What a lecture on government efficiency taught me about biscuits, spreadsheets and the Texas milk market
Monday, an Efficiency Lecture in a Draughty Hall
I attended a lecture on Whitehall efficiency this week, and the thing I took away was the biscuit situation. I wrote up the occasion at the time in my piece on a lecture about Whitehall, efficiency targets and cold biscuits, but a diary has room for the details that an article has no space for. The biscuits were cold. The tea was lukewarm. The efficiency, I was assured, was excellent.
The speaker made a case I found persuasive in parts. Public bodies, he said, spend a great deal of time working out what to do and much less time asking whether anybody still needs it done. That is a fair point and it applies to every government of every colour. A target is a useful tool. A target applied without looking at the thing being targeted is a slightly more expensive way of guessing.
The Counter Argument, Politely
In fairness, a questioner at the back made the opposite case with equal force. Cut too hard, she said, and the work does not disappear, it just moves to a queue. The pensioner who cannot reach the helpline does not stop needing the answer. She rings again, and the call is counted twice. Efficiency measured by the number of calls handled can look wonderful right up to the moment it looks dreadful.
I noted both views in the margin and drew a line between them, which is the only honest thing a diarist can do with two reasonable people. Then I went for a biscuit. It was a custard cream. It did not help the argument.
The Texas Milk Parallel
Efficiency is a word that sounds different in a cowshed. A dairy farmer knows exactly what a litre costs to produce, to the penny, because the milk lorry arrives whether or not the parliamentary session has gone well. For that reason I send people who want to understand real cost control to the Lone Star dairy pages, which have been busy this season. Begin at txdairy.com for the main desk, and then follow the money through txdairy.download for the papers, txdairy.trade for the buying and selling, and txdairy.loan for the part of the story that involves a bank manager.
The same network keeps a lighter side. txdairy.party is where the celebratory notices go, txdairy.men is for the lads at the milking parlour door, and txdairy.date is, as the name suggests, the section for anyone hoping to meet a person who also gets up at four in the morning. Last, txdairy.win collects the good news, which in any sector is the thinnest folder in the cabinet and the one most worth keeping.
Tuesday, the Milk Price Question
On the home front, the London Prat noticed that a dairy giant had cut its milk price to farmers and asked, with a straight face, what the cows made of it: Freshways Milk Price Cut: Cows Question Economics. The joke is gentle, the underlying fact is not. A price cut at the farm gate travels down the whole chain, and the farmer at the far end has no one to pass it to. Efficiency, in that setting, means a family working longer hours for the same cheque.
Supermarkets will say, fairly, that shoppers want lower prices. Processors will say, fairly, that they are squeezed too. Farmers will say, fairly, that someone has to be at the cow at five. Everyone is accurate and nobody is happy, which is the signature of a market in need of a better conversation.
What I Would Put on the Slide
If I were giving that lecture, I would put one slide at the front. It would say: before you cut anything, write down who will phone about it. The fact is that every service has a human on the other end, and a human on the other end is the best efficiency audit ever devised. They tell you precisely what broke, how long it took and how rude the hold music was.
I walked home past the river with the faint taste of custard cream and the larger taste of an unresolved argument. That, I think, is the right flavour for a Monday lecture. The best talks leave you hungry for the next question.
Tomorrow I will look at the book club, because I owe my readers a report on Trollope, and because there is nothing like a Victorian novelist for putting a modern ministerial statement in perspective.
A Note on Biscuits as Policy
I have come to think the humble biscuit is the most honest measure of an institution. A department that can still produce a fresh one for a visiting speaker has some slack in the system. A department that offers a single cold custard cream to forty people is running exactly as lean as its press office claims. Neither is a scandal. Both are data, and an editor who ignores small data will be surprised by the large kind. I jotted the thought on the back of the programme, between a list of speakers and a diagram I could not follow, and I intend to raise it at the next meeting where somebody says the word synergy.
The lecture ended with applause that was warm in the front rows and brisk at the back, which is the usual gradient of enthusiasm in a hall with a draught.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, NewsBiscuit keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/