Managing Public Money

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A blog about public financial management: the fine art of managing public money to deliver vital services to the public. It involves budgeting, accounting, controlling, auditing, reporting, policy-making and decision-taking.

May 03, 2011

Another comment about Suffolk County Council

May 03, 2011/ Gary Bandy

I've written before about the Suffolk County Council's plans for a radical outsourcing of its services. I've been sceptical about the chances of success from the point of view of the technical difficulties in procuring a complex web of inter-related services from multiple suppliers. I suspect that once procured there would be enduring problems of management and co-ordination for however long the service contracts last.

Having read this post in Patrick Butler's cuts blog, it would seem that the Council's plans are floundering because a more fundamental problem: leadership. An extremely difficult operational management problem is inevitably made more difficult when there is not support from the very top of the organization.