Reducing bureaucracy for public sector frontline staff: Briefing for the ...

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18 Part Two Reducing bureaucracy for public sector frontline staff ¬¬ ¬¬ Methods of calculating savings: Some Departments such as the Ministry of Justice have opted to measure a reduction in the number of data requests imposed on the frontline while others such as the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department of Health are examining the burden these data requests impose. The Better Regulation Executive believed that assessing the burden of data requests is more informative than counting the number of data streams, but it took a pragmatic approach on a department by department basis. The Department of Health’s approach was one of the most thorough (Figure 7). Target dates: some Departments reported an initial lack of clarity about the target end date and some Departments reported that they will not complete implementation of their identified savings until after the government-wide target end date of May 2010. Progress in reducing data requests 2.5 A key performance indicator of the public sector strategy is a target to reduce data requests required by central government of frontline staff by 30 per cent by May 2010. But a lack of robust baselines and comprehensive calculation methodology at the start of the programme has hindered the Better Regulation Executive’s ability to report robust results. Progress reported to-date appears generally encouraging despite these difficulties. At the end of 2008 nine Departments reported on reductions in the number of data requests – Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Cabinet Office, Department for Communities and Local Government, Department for Culture Media and Sport, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Department for Transport, Department for Work and Pensions, Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. The Better Regulation Executive reported that across these nine Departments, 133 data requests had been removed by late 2008, some 27 per cent of the total number. Overall progress masks some individual variation in performance; for example Cabinet Office is not on track to deliver its commitment of 30 per cent reduction while the Ministry of Justice and Home Office are likely to exceed their target. Figure 7 The Department of Health’s methods of measuring burdens – a good practice example The Information Centre for Health and Social Care has developed a method of estimating the burden and cost of a data collection. It calculates the administrative and clinical staff resource it will take to complete the request. This is multiplied by the number of organisations involved and the annual frequency of the data collection to arrive at a total annual burden in notional person years across the whole National Health Service. E.g. collecting quarterly data from all Primary Care Trusts is estimated to take one administrator one day each quarter. The total estimated annual burden is therefore: 1 day x 4 quarters x 152 Primary Care Trusts = 608 person days 1 . Source: Summary of the Office of Government Commerce’s Procurement Capability Reviews noTe 1 National Health Service information Centre for Health and Social Care, Approaches to burden Management, January 2008.
Reducing bureaucracy for public sector frontline staff Part Two 19 2.6 The three Departments measuring reductions in terms of burden also reported some progress. In early 2009 the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which measured the reduction in burden through cost, reported that it had delivered a 10 per cent reduction to date and identified potential for a 29 per cent reduction by 2010-11. It has agreed these savings with a panel of frontline staff. And the Department of Health, using staff time to measure burden reduction, reported a 30 per cent reduction in social care and a 13 per cent reduction in health care. Finally research commissioned by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills in January 2009 showed that in higher education the costs of regulatory arrangements reduced by 21 per cent between 2004 and 2008. Progress against the perceptions target 2.7 A fundamental aim of reducing data streams is to ease the burdens on frontline workers. Therefore, reviewing whether perceptions of unnecessary bureaucracy are changing is important. In addition to the 30 per cent target reduction for data requests, the Better Regulation Executive also has a performance indicator under its Departmental Strategic Objective (Figure 5) to reduce the proportion of bureaucracy which the public sector front line believes to be unnecessary. The Better Regulation Executive has not yet reported its progress against this objective but plans to do so in 2010. Initiatives to tackle bureaucracy 2.8 The Departments we reviewed have made efforts to implement the three further strands of the public sector strategy: identifying and tackling irritants to staff, better engagement with front-line workers and encouraging intermediate bodies to adopt better regulation principles. On using identified irritants to reduce bureaucracy, Departments have consulted their frontline workers to identify key irritants, and progress in tackling these irritants has been reported in some Departments’ annual simplification plans. For example, the Ministry of Justice identified 19 irritants through its consultation exercise and solutions have now been found for five of these irritants. Figure 8 provides an example. Figure 8 Example of Ministry of Justice response to an irritant identifi ed by frontline staff Irritant: Probation staff requested a Video Conferencing Technology directory so that all staff working in prisons and probation know where people are located and how to contact them. This facility will significantly reduce travel. Response: The video-conferencing directory was published on 31 July 2008, providing probation staff with much faster and more straightforward access to information. Source: Ministry of Justice Simplification Plans 2007 and 2008
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