Necessity, that is. It’s Budget Day and the cuts are in the post. My incredible predictive powers tell me that government spending may be under a bit of pressure shortly.

If you’re not a regular over at William Heath’s Ideal Government blog, this post is a good introduction to his general themes. In his overview of his preoccupations, this one stands out:

We haven’t yet seriously started on co-creation or participative public services where the systems delivered are formally designed successfully to meet a real need, and created, measured and improved with active input from those it’s intended to help

The possibilities (and often, the idealism) of open-source advocacy couched in these terms may offer us a clue to where the value of participation may really be acknowledged in the short term. At any point in the day, the most enraged person in the UK is probably the one who has had to deal with the sublime idiocy of HMG IT procurement most recently.

As a microcosm of what’s wrong with our democracy, there can be few better examples. It’s substantially driven by insidious pressure groups (suppliers) who have captured departements and are capable of cranking up demand for what they are selling. As my friend Dominic Campbell put it recently, it’s time people start getting fired for buying IBM.

Politicians are particularly exposed here. The level of responsibility that they bear for expensive IT failures or the purchase of White Elephants is roughly at an inverse proportion to their ability to make those decisions. IT procurement is a complex and (deliberately?) mystifying process. Civil servants can often get away with huge mistakes and acts of carelessness that would be difficult to imagine in the Ministry of Defence the NHS.

And while some of us have huge reservations about the potential of citizens to get involved directly shaping schools or local authorities, IT procurment – with the existance of a large, well-networked open-source community (and a bunch of clever FOI-savvy geeks who really hate IT procurement) – may well provide the textbook example of how participative design can result in much better outcomes, better strategy, more bureaucratic accountability and tons of cost-savings.

We’ll see. (Have a look at this Government IT spend infographic that William points to by the way if you want to see how much cash is at stake here).

Iain Dale has a roustabout interview with Ken Livingstone. Here’s a snippet:

“…although there will be mistakes, a real, massive devolution would start bringing good people back into local government, but there’s got to be financial change as well. 97 per cent of all tax collected in Britain is collected by Gordon Brown. When I told the Mayor of Moscow that he said: “That’s worse than Russia under Stalin”.”

The whole thing is nice astringent stuff – well worth a read. (Hat Tip: Andy Sawford)

I’m never sure whether think-pieces work when the audience is on holiday. Personally, the old adage about getting a busy person to help when you need something doing can be adapted here: If you want to get people’s attention with a new idea, don’t pick a time when they are relaxing to pitch it. If it’s a good-un, it will cut through the clutter of a busy week-day.

Others don’t share my view though, and a few bloggers have clearly chosen the Christmas period to hit ‘publish’ on a few things that have been in their drafts folder for a while.

Here’s Podnosh asking why government doesn’t have reservists?

Here’s Read-Write-Web with what is (for me, anyway) a very optimistic post about re-localisation.

“In Web 1.0, these local businesses were viewed as roadkill. Everything would be ordered online and delivered by air and trucks from giant automated warehouses. Oops, lousy economics; plus increasing consumer push-back. So now Web 2.0 start-ups want to “partner” with these local businesses.”

And finally, RSA chief and former Downing St insider Matthew Taylor here outlines what he believes to be an opportunity for a new progressivism.

“This period was superseded by the long era of dominant individualism which may finally have come to an end with the credit crunch and subsequent downturn. Individualism fostered a remarkable era of innovation and freedom but was already subject to powerful critiques, especially from egalitarians emphasising growing inequality, high levels of social and individual pathology and, most of all, the dangers of climate change.”

He promises to flesh it out a good deal in 2009.

This time last year, Sir Christopher Foster – a long-standing government adviser on economic policy was much in evidence. There was this interview in the Telegraph, and I heard him on BBC Radio 4. The link to the programme is no longer available, but I made notes at the time. The Telegraph piece makes some very good points about micro-management, but this bit stood out in the radio programme.

Foster offered a familiar list of problems: They were … (and I paraphrase)…

• too many initiatives,
• too many reorganisations,
• not enough planning,
• many more pieces of legislation.
• too much micro-managing by politicians,
• the overconfidence of politicians in their own abilities

… and of course, the relationship with the media.

And that’s all well and good. But – again – why do politicians feel the need to constantly try new initiatives? Generally, if they aren’t being seen to over-react to almost everything, they can expect a well-organised personal campaign against them from any one of a few thousand professional pressure groups.

An unwillingness to either comply – or loudly denounce – any one of these initiatives – will rapidly result in that career-ending verdict: ‘Out of touch.’

And should the relatively small cadre of ministers in central government really be spending longer planning for difficulties? Surely, that’s what the professionals in Whitehall are for?

Certainly, it seems that the people that become MPs are often puzzled spectators on the whole question of public administration. They often seem to lack the basic grounding in good governance, and are prepared to be bullied by their party whips into a spiral of short-termism. They have no idea about how to get government departments to do what they are supposed to.

They didn’t get selected for their grasp of public administration, after all.

And when a headline keeps them awake, they arrive at work the next morning ready to add yet another ropey patch to already-poor legislation. Instead of fewer, better, bills, before Parliament, we get more and more faulty legislation that is often being replaced on the floor of the House of Commons before it even reaches the statute books.

And the constant spiral of regulation is resented even by people who generally don’t mind big-ish government in general. Surely, there is a case for politians to have a more supportive bunch of civil servants that they bring in with them when they win elections? There was a very good programme on The Westminster Hour earlier this week (I don’t know how long this link will work, but it was very good)

I mention this today because one of the higher-volume political weblogs – Harry’s Place – has an interesting post on the possibility of a less neutral civil service. If this were considered at Whitehall-level, surely it would be worth considering at a local level as well?