There was undoubtedly cheating and lying in the public sector before the performance management culture was so enthusiastically embraced but league tables, over ambitious targets, naming and shamming have increased the pressure and the temptation. Now we face a new round of budget cuts and senior managers are pressurised by politicians to maintain that services standards will not suffer and performance will continue to improve. Is the fiddling now so endemic we cannot trust any figures presented especially when so strongly contradicted by the evidence of our own eyes. It is rather like the old Stalinist Russia where farming collectives reported year on year record harvests in response to ever more demanding central government targets, mean while the blinds on the train were firmly pulled down so foreign journalist could not see the starving rural population.
I worked with a Director for several years who changed the returns provided to the then Social Service Inspectorate before he submitted them. When challenged he said he was not prepared to submit a figure that showed a deterioration in performance from the previous year. He simply made up a figure. He has since retired but how did he get away with fiddling the figures for years? The Authority was a two star coasting Directorate at a time when the inspectors were focussing on those in special measures or with one star. The Director had no ambitions for the Authority to be three star as he was of the view that there was only one way to go from three stars - down. So he did not over inflate the returns just smooth them out
But perhaps a more typical example of the monster we have crated is that recently reported in the Guardian news paper by an NHS whistle blower.
Jane worked in hospital administration. She blew the whistle on waiting list figures. She exposed the ways her department got round the 18 week waiting list target. The target was for 90% of patients to be seen within 18 weeks. Good practise would dictate that those who had waited longer would be a priority but she was told to give priority to those who were coming up to 18 weeks. The patients who had exceeded the 18 weeks no longer counted. Of course this meant lying to them about why they were still waiting. The most telling part of this story is that when she raised her concerns with her manager he said that all the other departments and every hospital used this and other manoeuvres to get round the system. The implication being they would be at a disadvantage if they didn’t follow the rest.
Is fiddling the figures the inevitable consequence of payment by results, over ambitious target setting and micro management? Is the performance management culture with its emphases on measuring success, management by targets and naming and shamming really the best way to run hospitals, schools and social services?
Blair McPherson author of UnLearning Management- short stories on modern management published by Russell House www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
