Let someone else do it! - Can you outsource public engagement?

The Government would like to achieve a culture-change. It feels – rightly or wrongly – that people are fed up with rather too many public servants beavering away doing bureaucratic tasks of various descriptions, whilst the rest of the private-sector economy shoulders the burden of paying for them. This is why we hear a lot about police officers having to do too much paperwork instead of chasing criminals or Council chiefs organising stakeholder away-days instead of emptying your bins. By squeezing budgets it is hoped that public bodies will learn to focus on their core activities and cut out the frills. Is public engagement such a frill?

And it begs the question of what exactly is the ‘core’?

Nowhere is the debate more active than in the National Health Service, where the abolition of PCTs prompts a re-think about the best place to locate key skills in the future. This includes figuring out what to do about the jobs of several hundred specialists in public involvement – the people who organise the dialogues between key parts of the NHS and the public they serve. Just look at the options that are being considered.

· Transfer these skills to the new Clinical Commissioning Groups. This might be feasible but only if they have bigger budgets than are currently planned.

· Join forces with other local public agencies (local authorities, police, fire & rescue as well as NHS) to provide a centralised capability able to co-ordinate and use resources better.

· Establish community-interest companies or other forms of social enterprise that can employ these specialist skills or host freelance consultants.

The Department of Health is quite keen on this last option – and in March published an entire paper encouraging staff from all over the NHS to consider alternative working models. The Localism Bill itself contains a ‘right to challenge’ whereby staff or social enterprises can bid to take over tasks currently undertaken by directly paid officers.

Clearly some people would prefer to see public engagement tasks being outsourced. So can this work? Here is why it might:-

· Many operational tasks have always been sub-contracted. Surveys, Focus Groups, Exhibitions and the rest are regularly undertaken by specialist Communications or Engagement consultants. Many of them belong to the Institute; they’re very good and we’re proud of being associated with them.

· Some public bodies have extremely variable workloads with seasonal or project-related highs/lows. An obvious way to handle the capacity needs is to flex the available manpower.

· When high-level advice is needed to persuade Directors or Senior Managers of how best to engage their stakeholders, an outside ‘expert’ often carries more weight

But, inevitably, there are downsides:-

· Where there is a permanent continuous dialogue with public or business-specific stakeholders, the continuity of relationships is vital; chopping and changing those involved will damage the interfaces

· Local knowledge is indispensible, with formal stakeholder databases and informal intelligence gathering through the front-line equally important. It’s almost impossible to do this from afar or from outside

· Once you lose a core competence, it is almost impossible to recover the position. This is what the Economist had to say about it in this week’s Edition (p 62) “When outsourcing goes wrong, it is the devil to put right. When Companies outsource a job, they typically eliminate the department that used to do it. They become entwined with their contractors, handing over sensitive material .... Extricating themselves from this tangle can be tough; it is much easier to close a department than to rebuild it ..”

We can argue as to whether public engagement tasks are ‘core’ for public bodies. But one thing is clear. Legal requirements to involve public, patients, tenants or any other groups cannot be outsourced. Officials are responsible ... period. And the Courts are increasingly ensuring they fulfil these obligations. The only question is whether they staff up and skill up to carry out the work internally or whether Managers are bold enough to risk outsourcing.

Trigger points

• The Department of Health paper on the ‘right to provide’ (March 2011)
• What public engagement activities has your organisation sub-contracted in recent years? Do you intend to change the policy in the coming months?
• Can you see a cost-effective case for employing freelance public engagement professionals on a sub-contract or ad hoc case?
• You may be intereested to know that we are holding another of our Legal Challenges to Consultation

This is the 192nd Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement