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Tuesday 12 July 2011

The Big Society and Failure

The LGiU has an interesting article on failure and the Big Society.  Ir argues that adapting to the Big Society means building in redundancy, blind alleys and the freedom to make mistakes.  I find that hard to reconcile with the Con Dem government's rhetoric on greater efficiencies.

However, it is also worth thinking about what would happen if you had a genuinely vibrant community organisation running a service that got into financial trouble.  Might they not argue that any financial shortfall was temporary and/or minor compared to the value of the service?  They could then turn to ministers or local government and argue for a "temporary" bailout.  If the minister said no, he might well face a political/media campaign based on generating hostile publicity rather than reasoned argument.  As soon as he started giving into such campaigns, he would encourage more.

It sounds like a reciepe for service provision to be based on the strength of lobbying campaigns and the emotiveness of the issues they can raise, rather than on a strategy designed to address need.

It also might create a "moral hazard" problem where organisations fail to take proper care of their own finances because they assume that the government will bail them out.  Just like the banks.

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