This week we’re looking at how to improve public services. How can bureaucracies best be managed to deliver positive outcomes? Does compliance get in the way of building trust between citizens and governments?
The state of public services is a pressing issue both in the UK and globally. News headlines are frequently dominated by stories of chronic failures and acute crises. In response, politicians often propose solutions involving more targets, tighter rules, and increased oversight. When confronted with challenges, their instinct is often to exert more control.
A new book challenges this approach, suggesting that such responses may (at least in some cases) be counterproductive. It argues that bureaucrats can often perform at their best when they are trusted with greater autonomy, encouraged to develop and apply their own expertise, and supported in collaborating with colleagues toward a shared mission. Despite this, the book acknowledges that managing for empowerment comes with significant challenges.
The book, Mission Driven Bureaucrats, is written by Dr. Dan Honig, Associate Professor of Public Policy in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy, who joins us on the podcast today.
Mentioned in this episode:
Alan Renwick: [00:00:00] Hello this is UCL Uncovering Politics and this week we're looking at how to improve public services. In particular, how can bureaucracies best be managed to deliver positive outcomes, and what role do all of us as citizens have to play in making that happen?
Hello, my name is Alan Renwick and welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics, the podcast of the School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at University College London.
Just a quick extra word before you get into the episode properly. You'll notice as you listen that we had some problems with Dan Honig's microphone while we were recording. We're very sorry about that, but we nevertheless thought that this was a really, really interesting conversation that we wanted you to hear.
And if you do find that there are some bits that you just can't make out, do note that you can always check the transcript, or if you're listening [00:01:00] on YouTube, you can look at the captions. I hope you enjoy the episode.
The state of public services is a matter of great concern in the UK and all around the world. The news is regularly filled with stories of chronic failure and acute crisis. Politicians often respond to these stories by promising more targets, more rules, and more oversight. When faced with a problem, their reaction is often to increase control.
But a new book suggests that that response may at least sometimes do more harm than good. It argues that bureaucrats often perform best when they're trusted with greater autonomy, allowed to develop and draw on their own competence, and and enabled to connect with their colleagues in pursuing an overarching mission.
Yet the book also acknowledges that the challenges in pursuing such management for empowerment can be great. Well, that book is called Mission Driven Bureaucrats, and its author is [00:02:00] none other than my colleague, Dr. Dan Honig, Associate Professor of Public Policy here in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy. Dan regularly appears on lists of the academics with most influence on governments around the world, and I'm delighted that he joins me down the line from the United States, where, Dan, I think you're, you've been having some, uh, meetings and conversations, uh, off the back of the book.
Is that right?
Dan Honig: Yes, that's right. And first, let me say just such an honor to be here. I'm, um, very excited to be able to speak with the audience about this work. Um, yes, that's right. So I'm in the States at the moment, uh, in part that is because, you know, there's a lot of energy and excitement, to my great delight.
About the book here as, as there's been a fair bit in the U. K. Um, you know, conversations with the World Bank, with U. S. Government, with other, governments in North America and well beyond, you know, I think we have a moment here where there is widespread recognition that the way we've been [00:03:00] delivering public services, our basic operating model has achieved some great things, but has really left a lot of value on the table.
Mhm. And maybe there are different approaches to management, which are going to get us further, uh, certainly than we find ourselves today.
Alan Renwick: Fantastic. Well, welcome, Dan, to the podcast. It's great to have you. And let's go straight into the core of that argument. What are, what are the core ideas in this book that so many people around the world are wanting to hear about?
Dan Honig: Yes. Well, I think you did a wonderful job summarizing a fair bit of it, uh, in the intro there. So, you know, first basic idea. Turns out bureaucrats are human beings. They're people, right? And it turns out, like most people, they come to jobs, like each and every one of us. They come to jobs in no small part because they care about doing the thing that the job is about.
And the more the extent to which that's true, the more they care about doing the thing, the more it makes sense to manage them, as you said, in a style which I call managing for empowerment. Right? So allowing [00:04:00] autonomy, cultivating competence and creating connection to peers and purpose. If you have someone, if you think about, you know, if you the listener think about, your work, right?
When you care about doing the job, all of those targets, all those reporting, all that, all those KPIs, right? Maybe they have oriented your work, right? But maybe they create a lot of paperwork, a lot of, red tape, a lot of compliance that keeps you from being able to achieve what you want. And, you know, not only, so the way I just said it makes it sound as if, our concern should be what an economist would call a transaction cost, right?
So, doing all of that paperwork slows you down. And that's true, but it also demotivates you. And if you feel like your job is being controlled from above, well, now it doesn't really feel like it matters whether I do the job or somebody else, and I'm more likely to leave, a job, when I can't fulfill the purpose that brought me to the job.
And so management is both about today's employees, but it's also about tomorrow's employees. And, you know, I think we have very good evidence. [00:05:00] I tried to assemble that evidence about why managing for empowerment is likely to work, the mechanisms that are going to foster mission motivation that are going to lead to higher performance, and retention of the mission motivated.
And ultimately better public services, which is what I think this is all about.
Alan Renwick: We'll want to get into the detail of a lot of that, over the course of this podcast, but before we do so, uh, be good to hear a little bit more about you actually and how you have come to this book. In the book, you talk a lot about having worked in all sorts of different countries around the world and having gained experience in, in working for governments around the world.
Do you want to say a bit about that experience and how it has led you to this book?
Dan Honig: Yeah, sure. So I sort of fell into a career before I became an academic. You know, to some extent, even while I was getting my Ph. D. and after working with a variety of governments, right? Initially focusing on what are known as fragile states, right? So I was the [00:06:00] special assistant to the finance minister in Liberia for a number of years under Ellen Johnson's earliest government, you know, I've worked with governments in Thailand and India and, South Sudan, Somalia and America, and the UK and well beyond.
And, one of the things I sort of came to believe is that in each government, so each time I walked into a new setting, I heard about these unique problems the government was having around how hard it was to monitor things, around how ultimately a lot of the work just could not fit into the way we were trying to manage it.
So that's true in Mogadishu. It's also true in Michigan, where I'm from. And I came to see the problems of governments as more alike than different, right? And ultimately, each and every government facing a challenge of trying to manage, as I put in the book for compliance too much.
And, you know, in that way, yes, this is a book about managing for government, but there's a [00:07:00] sense in which it's a book about managing. And in the introduction of the book, actually, I talk about my own experience working maintenance and apartment buildings back home in Detroit. Okay. And the way I found work that was overly focused on compliance and process demotivating.
In some ways, this book is about taking things that I think most people walking down the street in London and everywhere else know and trying to embed the wisdom, the truths that we all simply know about what it takes to motivate, to manage, to get excellent performance and trying to get them into the systems of government from which we've sort of lost those.
Alan Renwick: So we've mentioned two styles of management. There's the style that you want to push. Um, bureaucracies to boards, which you're, you call management for empowerment. And then you've also mentioned there the alternative management for compliance. Perhaps we should say a little bit more about management compliance, what its key features are, which I guess, your argument is that is [00:08:00] actually the dominant mode of management that exists in bureaucracies around the world today.
Dan Honig: Yes, I think that's right. I mean, so much so that, you know, I often am in conversation with governments that have trouble imagining something other than compliance. So what is this compliance? Uh, it's things like targets, rules, processes, procedures. Reporting a kind of accountability that focuses on like what an accountant would see what I call accounting based accountability, and it often involves trying to codify things so they can be transmitted up a hierarchy so they can be entered in the database, etc.
You said correctly that the book advocates for more management from that's not because I think management for compliance doesn't have its place. No. In fact, I argue that all tasks probably require at least a bit of compliance and some tasks require or would benefit from more than others. But most of the things government does are things that ultimately cannot be understood that way because they're about serving [00:09:00] diverse citizens who have diverse needs.
They're about making nuanced judgment calls. You know, if you're a social worker facing a vulnerable child and trying to make a decision to keep that child in the home. Or to put that child in a foster care system, which may itself be woefully inadequate. You could, and do, have a lot of rules that you should follow at present.
But ultimately, there's a judgment call there. And we're never going to be able to compliance our way to the best possible performance when that's the case. And, you know, I think we have in our governments. So, you know, too often we set up our government systems to minimize the chance of something bad happening.
Rather than to maximize performance and the only way to minimize the chance of anyone making an incorrect judgment is to allow there to be no judgment at all. But of course, in most cases, what I think we should be caring about is indeed maximizing the welfare of citizens. And that [00:10:00] means an approach that takes a little bit of a different strategy towards risk.
I should say having leaned into the risk a little bit early here. It's also not the case that all forms of empowerment increase that risk. You can get more mission motivation from your staff often inside the existing sort of compliance framework.
Alan Renwick: So can you say just a little bit more about why compliance, a compliance framework, a focus on managing simply for compliance, why that doesn't work? You've kind of hinted at it a little bit there, but it would be good to just draw that out a little bit more.
Dan Honig: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to do so. So, um, you know, when we manage for compliance, we can get people to see, to do exactly the things that we can observe from above. Right. So exactly the things that we can record. So sometimes those things are really. Almost everything of the task, right?
So if we're talking about collecting rubbish, managing for compliance feels to me like a pretty good idea. We can put GPS trackers on the cars, on the [00:11:00] trucks that the, that the bin men are using, we could have surveys afterwards that take pictures and make sure that all the rubbish that should have been collected has been, you know, this is a very compliance of all tasks and so managing for clients, probably a pretty good idea.
Will those bid men like it? Maybe, maybe not, but it is likely to be pretty efficient. But what about if we turn to the task of, you know, educating children, right? So when it comes to educating children, we can see if the teacher shows up in the classroom. We can see textbooks are there. But what actually happens if the teacher is meeting those students where they are?
Right. If if he or she is helping kind of, uh, them. Learn not just the things that can be tested at the end of the year exam, but also all of the things, the socio emotional skills, the kind of broader flourishing that we want, that I want for my kids, that I suspect you want for your kids. There's really no way to comply with that.
And so, you know, in some ways, recognising the limits of managing for [00:12:00] compliance is recognizing the limits of the observable to drive what we want to have at the observable, the codifiable, the reportable. Um, and most jobs in the public sector are not fully sort of monitorable and compliance able. As such, we have to rely on the humans who do the work.
And thankfully, in almost every country in the world, We have pretty good evidence that those humans tend to be people who want to do the work, who want to serve the public. And so the question is, how do we set up systems to empower them, uh, to support them, to give, put them in a place that lets them do the work they want to do to all of our best?
Alan Renwick: How have we ended up in a situation where there's compliance? Compliance based model is so dominant because I'm thinking back to my days as an undergraduate student 30 years ago, which is the last time I was, uh, studying public management theory. And the new public management was all the rage during that times was [00:13:00] that phrase we all had to know.
And my dim memory of it is, is basically it summed up in one phrase, which is steering, not rowing. And the idea that we should not have kind of top down process requirements on bureaucrats telling them exactly what they should be doing. We should rather have a broad sense of what's the goal that they should be aiming for.
And then we should free them in order to do that. That was my understanding of ideas about good public management 30 years ago, which kind of feels to me like it's a version, at least of what you're advocating today. And yet you're saying that basically we're not there. And indeed I get the impression when I, listen to debates about these issues that actually it's the new public management theorists that a lot of people like you are reacting against because they have taken us down a road of increasing, increasing focus on compliance.
So what's going on there?
Dan Honig: Yeah. So this is a really big and hotly debated [00:14:00] question. So there's no chance that in answering the question, I will not offend at least some public management scholars. And I apologize to those listening who might feel that way. But here's, here's my take. Right? So, um, my take is, uh, let's go with your steering, not rowing.
Right? So the first thing is very frequently what governments ended up doing was putting Uh, in place something to steer towards the finish line. Let's let's let's stick with the boats, right? So they put they put in place a finish line to aim towards but they also still monitored the room. So in fact the idea of new public management was one was going to substitute for the other we were going to get more steering less rowing, but instead we got more steering and more rowing.
And it turns out that that just means there's more stuff to worry about. And, you know, I think that's kind of problem one. I said two things. I'm actually going to give three, right? The second is our technology got better. Our ability to monitor things got better, which is fantastic. Right. So [00:15:00] technological progress is not anathema to management for empowerment.
Indeed, you know, one of the things we talk about with the AI revolution is the idea of kind of AI supports, including for the bits of tasks that are at this point more routine, but maybe increasingly for others that let humans complement those jobs and flourish in new ways. Technology is great. It can be great for empowerment too, but the way it came into our managerial systems was largely by increasing monitor ability or trying to, right.
We now could have that GPS chip. On that truck. Whereas when you were an undergraduate 30 years ago, that was a little bit harder to imagine. And so our tools to screw this up with got stronger and thus we screwed it up more because we did not think step back and think about our models. Right? So the third thing I'd say is, you know, again, to stick with your steering, not rowing.
What are we steering towards exactly? Over and over again, new public management ended [00:16:00] up being, I don't think this was true of all of its original, um, original advocates. But it ended up, so Christopher Hood in the UK has done a wonderful series of papers that basically shows that that steering has gone towards targets which are usually well correlated with the thing we cared about before.
But stop being well correlated with the thing we care about after we steer towards them. So, what's an example if that sounds too abstract, right? So, let's stick with schools because I was there before, right? So, test scores used to be reasonably well correlated with the overall quality of teaching.
Because the test scores, no pressure was put upon the test scores. The teachers weren't focusing particularly on the test scores. And so, the kids who did better on the test were the kids who were doing better overall, right? As we put pressure on test scores as a kind of target, as something we were steering towards, it turned out that test scores became unmoored with the other bits of learning.
Because it's super easy to teach you how to score well on a test, and as [00:17:00] a teacher I have every incentive to do so, when I make the job about scoring well on a test. And so, one of the problems is that steering, not rowing, implies that we're going to be able to steer to some composite, summative, captures all of the things and leads to no negative spillover is a target, right?
Or goal of some sort. And it turns out that's not the case. And so, you know, you could say that I'm advocating for steering not rowing, but if so, I'm advocating for doing it relying on the good judgment of those with their hands on the wheel. Rather than the setting of a finish line to which everyone must converge.
Um, and I think that's a kind of different take on what it is to steer. Um, but you know, I should say plenty of my fellow travelers in the, we need to reform the public sector road. I think there was nothing useful in new public management. I'm not amongst those folks. I think there is important architecture we can draw from, and indeed, I think there are cases where a basic new public [00:18:00] management approach of targets, not process, makes a lot of sense.
My argument essentially is a horseshoe courses argument. Let's use the managerial philosophy that makes the most sense for the people we have and the task we have. And when that's something, you know, quite conventional, let's do that. When it's new public management, also sounds great. Let's do it for real and really get rid of the rowing.
But when neither of those things is going to work, which is gonna be true a lot of the time. Let's use it.
Alan Renwick: And in In practical terms then, what is good management for empowerment going to look like? Maybe it's useful to continue the example of the schools here. You're not, you're not having lots of rules on the process. You're not having lots of top down targets. What do you do?
Dan Honig: Yes. Well, and it's it's it's nice that you I didn't mean to wander us in here, but they're emerging opportunities, including within the U. C. L family. Let me let me just put it that way for now. Um, to think about this actually precisely in the U. K. Um, thinking about educational [00:19:00] reform and approaches. So what do you do?
So first, you know, there's no one size fits all answer, right? There's nothing as simple as Yeah. Let's bring in a new test, right? Um, but it can look like creating different kinds of accountability process. So let's think about what it would mean to make teachers more accountable to each other, more accountable to the communities they serve, right?
The students and parents in that community, rather than focusing on reporting up a hierarchy. So the numbers call come all the way up and then go to the elected official who has control over the managerial resources who changes. It's a very. I know the, um, listeners cannot see. I've just made a very large circle, with my hand.
So let's make that route more direct, you know, let's think about what is getting in the way. So, when, as you kindly framed in, I, I do work with governments in a variety of settings. One of the first things I ask, uh, governments is what's the issue, what's getting in the way of people doing the work they [00:20:00] want to do.
And I will tell you that over and over again, ministers and deputy ministers and people at those kinds of levels, directors, give answers to those questions, and I appreciate those. And then I go and talk to the people actually doing the work. And it turns out those answers have something to do with what's getting in the way of the work, but not everything.
The first question to prognosis is what is the diagnosis? And just like in a medical setting, That diagnosis has some common features, but there's a reason we treat patients one by one and not based only on their blood values and test score. And that's because we have to tailor the prescription to the patient we have.
And the second, the last part of the book actually is entirely suggestions for things that have worked elsewhere that look like tailoring. And just to make it concrete, I'll give you a couple of those. I think the book. Surely has dozens. And in reality, there are hundreds, if not thousands of such.
So, you know, one thing you can do is get folks together [00:21:00] and who work for you, to discuss what is it that we're doing and why, right? Why? What is the value of this work? What's what makes it meaningful set what the book calls a clear mission and let that mission point in some ways come via a conversation of staff.
What is our collective enterprise? People work harder, not just for the welfare of citizens. They work harder for each other like any team. Right. Like a university team, like a school team, like a sports team. I mean, we have movie after movie about sports teams working hard for each other. And there's a reason that happens at the workplace too.
It happens everywhere. And, how can we strengthen those bonds? So that's one, one kind of idea. Another kind of idea is, thinking about what creating what I call green tape rules, right? So, a green tape rule is a rule that trumps other rules with a different kind of justification process, right?
The rule used to say, you can only give money. So here's an example from the [00:22:00] UK that's in the book, right? From Gateshead. Yeah. So Gateshead, just South of Newcastle, right? So Gateshead council used to have a system wherein, care for the elderly, who are socially isolated, went as it does in most councils in the UK, right?
So, um, needs were documented when there was a need for funding that went to a central office, which authorized the funding, and then somebody got a little bit of help. And what Gateshead did instead is empowered the frontline social workers to spend money according to their judgments. And it said like, look, you can spend money up to a certain cap, do what's reasonable, you're going to have to justify it afterwards, justifying.
It doesn't mean, ticking some boxes. It means explaining why this was a good idea. And, you know, we might go and talk to the clients and see if it was right. And so what does this allow? Well, it allows a social worker to do something, for example, say, oh, this socially isolated person doesn't see the pathway to get out of their [00:23:00] isolation.
Why don't I buy them a free bus pass? Why don't I spend the day accompanying them to the library or to the community center and showing them how to get there and get back and that that works out, right? I haven't documented it. I haven't sent it all the way up to Whitehall and had it come back that's a good idea.
I just think that's a good idea and I might be wrong. That's the thing about judgments. They can be wrong. I'm trying to help the person in front of me and I have the freedom to do so. And that's because there's a green tape rule that says to me. Guess what? Do what feels good. Not what feels good in the sense of, you know, going out to the pub, but what feels like the right thing to do.
And then we'll talk about whether it was the right thing to do. And that is a valid reason to have spent up to some amount of money. Right? So these are two of, as I say, literally scores and scores and scores of examples. But, there are lots of ways to allow autonomy, lots of ways. Cultivate competence and a sense of efficacy, the sense that you're doing something useful for the world.
Lots of ways to create connections.
Alan Renwick: Now, [00:24:00] skeptics, at least some skeptics are going to respond to what you've just said by thinking, well, if you give these people this much freedom, then they are just going to use it in order to go down to the pub and they're going to use it in order to shirk in some way or other. Or even if they're not kind of intentionally shirking, then they're, they're going to go take their foot off the pedal a little bit and they're just going to ease off.
And then other skeptics I suspect might have a different sort of concern, which is you might well have bureaucrats who are really driven and want to do good, but they may do it in a way that is unfair between different people, that if there aren't clear rules for them to follow, that it may be that, they, may favor particular people that they just like better, or they may have certain prejudices, you know, subconscious biases that lead them to be unfair in certain ways.
How would you respond to those sorts of concerns?
Dan Honig: Well, really easy questions out of my main, if you're going to keep tossing me the softball. No, I'm kidding. These are these are both quite hairy and but very [00:25:00] fair. So let me take that in turn. So your first question was, um, aren't some people going to shirk, right? Or won't most people shirk?
And I would say that, if the objection is won't most people shirk, the answer is we have literally no evidence that has almost ever been the case, right? So has that ever been a concern? Yes. It's a concern over and over and over again. And then it turns out that most people do not anytime they're treated in this way that people live up to the expectations we have of them, not just down to them.
Right. Um, so, if you're worried about that, run a pilot, partner with the UCL policy lab, um, which I'm happy to be a part of if you're in the UK. And, we can help you run a pilot. And then if it turns out that indeed, most people, sure, you can say, oh, look at those crazy academics, but, If what has happened in every other case happens and performance goes up, right?
Every other documented case. I don't have every case in the world, right? Then [00:26:00] I think that's probably a good thing. Um, and we should probably feel good about that. So if the objection is, will some people sure? The answer is probably yes, right? And when that happens, we should absolutely respond to this.
We, we shouldn't tolerate malfeasance, corruption, shirking, right. But we should address it not by changing the rules so that everyone suffers. But rather by addressing those folks that, some people very tragically misuse their driving licenses, right? We do not respond to that by saying no one can drive.
We respond to that by saying you can't drive, right? We're not gonna let you drive anymore and we're gonna have systems that check on that because we know the system works better even though if no one drove no one would get into a driving accident, right? We know the system works better when everyone drives, right?
So, how do we do that? We need to think about how we change up our systems to tolerate that, a system where if something goes wrong, we don't just say we need to get rid of the ability to do that [00:27:00] thing so, just a second really important question that I, I do touch on a bit in the book, but I think deserves a lot more development and a lot more kind of, um, empirical, um, empirical nuance than it has currently in the literature, which is, you talked about prejudices, , as allowing a bias for some citizens over others, I don't even think you need prejudices to worry about that, which is to say, I know I, I am honored to be settled in the UK.
I am originally American and all the time in the UK, I need to work harder to understand my counterparty and they need to work harder to understand me than they would with somebody who was born, around the bed. Right. Um, and that means that if I'm going to exercise judgment as a public servant.
I am going to be able to understand exactly what's going on better with the citizen who I'm culturally closer to, right? And so long as that is true, and I think all research suggests it is generally true, that [00:28:00] I better understand people who share more of my cultural values, I may be more effective, without any prejudice whatsoever, at helping those citizens.
Do I think that's a problem? Yes. Do I think we should think about the equity results? Yes. If this caused us to think, oh, we probably need more of what a public management scholar would say, descriptive representation in the public service, right? We need people who are more like and come from similar backgrounds, people they serve.
I think that would be a really good thing. I think the answer, let's make sure no one gets anything good because we're worried some people will get some good things that others don't, you know, I, yeah. appreciate the concern, but, and if that is your concern, the only way to ensure true equity is to ensure absolute management for compliance, right?
Then everyone will be treated equally. I, you know, survey after survey, study after study shows that citizens actually will not choose extreme equity over some inequality. which is [00:29:00] welfare generating. One could argue that's why we have a capitalist system. That's why we have a market. Um, and I think here too, we need to think about the aggregate good, not just the equality of outcomes.
Alan Renwick: Okay. You've talked several times about the importance of trusting officials to do the right thing. And, uh, I mean, it seems that the approach that you're advocating is one that places quite a premium on trust. So, um, managers have to trust those who are working below them. Politicians have to trust managers.
We as citizens also have to trust politicians, have to trust the state as a whole, in order to deliver effectively without the kinds of very strong rules being put in place that we might sometimes imagine are the only way that we can get compliance out of this system and get the system to do what we want it to do.
But trust, of course, is, [00:30:00] uh, is in very short supply, around the world at the moment, trust in politicians, trust in states, um, there's a lot of rhetoric in some states about the power of the deep state, uh, that is getting in the way, and what you're saying might be interpreted as let's empower the deep state, and allow bureaucrats with their missions to deliver effectively.
Um, I mean, I guess there's maybe, there's maybe two questions in here, actually. One, one is how do you respond to someone who is worried about the power of the deep state? Um, and for those people who are not particularly worried about that concern, but are just thinking about, well, how practically can we make this happen in a world where trust is just not there.
And it seems very difficult for politicians to have the confidence to pursue the sorts of, uh, policies that you're advocating. How can we do that? How can we overcome that problem?
Dan Honig: So let [00:31:00] me start with the, uh, deep state question, and I have no idea what countries you might be referring to for that. That might be a live issue. So, um, but yes. So
Alan Renwick: made me say it.
Dan Honig: who, who, who, where, where could such a thing be true? So, um, it is true that, uh, empowering bureaucrats means that those bureaucrats are going to pursue the, uh, are going to have more latitude to pursue what they wish to pursue, uh, in the absence of strict control from above.
That is built into the argument. If you think that means empowering the deep state, I would ask like, you know, which parts of the state are doing the things you don't want them to be doing? You, person concerned about the deep state, you know, that is say, are you against the educating children bit? Is it the NHS bit you don't like, you know, what is, so where you have a bit.
Where you think the state is probably doing the wrong thing, this you are arguing in the terms of the [00:32:00] book that we should change the mission point. But I bet you, you also will want the state to do something, right? Even you who hates the deep state. And the question here is not so, making people mission driven, or having a bureaucracy that's mission driven, does not make it good in a moral sense.
What it makes it is good at pursuing its goals so, you know, I talk in the book actually, so I am, I'm myself Jewish. I talk in the book about mission driven Nazis. I do that to highlight that, you know, you can have people who believe deeply in a mission that I, and I guess I hope most of your listeners would agree is morally repugnant.
And so I think many of those deep state critics want to change what the state does. They don't actually want the state not to do anything. And that means that they actually may want management for empowerment just with reforms of the state along the way. And that is rightly a domain of political and [00:33:00] public contestation.
In which that's why we've politics and ideas, I would say, um, you know, to your question, how do we get trust? You know, isn't it crazy, Dan to advocate for more trust at this moment, in particular, when we have so little, I would say I would turn around. I would say we have so little because we've operated our systems for so long without it.
You know, I know that if I go in to, you know, so I recently wrote a guest post for Sam Friedman's comment disagree.
In it, I recount, simple management for compliance moments from my own lived experience in the UK, right? And I talked about a moment where, you know, I needed a medical exam, but we couldn't get it right in the system, right? The test could not register correctly. And so they couldn't give me the test.
And we had, you know, four nurses and two doctors sitting around for 20 minutes, trying to make this thing, make the system Go from computer says no to okay, we can give this patient [00:34:00] his treatment, right? You know, a patient walks out from that experience, and I would suspect the average patient is pretty frustrated, has a lower level of trust in the NHS and in the system than they did at the beginning of the day.
And that's because this compliance mentality has pervaded that interaction between the citizen, uh, and the bureaucrat. And it has undermined the ability to form trust. Now, trust in government is not just about government giving you stuff. It's about government feeling accessible to you. It's about the people who are governing or the processes that are, that are governing making sense and seeming supportive to the citizen.
And that requires, you can't have a supportive, a process that supports citizens unless those bureaucrats are themselves supportive. Compliance rolls downhill, right? When, you know, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development required, was required to document, to dot every I and cross every [00:35:00] T in, in hurricane response.
What happens as a result? Well, they need citizens to You know, provide loads of paperwork so that they can demonstrate they made the payments accurately, but there's just been a hurricane who has the documents. The people who have the documents are disproportionately the wealthy and even they are pissed off at the end of the day because they have had to go through a compliance process that undermines their trust in government, even as the government delivers services to them.
And so, you know, I agree we are at a moment of low trust and you, you say, because we're at that moment, maybe this can't be a solution. I say we are at that moment because we haven't used the solution. And if we think it the other way, we will get there. I will just one thing in closing a long answer. I admit, um, is to say, you know, in the U. K. There is a government that has come into power on the back of delivering five missions. You will be [00:36:00] unsurprised to learn that I think delivering missions is likely to require mission driven bureaucrats. I think senior leadership in the UK agrees with this from the variety of conversations I've had.
Um, how are we going to get those mission driven bureaucrats? Well, we are not going to get them through strict compliance targets process rules that is not going to deliver on the current agenda. And if that is what has just been politically empowered in the UK, right? If that is the manifesto, if that is the mandate, that mandate will not go fulfilled.
If we take a status quo approach.
Alan Renwick: Final question then, what are the next steps that a government such as the UK government or any other government wanting to pursue this approach should take? And also, I guess, what are the steps that we as citizens should take in order to enable our governments to do that?
Dan Honig: Yeah, thank you. That's a great question. Um, you know, [00:37:00] from, uh, from a government standpoint, I think we need to step back and look at where our operating models are helping us and where they aren't right. And that is a process of diagnosis. That is Can involve support. I mean, of course, the first thing you should do is buy hundreds of copies of missions with your press.
That's the absolute, no, what the book suggests and what there are plenty of people around, especially in the UK these days to help you do, including UCL policy lab and others is think about what your current governance equilibrium looks like your current management equilibrium looks like and whether it's serving you.
Well, um, I have a partnership with Nesta around sort of evaluating mission driven ways of working. We're developing a document that will come out early next year, right? That's meant to be a framework for self diagnosis as well, right? To help with exactly this kind of question. I think, you know, once you've done that, you need to actually change things, right?
So you could change them in pilots. You could change them by changing the rules. You could change [00:38:00] them through like an organizational change management process, right? There are lots of ways up the mountain, but you have to take steps. And if you don't take them, nothing is going to change. From the citizen side, what I think we need to do, and I think government plays a role here too, is we need to have a different conversation about Uh, what it is that we expect of government, right?
So so many of our scandals look when you start to look with this lens like problems of compliance, right? I just gave you a couple of NHS examples that I suspect ring true to some, um, to some listeners. I think the horizon IT sent scandal in a different sense is about, you know, privileging compliance over everything else.
Uh, you know, if we require government. To owe it to never make a mistake, right, to never have anyone who misuses a pound, then we are going to end up with government that treats everyone exactly equally and everyone is running scared and mission driven [00:39:00] bureaucrats wish to exit if they are still present and we get low level equilibrium outcomes, which is where I think the UK is and where I think lots of countries are right for us to get something different as citizens.
Requires taking a different approach to what we expect. It requires, you know, if 98 teachers get more revenue, 98 principals, sorry, get more revenue autonomy, and 95 of them use it well, and two of them waste the money but follow the rules, and one of them steals a thousand quid, and that one ends up on the front of the paper, right?
And on the front of the sun, right? We need to react not by saying, oh, we should shut down this program. But but but rather, oh, what were the upsides of this for the other teachers for the other schools for the other principles? And how do we get more of this aggregate? I think that's a conversation that involves citizens and government and perhaps even [00:40:00] academics in rethinking what we expect, what we want, uh, because we will get the government that we expect.
And right now we expect very little. And that's exactly
Alan Renwick: Dan, thank you so much. That's been a really fantastic conversation. I've learned so much from it and from the book as well. And, uh, it's, uh, just, just so fascinating to explore all of these issues with you. We have been discussing Dan Honig's new book, Mission Driven Bureaucrats, empowering people to help government do better, which was published by Oxford University Press over the summer. The book keeps selling out. It is extremely popular, but if you have a problem in ordering a copy of the print version, you can at least pre order and electronic versions are also available. So you should be able to get your hands on a copy sooner or later.
And we will, as ever, put the details of the book in the show notes for this episode.
Dan Honig: Thank you so much for having me, Alan. Just a delight to be here.
Alan Renwick: Thank you. It's been really great. [00:41:00] Uh, that was, that was just terrific.
Next week here on UCL Uncovering Politics we'll be looking at whether unilateral expropriation of assets can ever be a justifiable means of redress for the wrongs of colonialism.
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I'm Alan Renwick. This episode was produced by Kaiser Kang and Eleanor Kingwell Banham.
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