| | By Mick James
The Office of
Government Commerce’s
(OGC) latest figures on
central government
spending on consultancy
make interesting reading
– or they would if
anybody could be
bothered to report on
them.
Unfortunately, as
they show a reduction in
government spending on
consultancy, they don’t
fit the template for a
news story - painting a
picture of hapless civil
servants stuffing the
mouths of useless
consultants with gold.
As MCA CEO Alan
Leaman points out:
“These figures give the
lie to the scare stories
we sometimes hear about
government spend on
consultants. They show
that government
departments are making
appropriate use of the
specialist skills that
consultants bring, and
getting value for money
for taxpayers.”
What’s a national
newspaper supposed to do
with that?
The headline they
wanted to run was
“Whitehall splashes out
on consultants” - and
guess what, they did. So
excited was the
Financial Times about
the imminent release of
the figures that they
ran this piece.
It’s textbook stuff,
right down to the
obligatory quote from | |
|
| | “David Craig”, who
rather bizarrely informs
us that it was him that
came up with the idea of
“transforming an
organisation” but the
private sector was “too
intelligent to buy it”.
The piece also contains
the schoolboy error of
assuming that a junior
consultant on £700 a day
will be working five
days a week, 50 weeks a
year to bring in
£175,000, which at least
proves that there is a
working calculator in
the FT office if not
much actual financial
nous.
The FT claimed it was
awaiting the OGC update
“with interest” but this
interest seems to have
faded when it reported
that “Central Government
spend on consultancy has
decreased by 31% over
three years” and the
government’s Consultancy
Value programme was
“assisting departments
in driving greater value
from government's use of
consultants”.
The Consultancy Value
Programme (CVP) is a set
of tools and support
items, such as business
case templates, that are
aimed at creating more
consistent use of
consultancy and best
practice across central
government. It’s an
excellent idea,
particularly as one of
its aims is to ensure a
consistent definition of
consultancy across | |
|
| | government. When we have
these debates, it’s
important to know that
we are talking about
genuine consultancy
projects, and not the
interims and temps and
contractors that
departments often hide
under the consultancy
umbrella.
So do the figures
bear out the OGC’s
assertions about the
CVP? Sadly one has to
answer, not really,
because all they reflect
is a drop in headline
spend - central
government is spending
less overall on
consultants, but is that
a good or a bad thing?
For one thing, the
headline figure conceals
some wide internal
variances - can we
conclude that BERR
(Department for
Business, Employment and
Regulatory Reform) and
the DWP (Department for
Work and Pensions),
which have more than
halved their
expenditure, are doing
better than Children,
Schools and Families
(DCSF) or Justice (MOJ),
which have ramped it up?
Of course we can’t - the
DWP might just be
running out of useless
projects to squander our
money on, while MOJ
might be getting such
startling returns on its
spending that it really
is chaining junior
consultants to their
desks. And no one at the | |
|
| | OGC seems to have
twigged that this is
exactly the pattern you
want to see in
consultancy spending,
with projects topping
out in one department as
another one gets going.
Even the headline
figure isn’t, in itself,
good news - it’s not
just that the
consultancy industry
needs the money and the
work, but the public
sector still needs the
projects. I’m already
hearing stories of civil
servants turning their
backs on simple spending
decisions that would
have returned hundreds
of thousands of pounds
to the public purse. If
we continue this narrow
focus on spending we run
a very real risk of
spoiling the ship for
the sake of a ha’porth -
OK, a few hundred
million pounds worth of
tar.
This is all the more
a shame because the CVP
itself contains a very
worthy emphasis on
benchmarking and
assessment - one of the
most trenchant
criticisms of public
spending on consultancy
was that the sector
neither set explicit
criteria for success nor
checked if they had been
met.
The CVP toolkit
contains a “consultancy
performance review”
template which allows
the client to evaluate | |
|
| | the project against
around 40 detailed
criteria and mark each
on a scale of 0
(Unacceptable, no
criteria met) to 5 (
Excellent, all criteria
exceeded & demonstrate
best practice approach
and outcome).
I imagine that, if
government is doling
these forms out, then at
some level somebody
could also be collating
them. This doesn’t even
have to be a sampling
exercise - the template
is an Excel spreadsheet.
So we could have a
complete record of the
outcome of around a
billion pounds of
consultancy, year on
year, broken into the
most explicit detail in
terms of client
satisfaction and
exemplary practice. That
would put some teeth
into the debate about
public sector.
The government’s use
of consultants has too
long been a murky and
little understood area
more likely to be used
as a political football
than an example of best
practice. Hopefully, one
result of the CVP
initiative will be to
shine a little more
light on projects that
should be a cause for
national pride rather
than a guilty secret. | |
|
Previous Page 