Soldiers kill civilians for bonuses
Indian soldiers in Kashmir are being investigated by the local police because they may be killing civilians and then claiming that they are Islamic militants. Human rights activist Parvez Imroz was interviewed in an article by The Guardian where he said that soldiers received bonuses for each kill. He added that, “There are vested interests [...]
Outsourced call centre rethink
The Chief Executive of Northern Ireland Water is having a rethink about its outsourced call centre, according to the Belfast Telegraph. Laurence McKenzie said that, “One of the things that keeps me awake at night is the impetus we need to give to customer service. We have far too many at the minute, I believe, [...]
Why performance related pay is bad for the public sector
Glyn Lumley has written an excellent blog post entitled 10 reasons why performance-related pay should not be used in the public sector and I recommend reading it before proceeding with this post. I would like to add reason 11, which is hinted at in Glyn’s reasons 8 and 9. He cites Daniel Pink and Alfie [...]
The alternative to ring-fencing
Age UK has called for the social care budget to be ring-fenced like the money for the NHS has been. They claim that social care has an effect on the NHS and cutting its budget will drive demand into the NHS. They are no doubt right, but they are using a classic silo-thinking trick. They [...]
Surgery targets endanger patient safety
The BBC reports that About one in five of the nearly 600 surgeons questioned by Bournemouth University reported being involved in incidents, during a two-week period, where patients were harmed. Using the figures further on in the article of 549 surgeons questioned and 19% seeing harm, that means that in two weeks, 104 surgeons saw [...]
Call centres facing self-imposed effectiveness hell
The Mirror has an exclusive report, Call centre staff facing targets hell. Workers in call centres in Britain claim they are being treated like battery hens and say conditions are getting worse. The Mirror has uncovered shocking working conditions with some staff allowed just EIGHT minutes for their toilet breaks during an eight-hour shift and [...]
Local Gov Camp Review – Part Two
This is the second part of the report of the Local Gov Camp – Yorkshire and Humber event. You can read the first part here. I wanted to break it into two since the first part is quite positive, I was very impressed with the enthusiasm of the attendees to firstly come in their own [...]
Local Gov Camp Review – Part One
Today I went to Local Gov Camp – Yorkshire and Humberside to find out about social media in local government. The day was run on an unconference format which is quite like Open Space but even looser, if you can imagine that. Digital Vision The first session was about a digital vision – where do [...]
A target is not a plan
In the News section of the May 2010 edition of Qualityworld (who I have written for) there is a report on a vote by readers on which of the political parties have the best appreciation of change. I noted that one respondent wrote, The Tories’ critisism of targets indicates that they do not understand the [...]
NHS four-hour A&E target to be cut
From the Press Association, NHS four-hour A&E target to be cut This is good news, but it remains to be seen what the alternative will be. It is hoped there will be some sort of method behind it this time. By method I mean a practical way of improving that is not ideological or dogmatic, [...]
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