Quasi-autonomous non-Governmental Organisations (QUANGOS) have been part of the UK public sector for many decades and there are often robust political and managerial debates about the usefulness (or otherwise) of these public bodies. This has been brought into focus recently by the atrocious state of Government finances in the UK and the need for the next Government (whoever it may be) to make real terms reductions of public expenditure in excess of £100 billion.

Not surprisingly when there are threats to front line pubic services such as schools and hospitals many will question whether we really need the large range of QUANGOS which currently exist and also whether we can afford them in the current economic and fiscal climate.

A well-researched document recently produced by the Taxpayers Alliance claimed that in the UK there were a total of 1162 QUANGOS and other agencies which cost the taxpayer a total of £63.5 billion. These figures seem to chime with similar figures used by David Cameron in a recent speech but differ markedly from other claims which put total QUANGO expenditure at £14 billion.

This brings us to the first issue of what do we really mean by a QUANGO. For example, the figure of £124 billion includes in its list of QUANGOS all of the NHS Trusts in the UK which deliver hospital and community services. Few would regard NHS Trusts as being QUANGOS in the usual meaning of the world. Even the TPA report includes in its list of QUANGOS the following organisations:-

• The British Museum
• The BBC
• Kew Gardens
• The National Library for Wales

I am not sure many people would regard since high profile and well known organisations as QUANGOS.

Perhaps QUANGOS can be considered in four main groups:-

• Service providers – some QUANGOS such as the British Museum provide services directly to the general public.
• Funders – some QUANGOS distribute public funds to relevant external organisations. Thus the Arts Councils distribute funds to arts projects and the Higher education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) distributes funds to universities for teaching and research. So it is misleading (as the TPA report does) to claim that HEFCE spends £7billion per annum. The vast bulk of that money, with the exception of £20million for internal administrative costs, is distributed to universities for teaching and research. Also in this category might be included Regional Development Agencies.
• Regulators and Inspectors – some QUANGOS are charged with inspecting and regulating public sector service providers. Thus OFSTED inspects schools and the Healthcare commission inspects hospitals. The Audit Commission audits and inspects a range of public bodies. Also in this category might be included QUANGOS such as the Equalities commission.
• Advisors – there are a myriad of bodies of varying size which provide advisory services to various parts of Government.

There are many questions which will continue to be asked about QUANGOS. These include:-

• What benefit do they actually produce? For example, have schools really improved as a result of OFSTED? Have inequalities really reduced as a consequence of the Equalities Commission? The evidence is often thin. Also the activities of such inspection QUANGOS often place great burdens on the public bodies being inspected.
• Could their work be done by other existing organisations? For example, many of the roles of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) in funding post-16 education used to be done by local authorities. Also, much economic work is done by local authorities as well as RDAs. Do we therefore need these QUANGOS when local authorities might do the same work for less?
• What public accountability is there for the work of QUANGOS? The Boards of QUANGOS are not elected but appointed by Ministers who seem to closely control what they do in some detail.
• Why are so many QUANGOS based in London when their wok could be just as easily done in other parts of the UK?
• Are there too many QUANGOS? For example do we need a QUANGO to fund higher education (HEFCE) and a QUANGO to fund post 16 education (LSC)?
• Are QUANGOS just devices for Ministers to reduce civil service head count and to avoid direct responsibility?

Overall, the future of QUANGOS probably depends on how much time and energy Ministers can devote to the issue given the vast problems which will face the next Government. Some savings can probably be squeezed out of the QUANGO system but it is probably much less than currently imagined.

Find out more

Malcolm appeared on BBC One's The Politics Show talking about QUANGOs on November 8th

Get under the skin of questions of private and public finance with The Open University Business School

We often hear about the multitude of environmental challenges facing the world: be it water, energy and/or biodiversity crises. But it is not only the earth’s physical and biological resources that are at peril, but also cultural diversity.

Kaapse Klopse Carnival in Cape Town, South Africa. Behind the diversity of performers is Table Mountain, part of the Cape floristic Region (one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots).
[image by Yoseph Araya © copyright Yoseph Araya]

Simply defined culture could mean the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. Cultural diversity is a driving force of development, not only in respect of economic growth, but also as a means of leading a more fulfilling intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual life. [UNESCO defintion]

The disappearance of cultural diversity can at times be even worse than that of other biological diversity. For example, Professor Sutherland in his paper, Parallel extinction risk and global distribution of languages and species, notes: "Over the past 500 years, about 4.5% of the total number of described languages have disappeared, compared with 1.3% of birds and 1.9% of mammals."

Often the factors that determine the diversity of life and culture are very much similar. For example forest cover, tropical climates, heterogeneous topography and prevalence of pathogens are known to be associated with higher cultural diversity.

This emphasises the need to address the world’s heritage of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity together - as biocultural diversity.

Why?

There are many compelling scientific reasons for conservation of biocultural diversity – some of which relate to ecosystem of goods and services vital for our very existence on earth.

Moreover, extinction is forever, as the epitaph at the death of the very last Hawaiian snail in captivity sombrely reminds:

Here lies Partulina turgida: 1.5 million years BC to January 1996”

Lastly, on a more personal level, the earth is a very complex and fascinating place to live in and appreciate. The loss of a species, or the loss of human language diminishes the beauty of the world simply by removing a little of that complexity).

What can be done?

We should combine resources from all walks of life and work together to save our biocultural diversity. There are many approaches that could be tried.

Bringing awareness, documenting and sharing diversity knowledge go a long way in alerting experts as well as the general public.

Another approach is to explore new ways of linking cultural and biological diversity conservation schemes. There is currently growing interest as such e.g. religious communities are increasingly being involved into conservation activities and activism.

See, for example, BBC News reports on Faith leaders urging climate curbs or Beyond Belief: Linking faith and conservation from the WWF.

Watch: International Union for Conservation of Nature: Live Culture - An expert speaks

Not least is getting involved when possible or otherwise supporting organizations working towards this aim. Some notable examples include Terralingua and Global Diversity Fund.

Last word:

The well-versed advertisement for Patek Philippe, the Swiss watch company goes: “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely take care of it for the next generation.”

Taking this analogue, it would be a great shame (if not a crime) to bequeath an impoverished earth to our future generations.

Find out more

Saving Britain’s Past

BBC News: In defence of 'lost' languages

Terralingua: Index of Biocultural Diversity

Ecological influences on human behavioural diversity: A review of recent findings
Daniel Nettle, writing in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 2009

Parallel extinction risk and global distribution of languages and species
W J Sutherland, writing in Nature 423

Introducing Environment
Alice Peasgood and Mark Goodwin, Open University/Oxford University

OpenLearn: Diversity and difference in communication - free learning materials from the Open University.

About the author

Dr Yoseph Araya is a plant ecologist and associate lecturer at the Open University. He works on the biology and conservation of South African fynbos vegetation. Environmental education and the role of the public in research is one of his key interests.

Subscribe to Yoseph Araya's posts

 

The drastic cuts in public services that are now touted as necessary to meet the cost of the folly of the banks, and the “light touch” of regulators and government, contain some familiar and unfamiliar features for those of us with long memories of public sector reform: outsourcing and reengineering on the one hand, and a cut in spending on, and better value for money from, IT on the other.

“the greater the overall power of the IT industry in a country, the lower the performance of government IT systems.”

The claim that “a 20% saving on the estimated £16 billion spend (equivalent to £3.2billion) [on IT] appears to be achievable.” appears in a document published recently by the Treasury - Operational Efficiency Programme: back office operations and IT.

This report also estimates that back office operations across government and the public sector cost £18 billion, on which savings of 20 to 25 per cent – “a reduction of around £4 billion” - are achievable. One of the primary ways in which this will be achieved is through business process reengineering (BPR), and surprise, surprise, outsourcing. Neither is a new feature of the public sector, of course. BPR was a staple of the reforms of the 1990s, as it was in the private sector. And in both sectors many BPR initiatives failed to deliver the promised benefits. Outsourcing has an even longer pedigree. Indeed, as I’ve discussed here previously, the UK government and its advisors have been particularly zealous advocates of this approach to organisational change.

While the Operational Efficiency report’s authors have obviously taken a rigorous approach to collecting and analysing the data on which their conclusions and recommendations are based, a number of unrecognised contradictions and omissions did catch my eye.

First, the report notes that “Devolution and fragmentation across the public sector mean that there is a wide variation and substantial complexity in back office operations.” (p.38).

Houses of Parliament.
[Image © copyright Photos.com]

Unfortunately it then fails to acknowledge that much of this is due to the extent to which functions have been outsourced, and the lack of serious consideration that is too often given to the wider - or “hidden” –-costs and implications of this.

Second, the report goes to some lengths to explain why it is difficult to estimate the amount spent on IT and why international comparisons are “very difficult”. Nevertheless, based on an analysis of data from a number of sources it concludes that “the UK public sector’s IT spend is much more than other similar countries and that the UK does not get a proportionate return from this much higher spend.” (p.60).

Given that the report also notes that “£13.2 billion of public sector IT expenditure [of the estimated £16 billion] was committed to external contracts in 2007-08” (p.55), this isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the value of outsourcing, either. Furthermore – and despite many references to the lessons that can be learned from the private sector – there is no mention that I can see of the now established trend (particularly amongst large private sector companies) to insource IT requirements.

The most significant omission that struck me was, however, the report’s ignorance of a piece of research that is of direct relevance, particularly to the finding above: Digital Era Governance: IT corporations, the state and e-government. Published in late 2006, and based on research spanning five years funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, this book details and discusses findings from an international comparative study of, amongst other things, the performance of government IT. Amongst its many findings is this: “the greater the overall power of the IT industry in a country, the lower the performance of government IT systems.” (p.6).

Fingers on keyboard.
[image by Mike Traboe, some rights reserved]

It’s no secret that in the UK by the early 2000s five IT services and supply companies held 90 per cent of the government market: a situation that is unlikely to have changed, given the figure for external contracts I note above. So, rather than pursue the tired logic and questionable returns from outsourcing and reengineering, why not address an underlying problem. Put in place effective mechanisms to address this dominance and dependency. Unfortunately, without a shock to the system of the magnitude of the MP’s expenses scandal - which wasted spending on IT dwarfs, of course - I suspect that may never happen.

About the author

Ivan Horrocks is a lecturer and member of the Technology Management Group at The Open University. He has written many publications about the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and government and politics.

Subscribe to Ivan Horrocks's posts