The public sector is a set of institutions continually subject to reform pressures and new challenges. While the classic bureaucratic model of public administration stressed standardisation, rule-based management and stability, wider pressures on the public sector over the last 50 years have encouraged increased flexibility in program implementation and inclusiveness in program design.[1]
These changes tend to be driven by concerns about effectiveness and significant constraints on the resources made available to public sector managers. Throughout the public sector, it is increasingly recognised that the achievement of successful program outcomes requires:
At the same time, however, public confidence in the role and ability, of government has been declining over recent years (see Exhibit 1). The public continues to have high expectations of the services provided by the public sector, but is increasingly sceptical of government’s abilities and cynical regarding the motivations of political leaders.[2] This level of disengagement makes devolution difficult and undermines the recognition of positive public programs.
Exhibit 1: Declining Trust in Government — New Zealand and Australia
… in 1985, 8.6% of New Zealanders had ‘a great deal’ of confidence in the government. By 1998 that figure had fallen to 2.5%. The number of people who were ‘not at all’ confident in the good intentions of their government doubled from 11.1% in 1985 to 21.8% in 1998.
Barnes and Gill, 2000, Declining Government Performance?
Why Citizens Don't Trust Government
… many public institutions lost public confidence in the period 1983-95, including the legal system 61% to 35%, the press 29% to 16%, the public service 47% to 38% and the Federal government 55% to 26%.
Cox, 2003, Social In/Equality
Public scepticism about the role of the state has contributed to the emergence of managerial norms that emphasise inclusive and devolved policy development. In turn, this has required public sector managers to acquire new skills and capabilities.
While the classic bureaucratic model emphasised and rewarded strict technical expertise, the modern public sector manager is expected to have a range of ‘soft’ skills around coalition formation and stakeholder management. Some of the representative functions (consultation, negotiation, coalition building and other political skills) once attributed to political leaders have been delegated (appropriately or not) to public sector managers.
This approach is both consistent and broadly aligned with an empahasis on notions of public value in public sector management. Mark Moore, in his 1995 book Creating Public Value (see Exhibit 2), remarks on what he sees as a trend towards executive government expecting public sector managers to be responsive to the public’s interests and concerns. Needless to say, this creates new responsibilities and accountabilities for managers.
Exhibit 2: Engagement as the Creation of Public Value
In his 1995 Book, Creating Public Value, Mark Moore outlines the role of the public manager as an agent in creating ‘value’ in the public sector, in the same way that a private-sector manager is tasked with creating private (or ‘shareholder’) value. Public managers, according to Moore, need to focus their attention on a bridging role between political leaders (who are ‘authorisers’ of manager's plans) and stakeholder groups.
Thus, as in the private sector, alignment needs to be made between the satisfaction of those who consume the public services being provided (customers and clients) and those to whom the manager is directly responsible (political leadership as a ‘board of directors’). This requires that public managers recognise themselves as an having an important role in ‘strengthening the policies that are sold to their authorisers’. Moore, therefore, observes that the public manager is critical in shaping the public ‘narrative’ around their programs of action.
While this can simply be seen as call for better program development in the public sector, Moore's notion of public managers as value creators is broader: First, he recognises that the analogy between public and private value creation is somewhat false and that public value creation is not the result of a free choice by clients, but suffers from coercion (either at the individual level of program consumption, or collectively through taxation). The public manager is constrained in their ability to rely on ‘marketplace’ models of accountability.
Secondly, Moore is very critical of ‘defects’ in the political system as a guide to action for public managers. Citing ‘corrupting’ elements like short-termism, irrational decision-making and risk avoidance, Moore identifies a basic problem in classical conceptions of bureaucratic neutrality (vis-à-vis the criticisms of Max Weber as to the de-humanising nature of classic hierarchical bureaucracy).
Overall, therefore, the notion of public value creation recognises that there is a strong moral imperative placed on the public manager that results from their reliance on coercion for their provision of the resources at their disposal, matched with a need to balance the provision of immediate services to client groups against societal benefits (such as the aggregate benefit of their action, the effective choice of ends and political accountability).
In terms of engagement activities provide opportunities to leverage public value by:
- directly creating a means by which the public manager can develop their programmatic policy proposals through stakeholder input (at the design, development, reporting and post-implementation review stages);
- expanding the range of stakeholder groups that can form part of the narrative creation process (recognising and incorporating groups beyond direct authorisers and clients, but who may receive public value indirectly);
- accessing a constituency around the policy area directly to mobilise action where political failures or corruption becomes apparent and/or act entrepreneurially to strengthen policy proposals for authorisation; and
- developing a long-term view to ensure that public institutions and not simply immediate programs, are strengthened and sustainable (inter-generational value creation).
Moore, Mark. 1995. Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
An overarching focus on a strategic planning approach has been matched in recent years with a renewed concern for local community development and empowerment as a critical element in program implementation. Combined, these trends lead to greater:
Exhibit 3: eEngagement and Social Capital – Chicken and Egg
Social Capital represents the idea that there is value in community. That is, that the social ties that bind communities and individuals together produce a range of positive benefits (psychological as well as material) that make vibrant communities more healthy and resistant to change than those with low levels of interpersonal contact, trust and shared norms and concerns.
In the public policy context, the recognition of the value of community ties is not new. Post-war policy failures associated with the US ‘great society’ projects of Lyndon B. Johnson identified a lack of planning around the social supports that brace policy delivery and the 1970s saw renewed interest in ‘communities’ as loci for policy development and implementation. Over the last decade and a half, the notion of social capital has renewed public-sector interest in the role governments can have in developing and strengthening communities. It is now common for public servants to talk of the role of governments in ‘investing’ in social capital, or the implications of different levels of social capital on program delivery and program effectiveness.
Social capital has clear implications for the eEngagement practitioner:[3] First, public engagement is fundamentally tied to social capital. This can be through the role of community-based engagement activities in developing new or renewed ties within the community (a ‘bringing together’ process), assisting in the development of shared understandings and values, or though the aggregation and exchange of resources held within the community. In this way, the consultative process of co-decision-making can move to one of co-production, where the social capital developed during consultation can be tasked towards partial or complete program delivery. The benefits that this can bring in terms of community ‘ownership’ of the resultant policy can be considerable.
Second, public engagement can be dependent on levels of social capital in the community: where social ties are weak and trust is low, public engagement processes need to invest considerably more time in establishing shared understanding of the ‘rules of the game’ (consultation and participation processes), the basic nature of the issues under consideration and earning of trust.
Overall, social capital is commonly associated with social networks and therefore has a strong relationship to networking technologies. In recent years the term ‘social media’ has come to describe a range of technologies (such as social networking websites, blogs, wikis) where users have a key role in the creation of content and therefore the value associated with the service. These services represent a good example of social capital: while the underlying technology (such as the website) serves as a facilitator for collective action and benefit, the participation of members and the relationship between members serves as the primary generator of value. For a good guide to social media, see: Cook, Trevor and Hopkins, Lee. 2006. Social Media or, ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love communication’, <http://trevorcook.typepad.com/weblog/files/ CookHopkins-SocialMediaWhitePaper.pdf>