How can governments deliver their policies?

When Shakespeare posed this question (or something like that) in 1603 he would not have guessed that the President of the World Bank would commit to the ‘science of delivery’ or that many countries we work with would be asking the same question.  But they are.

In the technical note When Might the Introduction of a Delivery Unit Be the Right Intervention (pdf) we outlined some of the issues to consider in answering this question. Since then I’ve had the privilege to work with the World Bank colleagues, and others, mobilizing new Delivery Units and for me the tension between strategy/policy and implementation has come into sharper relief. So this piece is to explore a further question: when a country asks for help with delivery, do they (and we) really want assistance with strengthening their strategy and/or policy capacity?

In the technical note, we argued that the innovation of a Delivery Unit is fundamentally about changing the culture of a government to one that is focused on results and improving the way the government gets better results quicker.  We also argued that the skills of working in a Delivery Unit are different than those of policy development.

Both of these remain true.  But, in practice, I have found two tensions we didn’t quite highlight sufficiently. The first is that even if the leadership is committed to results the day-to-day nature of what government does is not primarily about getting results, but about policy. And that increasingly the response to a 24/7 media is driving leaders towards new policy announcements.

The second is that once the government has set their priorities the clarity of focus on measurable results gets distorted by a focus on policy and policy actions. I think this may be partly down to the local expertise recruited for a unit and the international expertise that is brought in to support the Unit – policy experts. Which means that sometimes the new Delivery Unit finds itself either preparing strategy/policy (which they have strong expertise) or focusing on ‘doing things’ rather than ‘achieving results’. So the default is a drift to policy and it may be we even encourage that drift.

If the government really does want new capability and capacity to improve results then one way through this might be to make it clear that the Delivery Unit will focus only on making existing policy work. This would mean an obstinate concentration on getting measurable results. And the primary skill required would be the ability to developing a really detailed understanding of what frontline practitioners (teachers, police, tax officers, health workers..) actually do and the capability to analyze both what works and what gets in the way of high performance.

It may just also mean a shift of approach to building capability through existing policy – rather than using new policy (with the inherent time and cost) as the lever for change.

I am not suggesting we, or the Centre of Government, move away from the development of new policy, as it is a key lever for change.  Just that policy and delivery/implementation are different. And given the cross government nature of both there is a need for the center to ensure coherence and consistency. But the debate about the center of government is for another day.

So what do you think is our next step in this work:

• Do we need to be clearer with governments upfront that there are two different tasks that need doing (strategy/policy and implementation) and that they are different – with different skills and approaches?
• Do we need to think differently about the understanding and skill we bring (both locally and internationally) to Delivery Unit work?
• Do we need to be designing Delivery Units to only focus on making existing policy work?
• Do citizens get more get more from continuous improvement or more radical changes in strategy/policy?

This article was originally published on The World Bank’s Governance for Development Blog. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Ray Shostak, was the Head of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s  Delivery Unit, Director General Performance Management and member of the Board of Her Majesty’s Treasury from 2007 – 2011.

Image: A view shows the headquarters of a French business in Courbevoie, outside Paris. REUTERS.