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July 13, 2006
Investors in People
If one is concerned, as one might be, at the low standard of elementary management, of which examples raised here in the past few days alone are
- inability to staff libraries at the right time with the right numbers
- inability to allocate budget priorities to the things that users of libraries need like books and being open.
- spending £57,000 to build a a counter that should probably have cost less than £3,000
- failure to arrange for the windows to be washed and light fittings to be cleaned
then one might seek those mechanisms of national and local government which exist to provide straightforward management training for those who care for the public purse in our libraries.
One of those organisations for which we all pay and that has attracted my attention, as they obviously intend to do by the little plaques they place on walls, is "Investors in People". This is a large but low-flying quango which protects its budget fiercely and appear to account to no public body for what it does. It claims to help organisations improve their basic management skills.
It also plays the game that all clever quangoistas play of having a name which sounds very worthy to a panel of budget-cutters. If you can call yourself "child literacy enterprise learning futures" you will be having an ever growing fund to spend, even if you sit around knitting - or whatever you like to do. No one serious ever checks whether you actually achieve anything.
Readers of this blog will have seen that the "boards" of such bodies are not at all interested whether the managers of the quango have done what they are all paid for, but whether they have "advocated their case in government- and raised their profile" so that the next round of money will be secure. That is pleasantly demonstrated by the minutes of the board of the MLA.
I first came across them when I was working in a council in which the library department appeared to have no management experience, or skill, or any access to training, just at the moment that the inspectors from "Investors in People" were awarding them a plaque of accreditation and a certificate and having their photo taken. I was surprised because I thought there was an awful lot more to talk about before awarding certificates- for example there seemed to me to be an unfulfilled need to explain to local councillors, how all the money was spent in words they could understand.
So last year I approached the senior officers of IIP with a copy of the Select Committee report on public libraries which clearly expresses concern about the standard of management in the service and asked them if I could help them look at the approach they were using to public libraries and why they had accredited so many services when everybody else was finding management problems.
After two jolly friendly meetings, they stopped answering the emails, with a story about how important the subject was, but they were just moving offices, or something along those lines. Like all good quangoes they have learned to avoid dealing with the public: they just don't answer them.
Posted by Perkins at July 13, 2006 8:59 AM