Mike Freer, Leo Boland, Outsourcing and BT

Mike Freer and Leo Boland attended a conference in America organised by the BT VitalVision program. BT paid the course fees and the Barnet taxpayer paid their fares. What was the purpose of the BT vital vision course?

Here's what their website says :-

Vital Vision brings together a unique mix of senior Government decision-makers, BT research partners, and leading academic institutions including Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford and MIT.

The goal is to explore current business thinking and how it can best be applied to Government. The process is enhanced by the quality of the participants, and the stimulating, interactive environment they create. It is designed to be 'of the participants, by the participants' and is most definitely not a sales event.

Throughout the programme, we examine the technological, social and business changes that will affect us all, and debate how best to meet the profound challenges they raise. In sharing our respective visions of the future, we identify practical ways to address present issues as well as anticipate key developments.

Click HERE for the full detail. A brochure detailing the program is available HERE.

The course was held in Boston. I am assuming the program is the one described in the brochure (or one very similar). It sounds like a fascinating course. It started with a cruise and a buffet dinner aboard the Miz T (good name, wonder if she's a relative) on Sunday afternoon from 15.00 till 20.00. Here's the rest of the program


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Monday.
Engaging the citizen
Glen Urban

Break

Supply Chain Advantage
James Rice

Lunch

Financing E Government
Jerry Melching

Advancing the Service to the Citizen
John DeFigueiredo

Dinner at Hampshire House

Tuesday
Robust & adaptive Government organisations at what risk?
Danny Ertel

Lunch

Engaging the Citizen
Dimitris Bertsimas

Supply Chain Advantage
James Rice

Break

Free Time in Boston

Dinner at Lucca Restaurant


Wednesday

Change is a Risky Dance
George Roth

Break

The Dicital Divide
ITC

Lunch
Centre for E Business
Panel discussion
Vital Vision June
Planning London Workshops

Break

Overview of MIT media labs

Theatre Visit

The Blue Man Group


Thursday

Visit to MIT Media Labs

Break

Visit to MIT media Labs

Lunch

Sharing perspective on E-Governemy
Jerry Mechling
Closure 3pm


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According to the brochure "the purpose of the (Vital Vision) programme is to foster relationships between leading Government decision-makers, our research partners and ourselves, to DEVELOP AND TEST our visions of the future. We aim to enable the shaping of policy, inform new thinking and suggest practical solutions relevant to the unique complexities of the public sector"

"Participation is by invitation only, and restricted to very senior individuals who help to shape the agenda for change. Typically this is at the CEO or equivalent level. We ask participants to commit to the programme for a minimum of one year. Participants are responsible for their own travel and subsistence - as a result the programme does not contravene government hospitality rules."

So what exactly is being developed and tested? Well since the conference, Barnet Council have started working on the Future Shape scheme. If you have followed my blog you'll know that this is all about outsourcing as much work as possible to the private sector. The philosophy of the scheme is "The council should only do it if nobody else can". I know a little bit about BT and outsourcing. I worked for the company between 1985 and 1987 within the department that ran their "facilities management arm" (now called Outsourcing). I was technical support manager on what was their flagship project. It was extremely successful at the time for BT.

I still have contacts within the organisation and the outsourcing arm of the business has grown beyond our wildest dreams in 1987. I was talking to an ex colleague not so long ago and he told me about an exciting new concept they were developing. It seems that the hardest part of selling a project to a government or local authority body is getting through the decision making chain. Typically you convince the people in middle management, then you wait 10 years for a decision to be made. My friend at BT was working on a concept whereby you sell the "idea" to the decision makers, before you propose the product and then they champion the concept. In a throwaway comment my friend said "It's pretty easy selling them (politicians) the concept, because most of them aren't very bright". All you have to do is persuade them that there is massive kudos to be had from "transforming organisations". You can also sell them lots of consultancy. The clever thing about the programme is that it isn't a sales pitch. It just makes the participants "receptive" to the ideas you are promoting. Once they have taken the worm, who do they come to? The experts - You've got it - BT. They would target CEO's etc and give them a weeks intensive brainwashing. The message would be hammered home that people proposing objections (no matter how reasonable) were obstacles to be sidelined. It seems that you define your vision and get a team of like minded individuals to push it through. The idea was to create an "evangelical cult of agents of business change" (or words to that effect, I'd had a few beers as this was explained). Reading through the links above and knowing how future shape is being implemented, does any of this sound at all familiar?

I hadn't really joined the dots on this one until a comment on another blog pointed out that one of the authors of "Future Shape" is on secondment from BT. Now is the "transformation" of the provision of Council services by outsourcing a bad thing? As I said above, I worked on a pretty successful outsourced project for BT. They were selected as the organisation that commissioned them didn't have the ability to provide the service. After 3 years when the concept was proven they "insourced" it and is still insourced today. I've no fundamental objection to outsourcing. There are many things where outsourcing is better. For example it is far cheaper to Outsource Brian Coleman's taxi service. A nice Jag and a Chauffer would cost much more than the his last £8,000 taxi bill to the GLA for no real benefit. The council insourced the provision of Video conferencing equipment at a capital cost of £91,000 (I believe from the invoices)to save £4,500 they'd spent in the previous year on hiring equipment. It may well be that there are many services that a compelling business case can be made for outsourcing. It may be that service will improve. The thing is that future shape has no case studies, no cost justifications. It is just woolly thinking conceived (I suspect) over dinner in Boston.

I can tell Mike Freer and Leo Boland exactly how they should approach outsourcing or any other management change free of charge.

a) identify a problem within your business process.
b) define the problem in easily understandable terms.
c) define the solution in easily undertandable terms
d) show the benefits of the solution in easily understandable terms.

I've read the Future Shape report through several times and none of the above have been done. If they did this they might actually arrive at something which works and which saves money. Now for all I know, BT's Vital Vision course may have played no role at all in Freer and Bolands thinking on the subject. They've not asked me over to tea to discuss it, but as I join all the dots up, it really does look to me like a term we used at BT when a manager went of on a course, then came back enthusiastically implementing madcap schemes they'd been taught. We called it "Courseitus". It usually passed after a couple of weeks of reality. It seems that there is a more serious strain now. Rather than a department, it affects a whole council and seems to last at least a couple of years - I'll call it "Conferenceitus" - I believe it can only be cured by a palace coup, a new job or an election.