Visions of the future
LAST month's debate on the States Strategic Plan was interesting. Well, OK, actually it was very boring but it did throw up the odd interesting issue.
LAST month's debate on the States Strategic Plan was interesting. Well, OK, actually it was very boring but it did throw up the odd interesting issue.
The most stimulating part of the discussion wasn't over individual elements of the plan but rather whether these broad 'vision documents' serve any purpose at all.
Do they point the way to where we want to go as a community, allowing day-to-day policy making to fit into a broad strategic vision? Or are they just verbiage, taking many costly civil servant hours to draw up, engendering rambling unfocused political debates, only to gather dust on the shelf? I could argue it both ways.
Certainly it's easy to be cynical. Guernsey's history of 'blueprints for the future' is not a happy one. The first department I recall drawing up such a vision document was the old Tourist Board. When a new chief officer took over he took months out to consider where the industry should be going in the future.
The resulting blueprint contained one core proposal that the number of visitor beds in Guernsey shouldn't be allowed to drop below a set minimum. I can't remember how many thousand it was. This recommendation was endorsed and became part of official States' policy. The only problem was that there was absolutely no practical mechanism to stop a decline in bed stock happening. So it dropped below the ordained minimum and the Tourist Board's strategic plan could do nothing to stop it.
By the way, other elements of that master plan included establishing a casino, a Victor Hugo centre and a seawater therapy facility. Have you seen any of those about the island lately?
Actually, thinking about it, that wasn't the first States 'vision document'. A committee under Conseiller Tom Wise produced an earlier one which recommended capping Guernsey's population at 58,000 souls. That policy had to be scrapped when numbers approached the 'ceiling' because once again there was no practical system in place to enforce it.
More recently we've had very broad, long-term, strategic plans produced by HSSD, Education and other departments. There have also been several manifestations of the States-wide business/strategic plan. One of those made signing up to the women's rights convention CEDAW a top priority, but we're still waiting. So are they a total waste of time?
Well, the first thing to say is that long-term planning is a good thing. If you don't know where you want to go, then how do you decide what direction to start moving in? No sensible business would think of operating without a medium term vision document and nor should any government. Such a strategic framework is even more important for an administration without the publically endorsed manifesto which party politics brings.
The issue isn't whether a plan is needed but what the format should be.
I believe when it comes to broad policy planning there are three golden rules:
1. Less is more.
2. Achievability is key.
3. Policy objectives must be linked to the likely availability of resources.
I confess that when the first States Business Plan was drawn up I was as guilty as every other member of insisting that everything I felt passionately about should be included. I was wrong. You end up with a rambling document where the words get in the way of the clear vision. The States strategic plan should be no more than 20 pages long.
As for achievability, it's almost cruel/time-wasting to put together blueprints setting out ideal long-term objectives regardless of affordability. Fine, have a few paragraphs of ideological content setting out utopia, but then get down to brass tacks and what can actually be done over the next five years. Anything else is just raising false expectations. That is where the recent Education document falls down. It's stuffed with idealism but what can they actually do – and soon – given their massive financial challenges? We are none the wiser.
So my plea is not to go back to the bad old days of no long-term planning. Instead it's for the pendulum to swing halfway back with sharp, terse, planning documents being produced which major on what can be done, how, what it will cost and where that money is coming from.
One important spin-off would be the saving of thousands of expensive civil servant hours which would allow for a slimmer administration with the cash saved being transferred to the sharp end of service delivery.
