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August 16, 2006
Phil Kerridge and the PwC report
Phil Kerridge made some absolutely essential points in a comment yesterday..
The first is that when MLA contract a consultant (which they have done in the last 2 years to the tune of 4 million pounds)the consultant should be acting in the best interests of the people of the country; their duty of care is not to the MLA- but to the people who pay for and do or would use the library service.
I believe that this is a very serious mistake to print (as the report does as clear statement) that the consultants only have a duty of care to the officers of the MLA. This could easily be misinterpreted to imply that Price Waterhouse Cooper might only write whatever it takes to get the next contract from the MLA (which is a "Non- Governmental Body") and not what is in the interests of the people. Of course that could not possibly be true. If that were their motive it could imply that they will simply write whatever meets with the approval of the MLA and its steering committee of paid professional librarians. Nobody would believe such behaviour possible or honourable.
Moreover one would have thought that Consultants such as these, if they judged that what the MLA was asking for or "steering them towards" was not clearly in the best public interest, they would naturally say so. That is part of their job. The opposite is unthinkable.
No consultants with as high a reputation as these (or others like them) would dream of beaving in any other way.
However the question remains as to why this report fails to address and quantify so many of the problems identified in the previous phase of the work by PKF (who, one notes, failed to be awarded the contract for the next phase). In PKF the suggestion that savings of a much greater level could be made relatively quickly, seems to have been completely forgotten
I hope someone from Price Waterhouse Cooper and the MLA will come on here and put the record straight. Or even from the Government - which funds the MLA
This is what Phil said
Nice work for Pc W if you can get it! Don't they sum it up when they decline to accept responsibility for the adequacy, completeness or accuracy of the model or the assumptions upon which it's based? But perhaps that's pleasures of consultancy - all the fun and none of the responsibility?
Shouldn't there be a comparative intermediate model where libaries sort out their support costs, streamline to NAG etc etc and my friends at Askews carry on doing what they do very well? That way you avoid the risks of all the grandiose IT built into the proposals. But perhaps that's Tim! (Yes - it is exactly what I would suggest. Tim)
In any event £22m shared amongst 149 authorities - about £150k each but not before 2008 if we're lucky. The real question is what sort of a library service will be left when for example Dorset will already have taken £847k away from their £6 million - ish - budget?
Typical MLA - great scheme perhaps, shame it doesn't address the real problem!
Phil
Posted by Perkins at August 16, 2006 10:08 AM