and of Government. It would establish whether there are credible measures of performance, if not, suggest them, look at the data for both sectors, and establish the true costs of each sector.  It would look at possible side effects, and at how costs are reduced – whether by reducing wages so far as to propel workers into poverty, for example. It should also consider the type outsourcing – they are many very different types of course, some allowing direct inter-sector competition but many not – and at how well competition has been managed and how it could be managed better. And how well contracts are being managed. And it would look at overall benefits, for exmaple, whether it  has stimulated improvement in the public sector.

It would cost a little to do well – by rough reckoning maybe one five hundredth of one per cent of the value of outsourced contracts, per year. But at present, it isn’t done at all. I dont know of one, apart form my own study on prisons.  That's not because I'm cleverer than others - it's because I bothered. MoJ has stopped doing it for prisons. When I asked DH what studies they had done for healthcare and social care, they said none. The King’s Fund library has almost nothing. Think of the upheaval that readying the NHS for competition caused under Cameron - and nothing to show for it!

No one has a clue. And yet this huge experiment in out sourcing by far (proportionately) the biggest in the world, rolls on, year after year, in a state of perfect ignorance, unless and until we learn something from the many procurement disasters. For which no Minister and no official ever suffers any consequences whatsoever.

There are two reasons why this has become much more urgent. First, we seem to be witnessing more and more disasters in Government procurement – probation contracts, Birmingham prison, FM contracts, Turkish PPE and Chinese COVID tests, witness the flood of single supplier tenders in recent months and of course, almost anything done by MoD. Second, the coming fiscal and social crisis, triggered by COVID, but coming on top of years of cuts, especially in local government, makes it vital that procurement isn’t for the same old same old,  cheaper but degraded, but for a new way of meeting need. So, we are asking an institutionally incompetent Government to be suddenly much cleverer – but without bothering  to evaluate what is has done so far.

Sound good to you?