CURRENT PROJECTS

Organisational system diagnosis in the NHS

The NHS has been through so much reorganization and so many major programmes that in many places it has virtually ceased to function in its core purposes. We put our names to an open letter to the Audit Commission and the parliamentary select committee 5 years ago explaining why the National Programme for IT would fail (£12bn + opportunity costs), and since then things have got worse.

We have worked with CSPI (http://www.cspi-associates.com/) and are working with Fractal (http://www.fractal-consulting.com/) on diagnosing where there are issues with the viability of organizations within the NHS and in the local markets for Healthcare services.

We are also exploring approaches to using a social enterprise to partner with NHS organizations in finding solutions to problems that fall between the responsibilities of existing organizations or which are too risky for organisations to tackle.

We have an interest in leadership and governance as the requirements for these that come out of our modeling are very different from what is usually in place.

Wealth generation and transparency

We are working with a loose group of colleagues and experts on radical notions of how real wealth is generated. (http://www.webofwealth.org/home)

This project has generated a lot of research into the notion of transparency and in particular how to make relationships between organizations transparent. There is an urgent need for progress in this area as the success rate at commissioning even moderately complex products and services is so low. Approaches via contracts and contractual penalties have shown themselves time and time again to simply not work.

We are generating a public platform on what is wrong with the financial system and orthodox economics: in particular what caused the credit crunch and what the opportunities there are to put things on a different footing. We would like to implement pilot systems to show what transparency in financial services would look like.

Collaborative banking pilots

Banks famously do not listen and do not want to know about low income customers. We got some charitable funding from Esmee Fairbairn and Friends Provident Foundation (http://www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk/) to pilot approaches where groups of people would provide banking services for themselves. Our thanks go to the volunteers in New Cross and Barnet who set themselves up to reform their finances.

From the report – we are looking for ways to take this forward:

The fundamental factors in service design that were (re-)discovered by this research are:

• Peer support and peer pressure in taking effective action
• Discussion and debate about the meaning and value of transactions
• A community perspective and negotiation of the significance of individual action on the community financial position

Keeping Local Authority projects sustainable

A key topic for local authorities at the moment is project sustainability. Several of our clients are concerned that although they embark on ICT projects for good reasons and with a sound business case, the service envisaged is not sustainable and quickly gets crowded out by new priorities and different concerns. This is a slightly different version of the problems central government has getting IT systems to deliver benefit.

With our partners ALCO (www.alco.eu.com) we are discussing with councils here and in Ireland how to move sustainability centre stage. Part of the basis of this work is an ODPM project called FAME (Framework for Multi-Agency Environments) (www.fame-uk.org). Despite the acronyms this is all about who needs to talk to whom on what basis if there is to be a way to roll things forwards both technically and in terms of objectives and governance arrangements.

Surviving the Credit Crunch

A two day workshop developed with Evolution-IP. The construction industry, among others, has its back to the wall. Faced with a very big business critical risk indeed, and under pressure from all sides, how do those managing the organisation act? How can they avoid the lapse into overly-defensive behavior where they will certainly make decisions which are counter to their own real interests. How, instead of succumbing to panic and cutbacks, can they use this as an opportunity for reflection, for building broader contexts and more sustainable relationships?