Public participation in strategy-making

“Belfast used to be famed for launching ships; now all we launch is strategies.[1]”

Aficionados of Public Notices in regional newspapers will be aware of advertisements encouraging us to comment on policy documents.  Might they transform our lives?

Whatever people think about the quality of devolved government, we have quantity – one Department for every month of the year.  So complex is rulership, that each of the 12 Departments requires its own panoply of strategies.

I have scoured every Departmental website.  The Department of Education and Learning's site, as befits its name, is more instructive than its 11 peers.  It alone lists “external strategies” which are “key” to its work.   
Guess how many?

Thirty.  This includes strategies ranging from safeguarding vulnerable groups to a homelessness strategy.  There is even one for better regulation.  Without paradoxical intention, this latter strategy[2] warns against the dangers of

“unnecessary red tape, too much form-filling and the perceived heavy hand of government regulation.”

My reckoning is that there are about 40 strategies, with more out for public consultation.  This estimate excludes policy statements and an enormous array filed as archived consultation documents.  Is it surprising that charities and voluntary groups - consulted as standard practice - complain of a debilitating syndrome, “consultation fatigue?”

Extending the Professor’s satirical metaphor, the question is apparent.  Will this titanic edifice of strategic thinking lead us to Valhalla, or will the riveting efforts of our elaborate bureaucracy sink calamitously?

This essay examines the efforts of Northern Ireland Departments of Government to make policy, taking two examples of strategies published for public comment.

Community relations

My interest was aroused by a newspaper article [3] berating the Government for its half-hearted attempt to deal with community relations.[4]  Surely the Government’s answer to the outstanding policy issue for our peace process couldn’t be as dire as the article was claiming.  Could the embryonic strategy be

“a flimsy manifesto for sharing - all fine words, little detail - and a gaping hole when it comes to integration?”

To my chagrin (or maybe horror), I discovered that it exceeded my most pessimistic expectation.  Perplexed by the pusillanimous attitude of the lead Department of Government, the Office of First and Deputy First Ministers (OFMDFM), to tackling sectarianism and racism, and exasperated by the report’s error-strewn presentation, I submitted a 13 page paragraph-by-paragraph line-by-line critique.

OFMDFM has also set out policy-making guidelines for its Departments, known after its cover as the “Red Book”.  OFMDFM, ironically, ignores its red-hot standards.  For example, a basic tenet is that policy must be “evidence-based.”  

I argued that their document 

“contains no analysis of the problem, no evidence is presented on which to base policy, meaning that without solid foundation, it is fatally flawed.”

It is also supposed to refer to related high-level strategies.  This is to illustrate that Government is “joined up.”   
Querying the non-acknowledgement of the Sustainable Development Strategy,[5]  I argued that 

“a strategy for social cohesion cannot ignore the economic downturn, fiscal tightening, cuts in Government spending and their social, economic and environmental consequences.  This includes the impact on community relations.”

OFMDFM’s document had lauded the role of libraries and museums “as shared spaces.”  Nowhere, however, did it consider the effects of austerity on neutral venues.

I criticised OFMDFM for falsely claiming that 

“woven throughout this document are (sic) a range of actions which Government is taking to tackle sectarianism, racism and hate” (hatred to us).

I countered:

“On the contrary, (OFMDFM) delivers no measurable targets against which a policy can be judged.”

Vagueness permeates, with nothing resembling a can-do approach.  A salient example is “peace walls,” 99 structures which cement community division[6].   
One paragraph mentions an unspecified programme to remove the walls.  
 Another says that the Flags Protocol will be reviewed.  
Another paragraph says that the Department of Justice will develop “a long-term approach to reduce the risk of young people becoming engaged in hate crime.”  
None of these carries any commitment, timescale, or plan for delivery.

Some sentences are so convoluted that an oxygen pack is needed to comprehend the meaning of nine-line brain-busters before an overdue full stop allows the reader to draw breath.

My response to the OFMDFM argued that their document is
 

“prolix and so badly written that the important message of what to do about community relations is lost in a morass of verbiage.  Its grammar syntax and punctuation are poor, it avoids using plain English, and it uses copious jargon.  Different sections have differing styles of writing, which suggests that different people may have written them.  It is also mesmerizingly vague and repetitive.”

I even criticised the title, “Cohesion, Sharing and Integration,” abbreviated by OFMDFM to CSI 

“allusion to American television crime fiction, intended or not, is unsubtle and inappropriate.  If OFMDFM were serious, it should entitle it as a draft strategy for community relations.”

Two years on and still there is no final strategy.

Community development and urban regeneration

A strategy for urban regeneration[7] from the Department for Social Development (DSD) is a more recent addition to the growth industry of consultation documents.   

Exasperatingly but not unsurprisingly, the same faults recur.  My critique was an 8-page lambast.

Despite claiming to possess a raft of evidence, DSD deprives its audience of a synopsis of the research, failing also to spell out the lessons that emerge for new policy.   
This flaw deprives the reader of the opportunity to consider DSD’s analysis of the issues.  It is as if DSD is unwilling to make easy the sharing of information with its audience which is allegedly being consulted.

I wrote:

“People would like to know how the DSD sees the economic outlook affecting its priorities, given the pessimistic prognostications of commentators.  One quotes research which envisages a recession in a “vulnerable” Northern Ireland economy lasting 13 years “on a best case scenario.”[8]

DSD lists objectives, some described as “enabling.”  
 The problem is that they enable nothing because they present no timeframe, no budget, and no commitment – which makes them aspirations, at best.  
All that it offers after 22 laborious pages is a stultifying promise to assess existing policies and to develop new ones.   
The reader feels cheated.  What is there to comment on?

Like OFMDFM, DSD underplays successes achieved under current policy.  I argued that:

“DSD has worked with community groups since Devolution.  It has ample evidence to show that this has kept Northern Ireland afloat during the Troubles.  As the political class has made a living out of community division, volunteerism has carried out great work, often unheralded.  It would have been appropriate for the document to acknowledge this fact.”

The hotly-contested accolade for least intelligible prose goes to this paragraph:

“The Logic Model describes logical linkages among programme resources, activities, outputs, audiences, and short, immediate, and long-term outcomes related to a specific problem or situation.  With this model the planning sequence is inverted, thereby focussing on the outcomes to be achieved – we ask what needs to be done rather than what is being done.  Logic models link the problem (situation) to the intervention (our inputs and outputs) and the impact (outcome).[9]”

Reversing logic is a perilous tactic.  
I warned DSD of the danger of

“transmuting evidence-based policy into policy-based evidence. “[10]

To express my wonderment at the DSD’s proposal, I had to invent a neologism:

“One wonders whether DSD has subjected logic-reversal to a risk assessment given the potential for the model’s disappearance in a rectumnilinear direction.”

Conclusion

People crave for committed, radical, and unequivocal effort by Government to show that it takes community relations seriously.   
The tax-paying electorate wants leadership, not verbiage.  
A consequence of the OFMDFM and DSD’s obfuscation is that citizens will not understand strategies.  Few will respond.  This jeopardises the legitimacy of finalised policy.

Failure to act is to tolerate prejudice bigotry and racism.  
It creates the potential for undermining of the peace process.   
Politically, it undermines the sustainability of Northern Ireland as a self-governing region.  Community division and deprivation exacerbate selective migration.

What is the point of a production line of strategies if all they do is employ mandarins?  Disingenuous efforts to promote public participation in policy-making bring the OFMDFM and DSD’s abilities into disrepute.   

Doubts arise about their capacity to deliver on community relations and urban regeneration.   

What confidence can the public have in their rite to govern?

Strategic vacuity is a scandal.

© Michael McSorley 2013

 

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[1] Prof Frank Gaffikin, Inaugural lecture, QUB Institute of Spatial and Environmental Planning May 2010

[2] Northern Ireland Better Regulation Strategy Dept of Enterprise Trade and Investment

[3] Belfast Telegraph 18 August 2010 Owen Polley

[4] Programme for Cohesion Sharing and Integration Consultation Document  undated (but July 2010) Office of First & Deputy First Minister

[5]Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) Published by OFMDFM 27 May 2010

[6] Observer 22 January 2012 S O’Hagan “Belfast, divided in the name of peace.”

[7] “Urban Regeneration and Community Development Policy Framework 2012, Department for Social Development (undated)

[8] “Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report Number One Feb 2012, pp 32-37

[9] Paragraph 5.2 page 21 “Urban Regeneration and Community Development Policy Framework 2012, Department for Social Development (undated).

[10] Observer 14 October 2012 p1, comment on a Govt policy by president of the Royal Society.