The Civil Society Strategy: building a future that works for everyone was released last week by the UK government. It is intended to provide a direction for government policy that will strengthen and support civil society in England. The report sets out a vision of the country with better connected communities, more neighbourliness, and businesses which bolster society. It sees a future of collaboration and ‘co-creation’.
There are five chapters that each look at the foundations of social value: people, places, the social sector, the private sector and the public sector. Rather than viewing these separately, it looks at them together, as ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’ It states that the government cannot solve complex challenges facing society but can bring together resources, policies and people, who, between them, can do so.
At the GO Lab we look at the latest innovations in public service commissioning and ensure that policies are built on robust academic evidence. In this sense, we hold a mirror to the government to help reveal what works and what does not. When the Civil Society Strategy was published last week, we noticed that it had a broad agenda with each chapter looking at a different aspect of society. However, this allows for great opportunities to experiment and learn about how government and civil society interact to take on complex social issues. Cross sector collaboration and innovation approaches to commissioning are examples that are featured. We welcome the commitment to develop a methodology to rigorously evaluate these new approaches and look forward to working with colleagues and partners in government to further develop this.
It is exciting to see that the government have committed to continuing our partnership with the Centre for Social Impact Bonds in order to build the evidence base for SIBs. In our recent Evidence Report, Building the Tools for public sector reform: Collaboration, Prevention, Innovation, we look at the evidence on all UK SIBs to date and find that SIBs seem to hold the potential to help overcome entrenched public sector challenges, but we need to seize the opportunities to learn. We will continue to conduct research into when SIBs are the most appropriate or most effective tool compared to alternative approaches.
The Strategy also states that the government will continue to work with Big Lottery Fund to ensure that the £80 million Life Chances Fund grows the use of these types of commissioning tools in the mainstream of local public services. We are closely involved in this work and will continue offering support to the Life Chances Fund applicants, running expert advice surgeries, and providing a range of events and webinars for commissioners in on a broad range of topics. The need for greater support and training for commissioners is referenced in the Strategy, and we extend both the range of our support to include education opportunities, and the content of our support to cover additional commissioning approaches.
Another central theme in the Strategy is to ensure that public spending is used to generate social value in addition to the goods and services it purchases. In order to do so the Strategy states that the Social Value Act will be applied to the whole of government spending and decision-making. There is also a reference to the Innovation Partnership procurement method. At the moment this has not been tested in the UK, but it has the potential to enable investment in new approaches. Based on the insights we have gathered into commissioning for complex social needs, we believe that promoting these procurement approaches will be welcomed by both civil society and public service leaders. They could help civil society and public services to develop stronger links and achieve more positive outcomes.
To secure social value in grant making, the Strategy proposes Grants 2.0 which will reflect the fact that grants can combine flexibility with the accountability and performance rigour of a contract. We are keen to build on our learning from SIBs and explore how such grants could be used to help with public service reform. We want to look at whether they can bring opportunities to collaborate across sectors, reduce demand for high-cost services, and develop innovative approaches.
Finally, we are excited to see the government explore ‘collaborative commissioning’ as a way of building more flexibility in public service delivery and focusing on relationships for people and communities. The report shares examples of where this is already emerging in local authorities across the country. They believe it will create an environment that allows for greater user-led, community-led and staff-led delivery of public services.
Whilst there is a keen interest in capturing the energy, expertise and resources of other sectors, we encourage the government to also consider the challenges that may arise when developing such partnerships. Within a collaboration, who is accountable for tax payer’s money? Do the services that are being delivered reach the expectations of citizens? Our latest research project is called Rallying Together and aims to look in greater detail at these questions. We are considering the role of local authority managers in the formation and management of collaborations. We are also looking at the tools used to constitute the collaborative relationships and how success is defined, as well as how collaboration projects are governed and funded.
The GO Lab team welcome the Civil Society Strategy and how its commitment to innovation in the public sector, increasing social value, and encouraging collaborations across society. Taking up new opportunities to experiment and learn is particularly necessary given increasing demands and decreasing budgets. As an independent research centre at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford we are keen to ensure that policies are evidence based. We think that the Civil Society Strategy has a lot to offer if we seize the opportunities to learn.