A packed house at Nesta yesterday for a ResPublica event, launching a new book by one of their Fellows, John Seddon. Seddon's book is a small collection of case studies showing how Systems Thinking has delivered 'more for less' in a few different public services.
It was interesting and the check, plan, do method and reuction of preventable demand all made sense, but that has to be set against the dogmatic 'dissing' of everything that has happended since 1997. The idea that much of an organisation's effort goes into dealing with demand created by their own poor attempts at meeting their customers basic needs makes some sense, even if it is put across in a rather evangelical way.
Seddon was also scathing about the methods used in the Total Place pilots and overall the crowd seemed to be with him. ResPublica are the new think tank on the block and are claimed to be influencing David Cameron's thinking. So can we expect the scrapping of all targets and inspection, as advocated by Seddon, after the election?
At a Total Place event last week we heard of one family having 370 face-to-face contacts with public agencies over 18 months and that 80% of the associated costs went on administrating these visits, such statistics do suggest that Vanguard/Seddon approaches may have a role to play. Even if they are a bit over-sold at times.
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