Give the performance room to breathe
Christiaan Gort of Turner writes on Platform O, the online platform for public administration, about the human touch in implementing organizations. What can politicians and policymakers do to bring that back? Well, absolutely nothing! Above all, give the implementing organizations the space they need, he argues.
Give the performance room to breathe
We need to bring the human touch back into implementation. Things have to change. Fundamentally. That is the conclusion after a year of revealing parliamentary inquiries, several scathing reports, and the fall of the cabinet. But it’s not just the implementing agencies that need to change. This calls all the more for a different attitude on the part of politicians and policy departments. What should politicians and policymakers do to bring the human touch back into implementation? Well, absolutely nothing. The best thing they can do right now is to give the implementing agencies some leeway.
After all, key factors in the child care subsidy scandal were overzealous politicians who wanted to crack down on fraudsters. Politicians who, time and again, overhauled administrative agencies without understanding the impact that “changing course” would have on day-to-day operations. The danger is that—in an effort to appear decisive—politicians will once again unilaterally impose all sorts of changes on administrative agencies.
“Administrative agencies have long been dealing with frustrated citizens at the service counter.”
Who has the best insight into the challenges citizens face? Who knows where the biggest practical bottlenecks in laws and regulations lie? It’s the implementing agencies. They’ve long been dealing with frustrated citizens at their service counters. They’re struggling to provide vulnerable citizens with sufficient tailored support. However, the task of change that implementation agencies are currently facing is enormous. They are already overwhelmed with managing all the temporary COVID-19 measures.
At the same time, they are busy making all sorts of adjustments due to policy changes implemented by the previous cabinet. As a result, change initiatives aimed at restoring a human touch to public services are receiving less attention than they need. Prevent implementing agencies from coming under even greater strain. It would therefore be to the credit of the new cabinet and policymakers if they introduced no new policies—or only a limited number—during the next cabinet term. Prioritization within the current reform agenda is necessary. Work together to identify what is most important and practically feasible—both at the national and municipal levels.
“Policymakers should play a facilitating role, not a directing one”
This calls for a fundamentally different approach on the part of policymakers. The reflex is to prefer creating new policies rather than properly implementing existing ones. However, change requires 20 percent planning and 80 percent execution. The direction toward a human-centered approach is now clear. It is time to empower those responsible for implementation to put this into practice. This requires policymakers to take on a facilitating role rather than a directing one. This means making the necessary (financial) resources available, since financial constraints prevent implementing agencies and municipalities from taking decisive action. It means simplifying laws and regulations to allow more room for tailored solutions (no, not new legislation). It means removing barriers to collaboration between government agencies, so they are better able to act as a single government. It is therefore high time for a change of direction within the government and for more attention to be paid to implementing changes rather than just devising them.
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