For some 25 years the second author worked in Canada, the USA and Australia in a variety of positions having to do with the formulation and implementation of public disability policy. For example, he was for five exciting years Director and Consultant for Mental Retardation (since Intellectual Disability) Services for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada, following this with some years as Director of the Victorian Government’s Educational Integration Unit, then Principal Disability Policy Advisor for Community Services Victoria, followed by a number of years as Director of the NSW Office on Disability in the State Government’s Social Policy Directorate
From lengthy experience in the musty heights of various provincial and state bureaucracies, several “truths” have been revealed to him, generally at moments of crisis, and these are as follows:
It was always very difficult to design public policies that look good on paper;
It was even harder to frame them in words and catch-phrases that sounded pleasing to his political masters; and
It
These revelations possibly result because governmental policies are likely to be as complex as the society upon which, and through which they have been designed to work. A single government policy relating to people with mobility impairment for example, may involve the complex and interrelated activities of several Commonwealth departments, several state government departments and a number of local governments.
In NSW alone at the state level, there are almost 150 government agencies, at least 130 of which are required under section 9 of the NSW Disability Services Act to produce formal disability plans. A recently adopted government policy might also involve private organisations, for example the Vision Australia, the Deaf Society or the Royal Institute for Deaf & Blind Children or the state’s Guide Dogs Association. Such professional organisations as South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment, the Australian Braille Authority, and such special interest groups as NSW Institute for Family Advocacy might all have a role to play or decide that they had something to contribute. As well as these, specific individuals might be involved as customers, or consumers.
The question of how best to control, or plan for these multiple interests in the policy implementation process is at the heart of the challenge that has become universally known in the private and public human service sectors as the “implementation
Orientation and mobility service delivery in our country has traditionally been the prerogative of highly reputable state-based and home state-focused charitable organisations. Imagine then, a scenario in which the Commonwealth and State Government Ministers have been persuaded by a vocal group of consumer advocates, the Australian Blindness Forum and National Disability Services (NDS) in Canberra to allocate $20million over three years into the development of a
Essentially, someone to whom authority has been delegated will have to do some planning about how, where and when the money will be spent. The challenge will essentially involve assembling and implementing some form of distributive program through an appropriate mechanism or process. What is needed at the initial stage of this new and exciting project will be analogous to an architect’s blueprint. The necessary plan can be assembled either from scratch or by overhauling and supplementing an existing mechanism. Implementation will mean aggregating and assembling elements and putting the implementation machine together, then making it run so that the allocated monies will flow to the beneficiaries. Hopefully, these will be people with O&M needs and their families. For those whose responsibility it is to deliver the new program, the challenges will mostly be about exerting and maintaining control of the processes they have devised.
The several parts of the implementation ‘machine’ will consist of some or all of the following:
An administrative and financial control locus or loci;
Identification of presumptive beneficiaries;
Private providers of related O&M-related goods and services, for example, housing, work, educational, health services;
Professionals, developers, perhaps land holders;
Clearances by public regulatory authorities;
Innovations in program and design;
Other funding sources;
Trouble shooters;
Political support to protect and sustain the projects as they develop.
Most of those involved in the numerous and diverse elements that together make up the O&M services implementation project will be relatively independent of one another. Their politics can generally be assumed to be initially highly defensive. They will each want “a cut of the benefits pie”. However, some will want to avoid scrutiny for a variety of reasons; some will want to avoid responsibility and all will seek to avoid blame should anything go wrong. It is essential therefore, that whoever holds the authority for implementing the new policy should have a clear conception of the integration processes that are necessary, before specifying the problems that might result from them. And before speculating about what might have to be done about the hypothesised problems.
Viewed from this perspective, implementation of the exciting new O&M development program might be conceived as a playing field on which numerous political and bureaucratic games are played. The implementation process, involving the assembly of a variety of elements, together required to produce some particularly desirable outcomes, involves therefore, playing out a number of loosely inter-related games whereby certain elements are withheld from, or delivered to the program assembly process on particular terms.
The most successful participants involved in implementation will tend to see the process as a game, rather like chess, checkers or Japanese Go. Their motivation is to be winners. The games are characterised by a need to manoeuvre large numbers of semi-autonomous actors or participants. Each of these will be trying to gain access to certain desired program elements that are not under his or her control, while at the same time trying to extract better terms from other players who are seeking to access elements that s/he controls.
Further, most or all program assembly processes generally take much longer than their sponsors hope or expect they will. Delays can result from such management games as “stalling”, “thwarting” and “postponing”. Delay is perhaps endemic to program implementation. It occurs, for example through the extra time needed to find suitable service providers. This might particularly be the case with regard to O&M service provision. It might occur through the time it takes for potential providers to decide on the terms they require before committing to the project. Delays in project implementation most often occur from queuing problems, i.e., from the sheer number of transactions that are necessary to make the project flow.
Manoeuvres by several players in the implementation game can both express conflict and create it. Moreover, with every counter-move aimed at reducing conflict, there is a risk of actually making things worse. In fact, much of the implementation process for the O&M project will move along, out of control, driven by complex forces not of any party’s making. There will be delay from protracted and frustrating negotiation, from unplanned and accidental occurrences, blocking delays, adoption of alternative time priorities and the seemingly inevitable illogicality of collective action. The delays themselves will cause actors to renege on commitments.
Project managers who are held politically accountable for the success of the new policy initiative are obliged to cope. To do so they will have to play management games. Typical of these sorts of activities are “tokenism” and “monopoly” games.
A variety of other games will be identifiable in the new O&M services implementation process, some well-hidden (covert), some played on the open playing field (overt). These games will include some or all the following sorts:
By trying to avoid responsibility;
By defending themselves against the games of others;
By trying to set up advantageous situations.
Diversion of money (resources) that ought to be used to obtain or create some of the program elements,
Deflection of the policy goals stipulated in the original mandate,
Resistance to all efforts to control behaviour administratively; and
Dissipation of personal and political energies in games playing that might otherwise be channelled into constructive program actions.
Policy and program implementation, with regard to the $20 million new O&M services development initiative that provides the “playing field” for some or all of the games outlined above, should the advocacy groups and NDS dream come true, would almost certainly result in a display of pressure politics. Those involved in the process should expect to either observe or participate in an ongoing series of bargaining, manoeuvring and pulling and pushing as the policy adoption process spills over into actual implementation.
In all the “jockeying” the die-hards who believe they have in some way lost out, will seek, when the guidelines and regulations are being drafted, to continue their opposition. The entire project implementation process can be conceived as a system of pressures, with delay as an endemic characteristic.
With regard to the administrative processes that are essential to all forms of policy and project implementation, managers and advisers should expect to encounter a variety of forms of “authority leakage” because individual agency officials will have varying goals and use their discretion in translating orders. Further, the dynamics of organisational recruitment often create conservative middle managers and often, the lower staff echelons within agencies have autonomous power bases.
Implementation of the new O&M policies and programs will be driven by inter-organisational transactions with government officials, clients, private contractors, professional groups and publicists, all articulating their own special fears and anxieties. Successful implementation depends to a large extent on the “massing of assent” from those who are key stakeholders.
There are a great many issues arising from the various games described above, that touch upon the recurrent theme of the particularity of human service organisations. For example, such issues as rapidity of change and the large amount of external determination of change; the value dimension, for example, the issue of legitimacy, and aspects reflected by differing attitudes.
The reader can be quite sure that the creation and introduction of new forms of O&M service to Australians who are blind or vision impaired will involve, for better or worse, compromise on most important issues. Most importantly, it is essential for all key players in such an undertaking to remain optimistic and retain the primacy of having goals that will ultimately benefit people who require O&M skills.
Ideas in this article are based on Eugene Bardach’s (1977) timeless classic