This generation in Northern Ireland has been given a golden opportunity: to shape a future that works. For decades, attempts at building an economy were all-but destroyed by the ever-turning cycle of hostility. What we got was what we have: a public sector economy overly dependent on subvention, but enough to keep most heads above water. What we did not get were visitors, students or investment on anything like the right scale. So our tourist industry was a tenth the size of that in the South. We exported more educated 18-year olds than any other part of Britain or Ireland and got fewer back in return. And investors found better places to go.

Not that we lacked sympathy. Indeed it is hard to identify a conflict anywhere in the world that drew greater sympathy. At the last count the European Peace Programme had spent over £2 billion here and the International Fund for Ireland had topped £630 million. But too often it was pity not hope which we asked for and got.

The achievement of shared government took its time. But having got there, it is crucial that we seize the opportunity it creates and don’t mistake symbol for success. In spite of achievement, the poison of memory and suspicion is a potent legacy. If the time for action is not now, then when?

The focus of programmes for government on economic reform and building prosperity is both necessary and right. Yet no serious government can afford to pretend that this means more of the same. Modern economics depends on being attractive: being attractive to investors in a world where everyone is begging for attention, being attractive to the brightest and best so that new jobs can be secured, and being attractive for the visitor. Some of that is about tax and costs. And some of it depends on the quality of the environment and a sense of safety or on the quality of education and on the cultural life of our cities. All of these things have to do with tackling violence and hostility and growing an outward and forward looking community. Sectarianism drives away entrepreneurs, violence is a catastrophe for tourism, and capital was always a coward and has lots of places to put its cash.

At its core, building a truly shared future is crucial not only because it is right but because it is wise. The opportunities which peace brings are already visible: National Geographic and MTV are signs of serious change. Likewise, the City of Culture project could be the driver that turns Derry and Londonderry into the new Galway of the north west, a site for high tech and high spec industry, a magnet for the young and the hub of tourism for one of the most stunning parts of these islands.

But none of this will happen by wishing the past away. The happy-clappy rhetoric of shared future always means the hard work of confronting and acknowledging serious issues. The temptation to declare the past over may seem serious in the suburbs but it is ignorance at the interface. Ending hostility means facing the legacy of threat and fear that makes too many places no-go for too many people. City centre economies won’t thrive unless they are open, safe and shared. Walls won’t come down by wishing and riots won’t stop if we keep on ramping up the rhetoric. More importantly, saving services and keeping village schools depends on learning to share resources not on building parallel and hostile worlds.

In a time when austerity is eating in to an economy dependent on state aid and grants, the choice of shared or scared future is no small matter. The words of the Programme for Government give hope that sharing the future is no longer an add-on or extra but is a central part of good government for now. If it is not, then releasing an economy that works will still be tomorrow’s project.

Duncan Morrow is the outgoing Chief Executive of the Community Relations Council.

Bruce Robinson has been at the forefront of efforts to transform the Northern Ireland Civil Service over many years. Before getting the top job at NICS he was involved in economic development, starting in the IDB and then as Permanent Secretary at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment.

Looking back on the change programme you led over the past few years, what are the highlights for you?

The major achievement has been to create the shared services and the effective running of the 12 departments from single platforms. That those key share services are now fully operational and embedded is terrific.

NI Direct is an excellent platform to take the further development of government services, delivered to the citizen, forward into the future. This will mean considerable change. There is no doubt that NI Direct has been a success and there is a next generation of service delivery to be done through that. The potential to keep service delivery both highly effective for the citizen and also highly efficient for the tax payer.

What are the difficult aspects of leading large scale change projects?

On large scale change projects a lot of hard work goes in before you start to see the benefits, so the challenge is on the one hand to recognise it’s a long-term process and, if you like, hold your nerve and on the other hand not to be insensitive to the feedback you are getting.

We did change things mid-stream in a number of areas. More around how we sought to engage staff in the process and we were very open to that and often you are doing that with incomplete feedback.

One of the toughest pieces was having the conviction to hold off on implementing HR Connect in the summer of 2009. It was due to go live in July and we held off until January [2010] and that was a tough call. We did get it right when we did launch, although it was very difficult and was only possible because of the testing validating we had done in the interim.

How have these investments changed the delivery of public services?

[There is] a greater sense of service-wide approach to issues now. Previously there was a departmental focus on how things happen. There is now a greater appreciation of doing things on a service-wide basis. At the core of that is, I have always felt, that our system is far too small to be able to justify investment in technology and systems at a departmental level – only at a NICS level.

The quality of service delivery to the citizen, I was convinced, needed the technological platforms and the support and infrastructure to deliver a really high quality public service.

I didn’t see any way of doing that without significant investment, not just in technology but also in our people. It seemed to me that any step change in the quality of service required investment, and that could be self-financing by improving the effectiveness and efficiency of what we are doing. It didn’t have to come at a significant price. Both of these goals were attainable.

How has the partnership with the private sector worked in delivering the projects?

We always had a vision of what we were trying to do and in that sense we were able to convince our private sector partners. We were ambitious and they felt we were committing significant resources to the programme. I do look back on it with considerable satisfaction.

Why did you undertake should a huge change programme when perhaps there wasn’t the obvious driver? Particularly as times were good.

I guess it comes back to some sort of sense of desire to see services in Northern Ireland to be as good as anywhere else in the world [and] a professional pride in seeing things done exceptionally well. I also felt there was an opportunity to create a Civil Service that people would be proud to serve in.

Over the past decade there has been a huge challenge around cost efficiency in service delivery in government systems.

On a large scale sets of projects such as these, at a particular point in time you may not be making as much progress as you would like but I do think over the five-year time frame we have seen substantial improvement in virtually all of the metrics. Certainly the investment has been justified.

There is now a new set of challenges and a new environment. Some very significant changes such as welfare reform, and the project management skills are there to deliver such changes.

Reflecting on your time in IDB and then DETI, what sticks out as regards developing the local economy?

The definition of an optimist is to have been involved in selling Northern Ireland as an investment location in the 1980s and 90s. It certainly had its challenges but selling here will always have considerable challenges.

There isn’t a significant local market, so therefore in your suite of attractions, you are missing quite a valuable one. For example, if you thing of investments in India or China, they are as much about the thought they are going to become highly significant markets for any products. Whereas we can never really offer that sort of opportunity.

This is about, and always has been about niche marketing and understanding what the customer is after and us being flexible to do that. The short lines of decision-making are our competitive advantage.

[I am] disappointed about one thing. In the late 1990s and early 00s we seemed to be closing the gap in terms of GVA [with GB]. It was about ’93 to 2000 that we did start to close the gap for about five years. There was a bit of a credit crunch around ’97 which didn’t happen here because I guess our property prices had not really gone out of line. I would really [have] liked to understand better what was really happening during that period and I did have a strong sense that a significant build in exporting across a number of sectors was behind that.

Fundamentally that is what we have to see. We have to build our international competiveness and the drive to improve efficiency is relentless. I was always very struck by companies during that period, companies like AVX, who were facing

10 per cent per annum reductions in selling prices year-on-year as manufacturers of electronic components and they were able to cope with that over a very sustained period. The challenge is right across the economy and it is not just for the private sector but also for government and its cost base.

Do you have any strong views on the corporation tax issue?

The issue is quite complex and one of the difficult pieces on corporation tax is that it is going to be quite costly and I think there is no law of gravity here that says inevitably the benefits will outweigh the costs. It is likely to be quite a reduction in public expenditure and that will definitely happen and it is not as clear cut that the public sector growth will outweigh that. In principle it has quite a considerable potential but there is quite a tough bit in playing that out and that’s what makes it a tough call politically.

How has the nature of public sector changed since you first joined it?

I joined at 30, which was comparatively late and unusually because of this I had two years’ probation to do. There have been two big changes. One as a result of devolution, with local ministers, has been a very significant and a very positive change. Devolution is a much more responsive system. The other big change is the development of professional skills within the Civil Service and that has been too long in coming. That’s not the case now and I think we have become much more professional.

How has leading a public sector organisation changed?

Leadership is more difficult nowadays because of a bigger spread of complexities. There are more demands around cost of delivery that wouldn’t have been the same in the past. One of the hardest things in the public sector is to understand what to stop doing and that is a really difficult area. Helping ministers understand what is a priority is always difficult, particularly in the present financial climate. That is the nub of any resource allocation discussion and decision. In today’s climate it’s inescapable.

Looking to the future, what do you think is the biggest challenge facing the public sector?

The economic situation is by far the biggest challenge. Public expenditure is going to be under pressure for quite a period of time and it’s evident now that the economic prospects for at least the next 18 months are quite flat. In this context the pressures on elected representatives are going to be very significant.

I also think some of the changes the Coalition Government are introducing are going to be very demanding, particularly with welfare reform. There are significant professional reputational risks in implementing huge technological and systems changes.

When the peace process was taking its baby steps, with the inevitable stumbles and tantrums, it became common for commentators to refer to WB Yeats’ line that “Peace comes dropping slow.”

We are long beyond that stage. The institutions are firmly embedded and the five main political parties in Stormont have little to threaten their position. Why then, are they so cautious about making decisions? Peace has come and is staying. Actions, initiative, policies: these are dropping exceedingly slow.

It is not like there is no mandate for action. There are plenty of proposals for initiatives from all sides of civil society. The policies, however, are not happening. Why has it taken so long to produce a Programme for Government? This cannot be blamed on the legal necessity for consultation, or section 75 implications.

What could be blamed is the lack of fiscal powers devolved from Westminster, or more accurately, HM Treasury. Indeed, the very reason given by New Labour against granting tax-varying powers for the Northern Ireland Assembly was the presumption back in 1998 that this would mean tax rises.

How the assumptions of politics have changed since then. Tax reductions have been the fact of governance since then, with freezes and caps on domestic and business rates, one of the few revenue- raisers available to the Assembly. The loud campaign for the devolution of corporation tax powers is wholly based in lowering them.

That said, there are legally available options which the Executive could utilise. They have been approached by business organisations, the voluntary sector and the trade unions on successive occasions. They have done almost nothing.

We suggested that a simple and cheap £1 levy on every hotel stay could be used to subsidise large conferences in locations such as Belfast’s Waterfront Hall or Derry’s Millennium Forum. That would raise several hundreds of thousands of pounds for organisational costs, which would then generate millions from visitors spending money in bars, restaurants and, naturally, hotels.

We have suggested that the NILGOSC pension scheme be used more effectively to develop local high-end R&D-based businesses, with a certain percentage of its annual investments as venture capital.

We have suggested utilising the EU’s Globalisation Adjustment Fund, which re- trains workers who have been made redundant through processes of globalisation (such as outsourcing), and enables them to improve their chances for regaining work.

We have, along with the General Consumer Council, urged the reform and regulation of private energy suppliers, who are at present operating effectively as a cartel. We believe that the fuel needs of Northern Ireland and its consumers could be better served if domestic fuel was centrally purchased by the Department for Regional Development and then distributed by social economy enterprises, on a profit basis for all concerned, but well short of the extortionate behaviour of those who have the market in their grasp.

We have, along with every employers’ body, the entire voluntary sector, every environmental group, a raft of academics and the rhetorical support of every political party, called for an adventurous Green New Deal, which will provide jobs and services which are sustainable for those who use them, those who work for them, and the long-term care of the environment. After three years, we have a shopping bag levy. That is pathetic.

Meanwhile, £4 billion in cuts are just starting. Demand has stalled and the private sector is treading water. The eurozone, where 90 per cent of our non- sterling trade is conducted, could just implode. There are 4,000 jobs available for 60,000 unemployed, not forgetting the extra 50,000 of the ‘economically inactive’ who want a job.

Finally, barely noticed, NAMA has started its sell-off of distressed assets, £3.5 billion of which are north of the border. Has anyone the slightest idea what to do about that?

The whole point of devolution was so local politicians could make decisions which would positively affect the lives of their neighbours. Good, bad or indifferent, barely any decisions are being made at all. It is time for the political class to show up to work.

Peter Bunting is Assistant General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions

Innovation is “not just about things like iPads”, Charles Leadbeater contends. Instead, it is an important concept that many organisations are not exploring thoroughly.

The public sector in particular needs to innovate, according to Leadbeater. However, too often, innovative ideas get trapped in “pockets” and “then get translated into policy at national scale, too fast.”

Tony Blair’s former innovation advisor states that the four main ingredients for innovation are to create the authority, generate and select ideas, develop and replicate those ideas, and exit the old systems, rather than replicating them.

“Creating the authority requires continual political leadership, but increasingly [that] needs to operate at all levels of an organisation,” Leadbeater tells agendaNi.

Crisis often prompts innovation. However, money “rarely sustains it” and “mad passion and ambition drives it.”

He says that the space for innovation will grow once an organisation realises: ‘what we have is not good enough’, ‘our needs are fundamentally changing’ and ‘new ways to organise ourselves are plentiful’.

When generating and selecting new ideas, “where you stand will determine what you see.” Organisations need to look at the outcomes for people and communities first, then at what change would mean for institutions and services, he contends.

Innovative ideas from inside and outside the public sector should be discussed and borrowed, Leadbeater adds.

“It’s very easy to set up pockets of innovation, either inside, [where] you’ll find people who’ve done amazing bits of work around particular issues within the public sector such as great re-offender schemes or an amazing school. And you’ll find pockets outside [such as] a social enterprise,” he explains.

“One of the most important things is that [organisations] need to find people who can bridge inside and outside and know how to talk both languages.”

Generating new ideas is particularly difficult for the public sector. There are two main barriers, according to Leadbeater.

“One big barrier is complacency; that people don’t recognise enough how, what they’re doing might be ineffective or out- dated,” he states.

In addition: “There aren’t enough differences of view about what should be done so it’s very difficult to break the mindset.”

The other barrier is the risk factor. “Risk needs to be constantly managed in the public sector. Taken in a strategic and intelligent way, that requires political leadership, money and time,” he says.

Ultimately, “innovation in the public sector takes time.” It is the same as a “big, hierarchical corporation in relation to innovation” and it has additional problems with “political and public risk,” Leadbeater says.

How innovation is developed and replicated is “undervalued in the public sector”, according to Leadbeater “because too much public service innovation adds to what we have rather than replacing it with something better.”

Whilst some organisations have become better at developing ideas, generation still relies on “turning it into a policy and then making it a mandate nationally”. Leadbeater believes there should be other options because that route can often become “clumsy”.

The private sector has a market incentive for innovation but there is no equivalent in the public sector.

Reaching the final stage (exit and duplication) can often be an ‘innovator’s dilemma’, whereby they need to convince colleagues that the old systems should be replaced.

In order to achieve that “you have to audit the current way of doing things to try and show [there will be] real cost of effectiveness,” Leadbeater states.

Innovators should “create attractive visions of what you might create”, explaining how the transition works and how it happens. In this way, people working in the organisation will see that “this way of doing it is better.”

Leadbeater’s final advice to innovators is to “build up the case that: ‘What we are doing isn’t good enough. What we could do is new, exciting and practical and it delivers results.’”

What are the drivers for change?

Michael Smyth

In the short or medium term, it is dealing with the austerity programme that we’ve been handed as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review. Longer term, there is a debate that we need to rebalance our economy and part of that rebalancing will mean that the size of the public sector shrinks.

We need to replicate what the Republic has done, notwithstanding its current problems, and that is grow the private sector aggressively. Northern Ireland has to rebalance our economy in a positive sense by growing the private sector and that means creating the resources to enable public services to improve. There is a sterile debate about “we need to cut the public sector in order to create space for the private sector” and that’s the wrong way to look at it.

Stephen Peover

Over the next few years, we’re all going to be focused on trying to ensure that we live within our means. Our big issue is about rebalancing the economy and there is still work going on between us and the Treasury. We’re producing a consultative paper on rebalancing the economy. Growing the economy has been the first priority in making the Programme for Government and will almost certainly be the first priority in the Programme for Government when the new Executive takes up office and has time to think these issues through.

Dealing with the effects of constraints on the public sector, which will be exacerbated by any changes in corporation tax, but also trying to maximise the benefit that may come from the flexibilities you could get from managing the economy and growing the private sector in Northern Ireland.

Ian Coulter

There are some areas of the private sector that are continuing to thrive in difficult economic circumstances, for example in the technology and the agri-food sectors. I’m a great believer in the need to be positive and look forward to growth, but for the next six or 12 months there will be significant

challenges across most areas of the private sector. There are likely to be a number of high profile casualties and that is going to affect confidence, it’s going to affect supply chains, it’s going to affect smaller contractors building into bigger companies and then consultancies. That’s before you even get into the effect of Nama and how that’s going to play out.

David Lamb

Being on the cusp of an election, the probable shift in ministerial portfolios will undoubtedly create drivers for change in certain areas.

Aideen McGinley

I believe austerity demands ambition and audacity. In the past when we had the money, we probably took the easy way out for certain things, as you never actually had to ask questions like: “What are the things that really will make a change?”

We’re doing the regeneration plan in Derry at the minute where we’re putting together an investment and delivery strategy. Some of it is about fiscal incentives. We know from our plans we can deliver 12,500 jobs and we can save £200 million on the public purse, but what’s the incentive to do that?

I think there are some very interesting conversations that can be held within government and there is an openness to new thinking we found in particular with DFP, where they have said: “What way can we do things differently?” So there are hard decisions but there are also opportunities to actually do things in a much more targeted and effective way.

What changes are coming down the track in the private sector?

Barry Byrne

We work closely with both public and private sector and throughout the province and we’ve seen a lot of the challenges in the private sector where clients and customers are struggling and hitting the wall. We’ve also seen challenges in public sector clients in trying to drive efficiency.

The first is being lean, being efficient in whatever we do, and like any organisation in public or private, in the good times you become inefficient by virtue of human nature. Organisations in the private sector have gone through that lean process in the last two years, cutting out whatever we can cut out to survive, and I think there’s an element of that actively going on within the departments.

The second for me is around the innovation side of it, thinking differently. I think there’s a commonality here in terms of public and private sector, within the reality of the financial climate that we’re in. For us, the whole market has changed, things are not going to be the way they were two or three years ago and I think we all need to recognise that. But we can use that as a driver to say: “Well, let’s challenge our thinking and think differently.” The standard methodology of “that’s the way we’ve always done it” just has to be written off.

We’ve got a challenging political dynamic in Northern Ireland because there are elections and because of the relative immaturity of the political system. We’ve got to recognise that, and be alert and mindful of what constraints that will put on innovation.

How do we balance cost effectiveness with meeting customer needs?

Catherine McCallum

I agree that austerity can drive innovation. When there are no funding pressures, there’s less likelihood of applying a discipline to how we approach our business. When you are delivering frontline services, however, there is always the dilemma in terms of what you stop doing and how it will impact on those you serve.

We are reasonably fortunate in terms of the Budget where our Minister has sought to protect, as far as possible, our frontline services. For the first three years of the Budget period we’re reasonably confident that we will be able to continue to deliver the current level of service. Obviously we had been well warmed up to the fact that there were cuts coming down the line so over the last year we have been considering how we might deliver savings. Of course there may be challenges post-election, as who knows what priorities a different Minister might have?

Stephen Peover

There is work going on. The budget review group’s work is continuing and it is looking at issues of efficiency and effectiveness and revenue raising. These are relatively new phenomena and arrangements and they will develop as the Ministers come to terms with their responsibilities. There’s a lot of dynamic behind this and I don’t think the public sector is resistant to change. Simply recycling the existing processes we’ve got in Northern Ireland and shipping something from the public sector to the private sector doesn’t necessarily add to the sum total of human happiness or wealth. Austerity will drive radical change over the next few years.

Michael Smyth

There seems to be a set of short-term issues here around austerity. I think this is really about longer term.

I’ve seen all this before. I remember the 1976 austerity, the IMF, the borrowing. There was never a word about how we repaid that and it didn’t put my taxes up and it isn’t going to do that here. By the Budget of 2012 or 2013, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have to start to loosen the purse strings. So, in Northern Ireland although we have a Comprehensive Spending Review, that will change. Our problem is now and over the next two years, doing what we thought we could do with less money. Thereafter I think if economic growth permits, you will see a more generous public sector settlement. We need to look at this in the longer term because public sector change takes a long time; it is very people intensive. Our political system is very immature and that will slow up the appetite for change. We have a short- term problem; this is not an Armageddon.

Ian Coulter

The short-term problems that we have discussed are with us now, no matter what anyone does. There were 60 administrations in the last quarter and whilst some of those were connected, a lot weren’t.

Mid-to long-term I’m actually extremely positive. I’ve been very impressed by the fact that there are a lot of good ideas of how to innovate and grow revenues from within organisations.

The key to the success of many of these good ideas is making sure that we can engage effectively with our political leadership. Hopefully, when these elections are over, we will have more time and more appetite to look at how these ideas can be successfully implemented.

Stephen Peover

The Budget reflects the existing Programme for Government and it would have been odd to have had a new Programme for Government without a new Executive and a new Assembly.

Things don’t change that quickly over a period of time so there’s an essential continuity between where we’ve been and where we’re going. I’d like to think that we will cope with those short-term pressures and we will then turn our minds to the horizon.

What will be the impact of the cuts to public infrastructure investment?

Killian Margey

We’re looking at a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make these changes and to improve the delivery of value and services for the public sector and for citizens. When things start to improve again you lose that impetus, so I would see that as an opportunity now.

We know that we have to try and create our own revenue from our own resources and assets, and to promote an export-led strategy. Innovation is key, particularly through IT. The www.nidirect.gov.uk website is a very good example of how significant savings can be delivered.

Aideen McGinley

We’ve actually found it helpful because in the regeneration process in Derry, which has been two years long for which we make no apologies, we have been building up a coalition to deliver. The interesting thing is we ended up with 189 priorities and all of a sudden reality set in. We got it down to five themes and 11 catalyst projects; that will be a really robust analysis. We know the outputs and we know we can do it in an integrated and holistic way.

We’re looking at what is short-term, medium- term and long-term, which is a dose of reality. It actually cuts through a lot of the positioning for my “pet project” and a lot of people realise now that we will still get the 189 done if we do these 11.

Killian Margey

It strikes me that, yes, the public sector has to deliver but I think citizens have to deliver as well and maybe there has to be a re- education to develop a keener sense of civic responsibility and duty.

Catherine McCallum

I think the whole welfare reform agenda will drive out some of the changes that are needed in terms of civic responsibility. Strengthening the economy will, of course, be critical to the success of the welfare reforms because the emphasis will be more on what people can do, rather than what they can’t do, and unless the jobs are there to support the policy, the benefits may not be realised.

David Lamb

I think one of the issues is to try and get away from this “public bad, private good”. We should be trying to merge those concepts so we each have the opportunity to do better. In a way, the Housing Executive is a somewhat insular organisation. Our 90,000 tenants live in the six counties; we spend almost all of our money in the six counties, largely by private sector organisations. One priority to crack is how the public sector deals with smaller players in the private sector. Small people are nimble, small people are inventive; they have niches that need to be exploited.

Stephen Peover

We need to use new technology a lot better. We had Martha Lane Fox here last week doing a master class, the digital champion for the UK Government. We need to respond to the changing patterns of people’s interaction with public services. I was at a conference in Birmingham last week, where they’ve been going through a reform and modernisation programme. They have found that an online interaction with the public is 46 times cheaper than face-to-face contact.

Those things will have to come and they’re already happening in some places, and techniques like Lean are being used in the public sector. One of the things we’re not good at is making available to colleagues the good practice that is already happening in

many places.

I chair a reform group on citizen-facing reform and we’ve been going around and looking at some of the good practice in Northern Ireland. Quite a lot of it is in the Social Security Agency, where Lean is quite widely used. Processing times are dropping by a factor of five or 10 times. People are getting a service quickly. They’re getting it effectively and efficiently, without having to submit lots of paper, and that’s the way it should be.

Ian Coulter

One area where we have an opportunity to drive and shape infrastructure change is in the healthcare sector, because in Northern Ireland there are some world class new technologies being developed at an exponential rate. We’ve got some global market leaders like Randox.

Stephen Peover

We’re having contact with the Cabinet Office about mutualisation and they’re running a number of pilots. It’s an issue that will need to be talked through in Northern Ireland. It raises a whole set of policy problems about how those organisations work and operate, where they fit into the system, and whether there’s a long-term agenda of heading towards outsourcing or privatisation.

To mention the Birmingham example, they have £671 million in their reform programme and the way they’ve done that is through prudential borrowing.

Killian Margey

There are examples of changes in existing institutions. For example, healthcare is a good illustration where the delivery model has changed: domiciliary care services, maximising GP services to reduce A&E time, tele-health and telecare. That will deliver value and savings in the medium-to-long term.

Aideen McGinley

We could be a world leader in connected health but will we do the minimum to keep us in the marketplace and actually lose the leading edge? If we want to do it well, we actually have to take a further step and then keep going. It might be longer term. It might still be in an R&D phase.

Michael Smyth

The EU’s €87 billion budget for innovation and R&D is only one-third allocated, and it finishes in 2013. They’re going down the long list of Framework 7 projects that didn’t get funded in the first round and presumably that will only take them so far. So there will be opportunities for those that are leading edge projects if they’re not already receiving European funding.

What about a bigger role for the private and voluntary sector? Do you see that coming down the track?

Aideen McGinley

We found a huge gap between private and voluntary sectors and one of the big achievements was that we got the community and voluntary sector to recognise that they needed the economy to be a driver, and got the private sector to realise that we can’t really change the economy unless they bring the community on board.

I think we’ve started to crack the nut. Increasingly, as you look at examples such as Bryson House, we need to be replicating those models. In business as well, it’s more than corporate social responsibility, it’s about how you build your business, helping the voluntary sector to deliver professionally, and vice versa. Businesses that are now leaner need to have a feeling of worth. Sometimes you’re trimming so far, you lose that particular interface that motivates and inspires employees.

David Lamb

Bryson House have certainly changed and grown as an organisation. They are now responsible for managing half of the Warm Homes programme in Northern Ireland. We need to allow more players in, from whatever sector. We need to grow the 10- man business into a 20-man business, the 50-man business into an 80-man business. Barry Byrne

Our experience is quite extensive at a national level, in terms of working with the third sector and working more collaboratively with the public sector.

Justice is one area that we’re involved in, and we’re involved in one component part of it. Whilst that’s delivering a benefit and a potentially large efficiency saving, because the budgets are all ‘siloed’, you’re not realising the benefit in the next one along.

That’s where the voluntary and private sector can help, in coming at it from an holistic view, and looking at an end-to-end problem. Look at all the departments that have an impact on health from a societal point of view. That’s where the maturity of the government needs to come in and say: “Let’s step back, and let’s override our organisational dynamics, and understand the societal challenges.”

And that may mean moving money. It may mean moving departments. It may mean merging services. It may mean different collaborations with the public and private sector. That’s leadership we need and thus far hasn’t been there.

Ian Coulter

You can have a silo mentality in a business, when what is really needed is to get people joined up. If that can happen in a relatively small business, just think of what can happen in a huge organisation within the public sector. The point about engagement is really important.

One of our strengths, if we really focus on it over the next 5-10 years, is the level of access and engagement between public sector and private sector and all the different stakeholders. It’s actually very strong here as long as it’s approached the right way and in the right spirit.

Catherine McCallum

I think there’s huge scope for us to learn from how voluntary sector organisations do their business. We’re often driving out a lot of what’s happening, but in essence you could argue that these people are on the ground and can actually see and inform to a large degree how best to make things work.

Aideen McGinley

In the Cityscope analysis, the politicians were very determined that what we put in was as robust as possible, in terms of evidence, so we have 3,000 pages online of statistical analysis. We’ve everything from NISRA government statistics to Oxford Economics’ econometric model.

With the Cityscope survey, we tendered it and it was a local community organisation, Greater Shantallow Partnership, who won the tender. They trained 85 local people as enumerators, who went out and did 500 in- depth questionnaires in the 20 per cent most deprived neighbourhoods. We had a fantastic response, with detailed and reliable information.

It affirmed a lot of what we knew but we can say it with authority now, and we also know where to target and will repeat the exercise in 2012 and 2014.

Looking into the next two years, what advice would you give senior managers in the public sector?

Catherine McCallum

As public servants, we all have pride in what we do and that pride drives us in a positive way. Those of us who have leadership responsibility can influence the people around us, and it’s really important that we don’t let all the negative talk of austerity discourage us from being innovative and striving to achieving excellence in service delivery.

Stephen Peover

When we talk about the public sector, the important word in that is public. We exist to serve the public, and if we don’t serve them properly and effectively, and don’t give them what they want and in the way that they want it, then we’re not doing our job.

I think people do want to do a good job. That public sector ethos does still exist but it’s easy to get lost in a bureaucratic point. When times are easy, organisations blossom and aren’t efficient and effective.

If we’re going to be innovative, do new things and do them differently, we’re going to fail sometimes.

If every time something goes wrong it becomes a hanging point for the Minister concerned or criticism of the officials, then it is going to inhibit people trying to do things differently. And that’s the exactly the opposite of what we want to encourage.

If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. We’ll go back and do it the old way or find another way of doing it. That’s the way business operates; failure isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And that’s an attitude we haven’t really got in the public sector at the moment.

Ian Coulter

After the elections are over we need to collectively grasp the opportunity to engage and see what NI plc and its stakeholders can do. I’m tremendously hopeful about what can be achieved over the next five to ten years.

We just need to careful that the objectives set out in the economic plan are aligned with the Budget. If we are going to be focused on an export-led economy, we’ve got to make sure that the funds are there to do that. Invest NI has been given £5-8 million per annum on export-led initiatives. Is that enough?

Barry Byrne

There are two real issues for me. One is confidence-building around strategic leadership and the potentially profound effect that would have on the overall market. It’s how you spend money, how you present plans and effect change. Change must be confidently led in a positive way.

The second thing is focusing collectively on strategic outcomes. If we focus on outcomes and have a slightly longer time horizon, we’d have a much greater chance of delivery. Whereas if we focus on the here and now and the immediate cuts and savings and headcounts, that’s a downward spiral.

Aideen McGinley

We have to look at this as an opportunity. In the public sector, there was almost this taboo: “Don’t dare ever approach anything that is novel and contentious.” Now, it is: “Maybe we should be looking at novel and contentious, because maybe that’s the answer.”

My other plea is on skills and young people. So many of them now are just automatically assuming that there is no future here. There’s a complete mindset piece to say: “Go, but come back because we’ve something for you”, and we need to create it.

Michael Smyth

I’d be slightly less worried about it but I think we’re too hard on ourselves here. We’re part of the United Kingdom and if you look at every facet of public life across these islands, people from here are at the very top in everything. When Labour were in power, you could say the Scots mafia ran the country but scratch beneath the surface and you see four chairmen of FTSE 100 companies from Northern Ireland. That’s pro rata far higher than our population share.

I would want every household in Northern Ireland, with their kids growing up, to know that they have the choice to reach their potential here on this island rather than have to leave.

David Lamb

The number of 16-year olds who are functionally illiterate is an ‘elephant in the room’ and must be addressed if they are to play a full part in making this a better Northern Ireland. We cannot let them down again.

Killian Margey

Failure is an inherent part of success when you need to innovate and managed risk is ok. I think there are times when the public needs to cut the public sector a bit of slack on this. But if you are going to fail, if possible you want fail quickly and you want to fail cheaply and then move on to the next project.

On managing performance in the public sector, I think there needs to be more positivity in your workforce at every level, more engagement with the frontline, more transparency and more accountability as well. Success should be properly rewarded.

Local democracy means that ministers must have power over policy, Alex Attwood has stated in a call for more reform.

Officials and groups lobbying government need to change their attitude to ministers as devolution takes root, according to Alex Attwood. Speaking at the Northern Ireland Housing Conference, the Social Development Minister emphasised the primacy of elected ministers over officials.

“The democratic interest is here and if ministers get into government and get into power, the democratic interest is going to get stronger,” he stated.

Northern Ireland was “good at doing reform” and needed a new phase of it, he added, highlighting the housing sector as a “trailblazer”.

However, he also pointed to a letter that he had received from the Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations (NIFHA), dated 26 January, which laid down 13 conditions for government, rather than suggestions.

One was worded: “The Minister will raise no objection to Housing Executive rent increases that do not exceed the rate of inflation”.

“That’s the problem,” Attwood retorted. Federations and representative groups should not direct ministers on how they approach policy or finance, he explained. That was up to a government.

Attwood had asked for the letter to be withdrawn but this was refused.

Separately, he was worried about the character of Northern Ireland’s government, as the DUP and Sinn Féin were attacking smaller parties for objecting to the draft Budget.

The Minister had also asked housing association chief executives and his senior civil servants to take a voluntary pay cut, but said none had done so. He was particularly disappointed with the attitude in DSD, as the department is responsible for helping the most disadvantaged members of society.

“When things are not right, you demand the right to dissent because there is much to dissent from,” Attwood said, describing this as the “most severe” Budget in a generation.

Attwood described the previous day (22 February) as one of his most difficult days as Minister, due to resistance to change within his own department. He observed that some other ministers were in government “but certainly not in power”.

He also re-emphasised the need for a fundamental review of the Housing Executive and warned that fuel poverty would increase, due to rising oil prices, reduced incomes and welfare reform. Attwood also admitted that he “didn’t move quickly enough” when the Housing Executive properties were affected by the December water crisis.

Attwood has been seeking an exemption for Northern Ireland from welfare cuts. He pointed out that Lord David Freud, the UK Government’s Welfare Reform Minister, had previously studied the peace process and would have understood that the province was a distinct region.

Housing was also discussed by the British-Irish Council, when it met at St Mary’s University College on 16 February. Attwood was most impressed by Scottish Housing Minister Alex Neil and his proposals to match housing reform with need. The Scottish Government has just published its new housing strategy: ‘Homes Fit for the 21st Century’.

The SDLP MLA was appointed Social Development Minister last May. All ministers continue in office until the new Executive is appointed, after the 5 May Assembly election.

NIFHA responds

Asked to reply to Attwood’s criticism, NIFHA Chief Executive Chris Williamson said: “In responding as positively as possible to the proposed 40 per cent cut in the budget for social house-building, our registered housing association members made a substantial offer of help to the Minister for Social Development.” He added: “NIFHA’s members will continue to work with the DSD to maximise social housing output, provide construction jobs and stimulate the wider economy.”

In its favour, separate education allows parents to choose schools with their own community’s ethos. The result, though, is that over 90 per cent of children do not meet a child from the other community during their average school day.

Integrated education is officially defined as “the education together at school of Protestant and Roman Catholic pupils” in the 1989 Education Order.

Our analysis focuses on the three main levels of schooling: primary, secondary (non-grammar) and grammar. In 2009-2010, these accounted for just over 300,000 pupils in 1,068 state-funded schools.

Those schools were, in turn, spread across four sectors:

The vast majority of maintained schools were Catholic-owned (470). The category also included 21 Irish medium schools and four schools run by Protestant churches.

The clearest example of integrated education is the formal integrated sector, which had 20,204 pupils and a 6.7 per cent share. However, there were also:

• 5,243 Catholic pupils in controlled schools;
• 2,072 Catholic pupils in non-Catholic voluntary grammars;
• 1,001 Protestant pupils in maintained schools;
• 253 Protestant pupils in Catholic grammars.

When these numbers are added, the new integrated total appears to equal 28,773, or 9.6 per cent.

When these numbers are added, the new integrated total appears to equal 28,773, or 9.6 per cent.

However, three controlled primary schools were 100 per cent Catholic and therefore not mixed. Minorities also tend to be small minorities in controlled and maintained schools. Outside the formal integrated sector, just 55 schools enrolled 10 per cent of their pupils from the minority community. Of these, 22 enrolled 30 per cent of their pupils from minorities.

Parents

Most education in Northern Ireland is state-funded but also influenced by the churches and, of course, parental choice. All three groups will therefore influence whether and how the system moves towards more sharing.

The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in 1948, recognised that parents had a “prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” The European Convention on Human Rights adds that the state shall respect the right of parents to “ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”

Surveys suggest that integrated education is parents’ main preference and support is much higher than the current enrolment level.

A Millward Brown survey in 2008 found that 43 per cent of respondents would prefer that their children or grandchildren attended an integrated sector school.

In the 2009 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, 62 per cent of respondents said that they preferred mixed-religion schools. Similar trends have been recorded in that series and the previous Social Attitude Surveys since the 1960s.

Churches

Schools were first provided by the churches and all four main denominations draw up the core RE syllabus. Religious education and collective worship is compulsory, although parents have the right to withdraw their child.

As for school management, the churches currently take three main approaches:

• Church-owned schools with state funding;
• State-owned schools with church influence;
• Independent church-owned schools.

Almost all schools in the first category are Catholic-owned.

“Education is not value-free,” Bishop Donal McKeown told agendaNi. In his view, Catholic education “communicates a particular vision of the human person and of the meaning of life.” In Catholic thinking, the school complements learning in the home and at church. Non-Catholic children also attend the church’s schools and opt out of worship.

Protestant churches saw the transfer of their schools as an ‘investment’ in the Northern Ireland state. Most controlled schools therefore have church-appointed governors.

“We seek to contribute a vision of education based upon the values of the Christian faith,” said Rev Ian Ellis, who is secretary to the Transferors Representatives Council. While schools have a “diversity of beliefs” among pupils, parents and staff, Christianity continues to be “the most widely held religious faith” in Northern Ireland. “It is also our belief that the impulse of many parents is to have their children educated in schools within the context of Christian faith.”

The seven independent Christian schools are mostly run by the Free Presbyterian Church, which considers the state system too secular.

State

The religious divide, of course, mirrors political division. Catholics initially set up their own schools due to state persecution under the penal laws. The nature of the state has subsequently changed over time, switching between direct rule and devolution.

Governments have intervened to promote integrated education on four occasions.

British chief secretary Edward Stanley made the first attempt in 1831. Stanley envisaged a single national primary school system, to reduce sectarian divisions. Children would be taught a standard secular curriculum and receive basic religious education in schools.

The Protestant and Catholic churches disagreed over the form of RE to be taught. The state therefore allowed them to run their own separate schools, with state funding.

Northern Ireland was formed in the midst of sectarian conflict, with nationalists resenting partition and boycotting the unionist government. Against this troubled backdrop, the first education minister Lord Londonderry sought to create a non-denominational system, again to reduce to division.

Under the Education Act 1923:

• every state-funded school was to be open to all children, regardless of background;
• religious education could be taught outside compulsory school hours.

Churches were invited to transfer their schools on these terms. If a school were not transferred, the state would pay only half of its maintenance and upkeep costs. Two compromises encouraged Protestant churches to transfer their schools to the state:

• allowing churches to appoint school governors and education authority members;
• introducing non-denominational religious education and collective worship to schools.

Despite underfunding, the Catholic Church remained opposed, to preserve its schools’ ethos. Their grant was gradually increased, reaching the full 100 per cent for recurrent funding in 1989.

Deep divisions remained throughout the old Stormont era but this was not the full picture. Protestants and Catholics were educated together at university, in colleges and grammar schools and in the mill schools of County Down.

Another UUP education minister, Basil McIvor, suggested a shared schools plan in 1974 but the Executive collapsed soon afterwards. This would have set aside £13 million for schools which involved Catholic and Protestant churches in their management.

Brian Mawhinney introduced a duty to “encourage and facilitate the development of integrated education” in 1989. A Shared Future, published under direct rule in 2005, also warned that “parallel living and the provision of parallel services are unsustainable both morally and economically.”

Reducing and eliminating segregated services” is only a long-term “theme for action” in the Executive’s draft Cohesion, Sharing and Integration strategy; the document only briefly mentions education.

Funding for community relations in education has been cut from

£4.25 million in 2006-2007 to £1.1 million this year. The Department of Education is moving the subject into the main curriculum as ‘community relations, equality and diversity’ (CRED). However, as the school census shows, most of that curriculum is taught in segregated schools.

Ways forward

Based on previous academic research and the available statistics, agendaNi has identified five potential options to increase the level of integrated education. These cover the whole definition, not just the formal integrated sector, and a strategy for sharing could combine more than one option.

1. State-run and integrated

Bringing all state-funded schools under state control is the most radical option.

In theory, it would be possible for the state to create integrated schools in mixed areas by merging mainly Protestant schools and mainly Catholic schools, with the smaller one closed to save money. A fully integrated school, though, is only possible if the neighbourhood it serves is itself shared.

Back in 2001, a total of 435,603 people lived in wards where over 90 per cent of residents are from one community. This meant that 25 per cent of the population effectively lived in single-identity areas. Around a quarter of schools would have a fully Protestant or fully Catholic intake, but a state-run solution could result in a major increase in integration (potentially up to

75 per cent if applied in all mixed areas).

However, it would also restrict some choice, especially if parents had to pay fees for a church school. The state would also need to decide whether and how to teach RE in such a system.

Taking religion out of school would resemble the USA’s public schools system and the 1923 Londonderry plan is the closest historical precedent.

American public schools effectively replace religion with a single national identity (e.g. the pledge of allegiance to the flag), which is missing in Northern Ireland. A US-style system may also lead to parents with strong religious beliefs opting out, either through private religious schools or homeschooling. As of 2007, around 12 per cent of American children were privately schooled and 3 per cent were homeschooled.

Support for secularised education is hard to gauge as the department does not keep statistics on parents opting out of RE. It is strongly backed by the Humanist Association and around 33,000 pupils (10.9 per cent) have no religious background.

Alternatively, a general form of RE and collective worship could be retained along with the parental right to opt out. This is closest to the 1831 Stanley plan but some parents may prefer a stronger Catholic or Protestant ethos.

2. Joint church schools

Outside Northern Ireland, there are around 20 examples of schools, colleges and universities run jointly by Protestant and Catholic churches. Most of these have been formed in England by the Catholic Church and the Church of England. Both traditions are taught.

In the Catholic Church’s view, the controlled sector is secular as Protestant churches do not own those schools. The main Protestant churches disagree and see potential for some shared schooling.

Archbishop Alan Harper has suggested that the two traditions can “work together with imagination and creativity to offer a shared Christian vision” in education. Catholic and Protestant clergy have visited jointly managed schools in Liverpool.

As stated, Catholic-run church schools already enrol non-Catholic pupils. However, only 11 of these schools are over 10 per cent Protestant and just four are over 30 per cent Protestant.

3. More grant-maintained integrated schools

Grant-maintained integrated (GMI) schools are set up by parents; the first example was Lagan College in 1981. These schools had 14,520 pupils in 2009-2010.

The number of GMI schools rose from 10 in 1991 to 37 in 2004. Only one new school was added between then and 2009. Decreased capital funding makes new builds less likely, especially with 54,000 unfilled places and a £292 million maintenance backlog. However, the Life and Times Survey suggests that parental demand for integrated schools will remain consistently strong.

4. More controlled integrated schools

Existing controlled schools can change their status to ‘controlled integrated’ through the transformation process. There were 23 controlled integrated schools (with 5,684 pupils) in 2009, compared to one in 1991. No maintained schools have followed this route, due to church objections.

For transformation, a school must enrol 10 per cent of new pupils from the minority and achieve an overall 70:30 balance within 10 years. Last year, there were 18 controlled schools with 30 per cent or more Catholic pupils.

However, each transformation results in one less controlled school and the number of Protestant church governors normally falls from four to two. Protestants can therefore feel a “sense of loss” when transformation occurs, Rev Ellis explained.

5. Separate schools but shared activities

So far, the solutions have focused on reshaping the system or creating more formal integrated schools. However, integrated education occurs through joint classes and activities between schools in different sectors. Early examples included the Education for Mutual Understanding and Cultural Heritage programmes.

The 2006 Bain Review called for collaboration to be maximised. The Sharing Education Programme, managed by Queen’s University, aims to put this into practice and its partnerships have helped to organise shared classes for around 60 schools since 2007.

The Entitlement Framework also makes sharing more possible. From September 2013, schools will be required to provide a minimum number of 24 courses at Key Stage 4 and 27 at post-16 level. At least one-third of courses must be academic and at least one-third vocational.

In 2008, 59 per cent of schools collaborated with other schools to deliver the curriculum – a level which is likely to rise as schools cannot provide all the new courses by themselves. The department is therefore encouraging schools to organise links through ‘area learning communities’.

Collaboration can also take place in further education colleges, which are non-denominational.

Michael Wardlow, a former Chief Executive of Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education, welcomes shared activities between schools but wants to see this approach incorporated into the whole school rather than depending on individual teachers or departments.

Wardlow’s focus is on people, not organisations and structures. All staff – whether teaching, ancillary or admin – “have individual but interdependent roles in operating a school and supporting learning in that community.” It also covers the board of governors and ideally, parents as well.

Conclusion

Each of the methods to increase integrated education has its pros and cons but the overall concept has clear benefits.

There is a continuum of ideas. Sharing could mean merging all sectors into one or continuing with the same sectors as now, as long as all schools make sure that regular sharing takes place.

Academics in the 1960s described Northern Ireland as a ‘divided community’. Now, it is usually described as having ‘two communities’. A separate but equal approach will probably see the next generation grow up even further apart.

Education is about the future and, put simply, it’s hard to imagine Northern Ireland having a genuinely shared future without a shared education system.

A costly divide

The financial cost of division in education remains unclear. In 2007, the Deloitte study could not separate this from the effects of academic selection and running small rural schools. However, it identified the costs of extra management for separate sectors (£6.4 million) and the grants to separate teaching colleges: £4.59 million to Stranmillis and £4.48 million to St Mary’s.

‘Developing the case for shared education’, published by Oxford Economics this September, calls on the Executive to improve sharing, partly for financial reasons. As well as efficiency, integration could prove to the UK Government that Northern Ireland can do “more for less” as spending cuts start.

The Northern Ireland Civil Service is changing. Owen McQuade met with its Head, Bruce Robinson, to discuss how the service is evolving to meet the challenges ahead.

We met in the wake of the Northern Ireland Water procurement dispute and although Bruce Robinson is unable to deal with the specifics, due to the investigation underway, he is clear as to the context for anyone working in public service.

“I’m very, very clear that the fundamental principles remain absolutely the same, which is that the civil servants are accountable to their ministers and through their ministers, in turn, to the Assembly.

“That remains a core principle.” Since devolution, Robinson says that civil servants have provided “vital support to ministers and to the Programme for Government right from the beginning.”

“That’s very, very important to all of us in the NICS: that devolution works. I always find it difficult when we go through a series of events such as we’ve gone through because for something in the order of 26-27,000 people who are committed to all of this work, much of that work goes on delivering vital services on a daily basis and to a high standard,” he adds.

Looking towards the challenges of the impending Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), Robinson sees difficult times ahead. He expects a “very significant reduction in resources” going forward over the next four years, a trend which has already been signalled both through the emergency Budget and announcements and discussions across the water, “with very significant changes in reductions to budgets, re-examination of the various arm’s length bodies and bodies which are undertaking work on behalf of departments.”

A key element of public sector reform is the development of the channels of engagement with citizens i.e. how members of the public get in touch with government. Robinson emphasises that “a lot of work” has been done on efficiency of the different channels.

He still believes there will always be a requirement for a proportion of services to be delivered face-to-face, adding: “That’s probably the difference between government and business. I don’t think government can concentrate, just given the nature of the services it’s required to deliver, that it can simply rely on delivering them all through the internet for example – even though that is, as everybody recognises, by far and away the most efficient in cost terms.”

NI Direct

Robinson believes that the work that has been done on NI Direct is “crucial” going forward for the next four or five years. Phase one of NI Direct has “worked well” with its website now extensively used. In its first year of operations there were just over a million visitors to the site and 1.7 million since it was launched in April 2009.

There has also been a significant amount achieved in telephony terms. “The standards of our telephony now are very high and, through the four anchor tenants in Phase 1 of the telephony aspect of NI Direct, we’ve received very successful outcomes,” observes Robinson. A good example recently was the billing of rates in April and May of this year which “worked exceptionally well.”

Now that NI Direct has got “good robust systems”, he expects that the next stage of development will be to move on to making transaction services on the internet more effectively and achieve even greater savings. At this point in time, a quarter of all calls are what Robinson describes as “one and done” through the use of the contact centre in NI Direct. This means that these queries are sorted out at the initial point of contact.

Initial pilot work has found that about 30 per cent would be dealt with in this fashion. In fact, 40 per cent were dealt with on the first point of contact in a pilot with the Planning Service.

Robinson sees this as “a recognition that a lot of those queries are capable of being handled quite straightforwardly. It’s quite often people who want to be pointed in the right direction or factual information that answers the query totally.”

The next phase of development will see more transactions on the internet and more services being delivered by telephony as a back-up.

Extending shared services

Robinson believes that the Civil Service shared service infrastructure offers a platform for savings: “We know their costing. They are capable of being scaled up. I’ve no doubt that over the next year that we’ll look at the feasibility of adding more organisations on because, given that the costs are absolutely sound and very, very good value, it’s an important opportunity for us to achieve a lot more, given that we’ve made the big investment.”

He points out that shared services have also led to “significant” improvements in some areas e.g. considerably faster invoice payments to small businesses. “That has been particularly important to ministers in responding to the [economic] pressure,” he adds.

The shared services have enabled improved financial management of processes. “We’re seeing money allocated being spent and financial management tightening up very, very considerably to ensure that we were able to deliver the maximum under those [shared services] programmes and that the money that had been allocated actually then was used to deliver outcomes.”

This improved financial management is due to a combination of a focus coming from ministers recognising again the financial pressures and departments responding to that challenge.

“There’s no doubt that financial management has become a much higher priority for us and we’ve achieved these better outcomes. It’s also been about training and skills within our people as well, and we’ve achieved these much better outcomes through that combination,“ he adds.

Morale

After feedback from the initial stages of shared services, the Civil Service has put a “great deal of emphasis on better communication with staff, and encouraging innovative approaches and co-operation.

“It was difficult, and a couple of years ago staff were indicating through the staff surveys that they found it difficult, but I believe we’re past the worst of that,” he comments. “People are now seeing [that] all of these systems have bedded in [and] are delivering. All of us have adapted and changed to that, and I think again that demonstrates where we’re going.”

Sickness absence rates are “going in the right direction” and the NICS is “now moving into tackling the harder issue” of long-term absence.

It is also investing heavily in training and taking a keen interest in corporate social responsibility, which follows on from a “very long and proud history” of charitable giving. While this was previously encouraged because it was “good for morale within the department”, the value is now being realised across the service e.g. through the Benevolent Fund or Business in the Community projects.

Efficiencies

The NICS has also seen a significant improvement in productivity. Over the last five years there has been a reduction in 2.7 per cent in FTE [full-time equivalent] permanent staff while the actual budgets in cash terms over that period have gone up by just over 30 per cent. Robinson observes: “The investment we’ve had in those shared services projects [has] been able to effect those efficiencies.”

Another aspect of the increased efficiency is the balance between NICS FTEs and whole public sector FTEs, where the NICS share has reduced from 14.9 per cent to 13 per cent. “That’s a combination of both NICS reductions and the growth in public expenditure, particularly with the emphasis in areas such as health and education [where] public sector employment has grown.

The contraction has also taken place in the senior Civil Service, again due to natural wastage, which allowed staff to be redeployed as new technology was introduced. Since last November the NICS has not been recruiting to the general grade. It wanted to avoid making new recruits redundant, as the budgetary pressure increased.

“We haven’t been able to define the scale; that will be in October,” he says of the forthcoming cuts. “Obviously, departments at this point in time are looking at likely impacts and starting to understand what those might mean and looking at the potential scenarios as part of the discussion for ministers to have within their departments, for ministers to have with the Finance Minister and ultimately for all that work to come together at the Executive.”

The Civil Service has been taking a strategic approach to budgets and operating costs over the last five years. This, in turn, allowed it to develop its major IT projects and gives Robinson “confidence that we can significantly re-engineer major processes and achieve successful outcomes.”

Robinson reflects: “As we move into the CSR period and certainly for NICS, the demand on departments to look very, very carefully at how we’re doing things, look very, very carefully at the reasons we’re doing things and what that does to enhance delivery to the citizen.”

The ‘standard’ policy cycle often places evaluation at the end. This summative approach is valuable to provide a snapshot of progress and impact but evaluation can, and should, be undertaken throughout the policy cycle. Ex-ante evaluation establishes a baseline and articulates what a policy hopes to achieve and how intervention will make a difference. Ongoing evaluation allows for revisions as policy is implemented, thus maximising its potential to deliver. Therefore ongoing evaluation and review needs to be built in at regular intervals.

Constrained public finances have encouraged more ‘in-house’ evaluation but there is value in maintaining an independent perspective. Individuals not directly involved in management and delivery can provide an unbiased point of view, challenging assumptions and bringing a fresh perspective.

More partnership approaches to evaluation are needed in the public sector. For example, some organisations in the voluntary sector are working with peers to provide each other with independent evaluation input, while others primarily self-evaluate but engage an external evaluator to guide the process and provide constructive challenge.

In some cases, the evaluation is clearly embedded in an ongoing cycle of policy development e.g. where delivery is contracted to third parties and the contract cycle drives regular reviews. However, it is not unusual to find at the point of evaluation that there is only a rather vague idea of what impact a programme was expected to have and how it was meant to effect change. Defining this in retrospect can be difficult and risks being biased by hindsight. A well-defined evaluation framework not only supports evaluation; it can also support policy implementation.

We worked recently with a voluntary sector organisation which had invested significantly in evaluation. Working with an external evaluator, it had defined an evaluation framework, with supporting monitoring and management processes. What was different in this case was that they had fully integrated this into their strategic planning cycle for the organisation. So evaluation became a tool to support the organisation itself rather than something ‘done to it’ by a funder.

There can sometimes be a ‘disconnect’ between overarching government policy and the interventions put in place to implement it. The majority of formal

evaluation takes place at the programme or project level rather than at the central policy level. It’s not always clear how this flows up into evaluation of overarching policies over a longer period of time or where the findings from individual programme evaluation end up.

Sometimes the overarching policy aim can get buried in the day-to-day realities of delivery. People and organisations invest time and energy in policies, and evaluation needs to get behind the natural instinct for self-preservation and resistance to change to identify what difference has really been made.

Too often evaluation is considered as something imposed from above, to satisfy paymasters or external stakeholders. But if viewed as a positive opportunity to take stock and continuously improve, then going through a well-designed evaluation process can be beneficial in itself. It can provide opportunities for communication with stakeholders, establish useful relationships, encourage the development of a learning culture and, importantly, create different and improved policy outcomes.

agendaNi looks at some of the ingredients of ‘good living’, as recommended by the Carnegie Trust inquiry into civil society’s future in the UK and Ireland.

Civil society has several meanings. It is people coming together voluntarily for the benefit of themselves and others, in one definition, while another describes it as the society we want to live in. A further view sees it as the places where people and organisations develop common interests and try to reconcile their differences peacefully.

The future of society as a whole is, of course, well contested but the inquiry found broad support for a “change of direction” from across the political spectrum.

This would involve moving away from the current excessive consumerism and waste, which puts a high value on money, to a more caring and compassionate society. Many things, it noted, have no price but can also be valued.

Power was too centralised and tied up in the traditional representative democracy, whereas it should be distributed with

many more voices heard. Topically for Northern Ireland, this vision also wants integration and mutual solidarity to replace segmentation and division in people’s relationships with others.

Ironically, that division has also created an opportunity for Northern Ireland’s charities, churches and community groups.

With formal politics in stalemate, civil society played a larger role in economic development and providing public services than it did elsewhere.

Social partners such as the CBI, Irish Congress of Trade Unions, NICVA and Ulster Farmers’ Union played an important role and are now forming new relationships with the devolved administration.

The report’s recommendations are grouped under four themes.

A civil economy

In the immediate aftermath of crisis, there is a consensus that something must change in the way the economy is run. The commission wants to see the financial system reshaped around better values e.g. responsibility, good governance, human well-being and environmental sustainability. In short, a more ‘civil’ economy is needed.

Civil society has been involved in the economy since the 19th century e.g. through trade unions and social enterprises. However, its role has been squeezed by the welfare state and the market, taking on social security and financial services respectively.

Three recommendations are outlined.

Financial institutions must, firstly, become more transparent and accountable. They should be required to report on their social and environmental impacts and their lending portfolios.

A more clearly tiered system also has its merits with different regulations for local, national and global finance. Restructuring the system is made easier by the large public holdings in banks after the bail-outs. Financial products, the report says, should meet social needs e.g. livelihood insurance to cover changes in personal income. When banks and other institutions invest, they could put 2.5 per cent of funds into social enterprises to support that sector.

Thirdly, the commission wants to see civil society growing in power and influence. This, crucially, involves improving people’s financial literacy. A ‘comprehensibility threshold’ is proposed so no product remains on the market if more than half its customers cannot understand it. It also wants to see millions of ordinary investors lobbying institutions so their money is used ethically.

Climate change

Campaigns to combat climate change have a high profile and the problems are now well-known. While the Copenhagen summit was a missed opportunity, campaigning should continue and positive alternatives also need to be put forward.

The preferred low carbon economy would have local roots with areas developing their own food supply, transport services and energy sources. Civil society groups with sufficient assets can invest in projects designed to bring this about.

Non-violent direct action can hold businesses to account for their environmental performance. Genuinely global alliances and also citizen conventions, to bring the main actors in society together to assess progress, are also suggested.

Media values

The media has lost sight of its importance to democracy and social change, the inquiry reports. A decline in the traditional media has been partly balanced by the rise of the internet but more of the news is now ‘churnalism’ i.e. recycled stories. Originality is declining. Freedom, pluralism and integrity are identified as three important values for the media. All parts of civil society should be free to shape the media’s content and the media, in turn, should not be controlled by a “small number of powerful interests”. Integrity is taken to mean truthfulness and accuracy.

Local and community news media should grow, it recommends, with the “free, open and democratic” nature of the internet protected from commercialism. The BBC is praised for its “public nature, quality and critical freedom” and should be promoted, given the decline of journalistic standards elsewhere. New funding models could include tax concessions, industry levies or civil society groups directing proportions of their advertising spend into news content.

Democracy

The history of British and Irish democracy shows that power had to be “prised” from those in authority by campaigners for change, according to the report. This is certainly true in grassroots campaigns for Scottish or Welsh devolution, but less so in Northern Ireland where devolution was negotiated between the governments and political parties.

A long decline in turnout and public confidence led up to the “jolt” of the 2009 expenses scandal. The commission believes that the “slow birth of a participating representative democracy” is taking place, where civil society has a greater role in organising deliberation, argument and decision-making. Practical examples include public petitions to legislatures and, in England, citizen juries.

Healthy democracy means freedom to criticise and dissent but some observers think that anti-terrorism laws are limiting civil liberties. The report calls for “very local democracy” e.g. the right to set up neighbourhood councils, allowing petitioners to take part in parliamentary debates (despite being unelected) and reviewing anti-terror laws.

Northern Ireland’s Opsahl Commission, a 1992 independent commission into the way forward for the peace process, is highlighted as it helped to develop a “public sphere”. It was led by Norwegian human rights lawyer Torkel Opsahl and demonstrated, at that point, that people from all sides wanted peace. This encouraged politicians to bring about what their voters desired.

The conclusion takes a local turn by highlighting Ballynafeigh, in south Belfast, as “proof of the difference that civil society can make even in difficult environments”. There is a strong sense of community and its different social and religious groups mix well. Quoting Winston Churchill from the 1930s crisis, the inquiry surmises that “the maps are out of date and the compass is broken”. It clearly hopes its work will help to improve society as an uncertain future unfolds.

A call for dissent

“Growing a participative and deliberative democracy is critical” for Northern Ireland, says NICVA Chief Executive Seamus McAleavey who sat on the commission in a personal capacity. “To get the best solutions to difficult issues we need people to push their heads above the parapet with their ideas. The ideas then generate further debate and refinement. Let’s seek to open up discussion as a matter of course not close it down prematurely with stock answers.”

One of the more alarming findings was the marginalisation of dissent in the Republic. As so many voluntary organisations relied on public funding, they were reluctant to criticise the Irish Government. McAleavey saw something similar over justice devolution as many organisations “self-censored themselves” because the debate was divided on unionist-nationalist party political lines.

“When people keep their heads down we lose good ideas,” he continues. “There are many people and organisations in Northern Ireland that decline to comment on important issues in case they are misinterpreted as being politically partisan.”