Triarchy Press
use code tpdirect at checkout for a 20% discount
  • SUBJECTS
  • ABOUT US
    • Systems thinking
    • Whatever Next?
    • Systems Thinking Glossary
    • AMED
  • BOOKSHOP
    • New Titles and Bestsellers
    • Delivery charges
    • Gift ideas
    • eBooks
    • Book Sellers
    • Inspection Copies
    • Recommend to Library
    • Non-UK Customers
  • BUSINESS AUDITS
  • AUTHORS
    • Author Information >
      • Royalties
  • THANK YOU
  • BASKET
  • CONTACT US
  • PERMISSIONS

Picture
The Whitehall Effect: How Whitehall became the enemy of great public services and what we can do about it
Author: John Seddon
[back to the book's home page].

Barry Sheerman MP (Lab., Huddersfield) at PoliticsHome.com (11/2/2015)

"Seddon’s central claim is that since the Thatcher era, governments have continuously tried to improve standards in public services while reducing costs but the claims for actual improvements are often “doubtful” while costly catastrophes have become commonplace. To deal with rising demand, governments have tried outsourcing, setting targets, increasing competition and choice, publishing league tables, using large-scale IT systems, and seeking  economies of scale, to name but a few of the much-vaunted reforms. Most of the time, according to Seddon, this has resulted in higher overall costs, less efficiency, lower staff morale, an expanding public sector, and poorer quality of services.

...Instead of debating management philosophies, he invites politicians to go and visit frontline services and ask some simple questions – particularly, how long does it take to resolve a case from beginning to end? This is very different from asking how long it takes to get through to the call centre. He cites examples of local government services – planning, housing services, food safety and others – that have been transformed using the systems thinking approach.

...The Whitehall Effect is a lively and stimulating read that warrants the attention of every civil servant, politician and citizen who takes an interest in how our country is run."
Read the full review

Peter Smith in Spend Matters - UK/Europe (8/12/2014):

"John Seddon’s “The Whitehall Effect” Is Essential Reading for Anyone Interested in the Public Sector.

John Seddon is an academic, author and consultant who has very strong views about much that governments have been doing over the last few years in terms of managing service delivery to citizens. In his new book, The Whitehall Effect, he takes aim at the UK government in the main, but anyone interested in the delivery of services to citizens will find much of interest here.

...Seddon is very dismissive of a number of commonly held views such as the whole idea that standardising and automating processes will lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness. He is not a believer in economies of scale, or regulation as a tool for improvement. His methods not only look to slay these “sacred cows” of business theory, but tend to put people at the heart of systems and processes, with apparently brilliant results in many cases. He writes about his firm’s experience in the Housing sector particularly, with some very convincing and interesting case studies along the way.

... the book makes some excellent points and identifies problems that most of us who have worked in government for any time will recognise. For instance, he is very suspicious of most of the government shared services philosophy, which given the experience to date (DfT, Research Councils, Arvato) is not unreasonable. He is sceptical about outsourcing, and even queries the move to digital-based services, which is very much the flavour of the month in Whitehall.

...Overall, the book is a enjoyable and stimulating read. It can be a little like taking a bracing cold shower on a hot day – the opinions come thick and fast, and most issues are very black and white in Seddon’s world. There isn’t a lot of space for grey areas or doubts. But whether or not you agree with everything he says, (I’m at 80% or so agreement I guess), the book is very much recommended reading for anyone interested in public service delivery..."
Read the full article

The Whitehall Effect ~ John Seddon 

In the press...     
Jim Mather (former Scottish Govt. Minister) at What Works Scotland  (23/2/2015)

"John Seddon ... is also very helpful in establishing that any service or any policy intervention ought to have three components:- 
  1. The purpose – as defined by the legitimate and reasonable service user(s)
  2. The measure(s) that can convince those users that the “purpose” is being met.
  3. The method(s) that can be developed and used to deliver the measures and meet the purpose.
... he is adamant that these three components work best when the policy-maker defines the purpose exclusively in terms that users would support and then stops. Leaving the people-who-do-the-work to decide on the measures and develop the methods that progressively produce better and better results. 

He is equally adamant that targets in the context of purpose are toxic. They can become the de facto purpose of any service and encouraging people to game the system and cheat. 

That single insight is worth the price of the book for it offers:- 
  • The politician the chance to genuinely lead and avoid being too prescriptive and wrong
  • The manager that chance to deliver meaningful local leadership get better results and higher morale
  • Front line staff the chance of better results, more autonomy and more fulfilment
  • The user the chance of better crisper services, increased self-sufficiency & self-respect
... This book is both a curiosity builder and a map that allows us to avoid pitfalls and plan a better more collaborative and inclusive way forward – and it gets my enthusiastic endorsement.
Read the full review

Simon Caulkin (former Observer columnist) at simoncaulkin.com (15/12/2014)

"Last week it was the turn of the Public Accounts Committee to charge that departments were overreliant on a handful of ‘quasi-monopoly’ contractors, two of them under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office for gross overcharging. The ‘markets’ being created by this kind of privatisation, charged the IG, were reducing competition and choice rather than enhancing them.

This is a fail in its own terms: but beyond that choice and competition are in themselves wrong-headed and self-defeating goals. These assertions run so counter to the authorised version that Whitehall simply blanks them out, which is why the outsourcing juggernaut rolls on regardless. This is one of the central themes of John Seddon’s important new book, The Whitehall Effect – How Whitehall Became the Enemy of Great Public Services and What We Can Do About it, which takes as its invaluable task the deconstruction of the current public-service paradigm (which is what it is) and the substitution of a better one...

One by one, Seddon picks off all the current public-service nostrums: as well as choice, personal budgets, commissioning, managing demand (aka rationing), risk management and lean have nothing to do with the purpose of a service in the only way that matters, as a citizen would define it. They are just activity. Some chapters (for example on procurement, aptly subtitled ‘how to ensure you don’t get what you want’) make you want to cry, laugh and smash up the furniture at the same time...

Under the radar, many similar initiatives in the UK public sector are producing the same kind of results, which Seddon has documented in a number of previous books and articles. This, though, is the most important and authoritative. In the run-up to the election, it has a direct message for every voter and politician as well as service leader: this is a set of ideas whose time has surely come.

Read the full article


Philip Johnston in The Telegraph (4/11/2014):

"The Whitehall Effect exposes a bureaucracy that is institutionally resistant to new ways of doing things, perpetuating a system that is both profligate and inefficient...

Those who have listened to [John Seddon] have transformed the way things are done, cutting costs and waste while ensuring services are delivered effectively...

Seddon argues that “bigger is better” thinking in the public sector is flawed: trying to drive costs down by delivering services on an industrial scale, with their accompanying IT failures, targets, regulations and inspection regimes, actually pushes costs up, he says. The way to save money and ensure “customer” satisfaction is to focus on managing value to the individual recipient of services.

Seddon has found that it makes no difference how much money is thrown at a public service such as the NHS if the way it is run and managed is fundamentally flawed. Departmental ministers should read this book and have the words “It’s the system, stupid” pinned up in large letters on the walls of their private offices." 
Read the full article


The Guardian 5/11/2014
The Whitehall ideas machine must go

Conservative Home 5/11/2014
We need a shift from Whitehall to local accountability

ResPublica - The Disraeli Room
The triple whammy that cripples our public services

Outsource Magazine
The Whitehall Effect

David Boyle in The Real Blog - Lib Dem Blog of the Year (10/11/2014):

"Seddon has the most coherent critique and probably the most practical alternative. He is so enjoyably rude to his opponents, the conversations with whom he repeats throughout his new book, The Whitehall Effect, that his old newsletters were required reading in local government.

In places like Camden, they have begun to roll out Seddon style systems thinking, and with great effect. But the debate has hardly been joined – because Whitehall is well-insulated against such a fundamental critique.

He describes his first encounter with local government in the book, when Swale District Council called him in because the back office system they had been told by the DWP to put in place for housing benefits seemed to be increasing the backlog – as we now know they do.

Seddon seems to have nailed the basic problem: imperial systems, like those built by public services during the Blair/Brown years – and especially inappropriate IT systems – can’t absorb the kind of human variety they tend to get. This enormously boosts costs.

Now, Seddon’s book has been long-awaited by people like me, who agree with most of what he says, because we were hoping for an answer to the great accountability conundrum – which is this. Without some kind of numerical measures, how are politicians going to hold services to account? And if they don’t use numerical targets, will these not just be imposed on them by the media?

Seddon’s answer is this; politicians should set the intentions of services and let managers find the best way to achieve them. ...

I’m hoping this book will force the big service managers to engage with the argument in a way they have failed to do so far – and admit that the waters around them have grown. The times they are a-changing.."
Read the full article


The Scottish Community Alliance (3/12/2014):

"Before the financial crisis struck, expenditure on public services had been growing in real terms each year. Apart from the fact that spending had already reached unaffordable levels, the outcomes being delivered were not matching the amounts being spent. This was the broad conclusion of the Christie Commission and is why public service reform is so high on the Government’s agenda. Many theories are put forward as to why our public services had become so dysfunctional, but one that is particularly compelling is John Seddon’s idea of the triple whammy generated by what he calls the Whitehall Effect."
Read the full article