Why we back transparency

One of the earliest councils to make its spending public was Northamptonshire CC, which first published its senior officers' salaries last May, and now publishes all items of spending above £500 on the last Friday of each month. Chief executive, Paul Blantern explains why, in his view, the transparency agenda encourages efficiency and better management Local government is undoubtedly stepping out on to a new frontier. The current economic climate demands that councils address the incumbent challenges rather than generate further promises. It requires that we strive to innovate and connect with our customers like never before. In Northamptonshire, this first resulted in the formulation of our pioneering You Choose campaign, which sought to better inform the public of the difficult financial choices that would have to be made, and has also inspired our transparency drive. In periods when difficult decisions must be taken, it is vital that we take our customers with us. To achieve this, we believe that they need to feel a connection with us as their council, as their ‘trusted advocate'. You Choose was an enormously-helpful tool in trying to achieve this, but the events of the last 12 months in the political domain have left the public mistrustful of government at all tiers. Add that to the real need for us to change the way we do business, and you find the sum of this equation resembles something like the Government's transparency agenda. In Northamptonshire, transparency was something we had recognised early on as being an important step. In early November 2009, my corporate management team (CMT) colleagues were considering proposals to publish our spend above £500, and in January 2010, my predecessor released her salary and expenses details to demonstrate the county's commitment to being an open and accountable local authority. In March 2010, around the time prime minister, David Cameron, was speaking to the Conservative Councillors Association on Conservative proposals for local government transparency, I and the rest of our CMT agreed to publish all council spending above £500 and our salaries and expenses, as well as the job title, salary band and actual salary of any officer who reported directly to us. By this point, we had been careful to foster the necessary relationships to ensure our transparency project got off the ground. We had held roundtable discussions with the Taxpayers' Alliance, as well as representatives of local and national media, and consulted all our suppliers by writing to them and detailing our intentions. This process of dialogue was enormously useful in helping add some form to the function we intended transparency to have. On 28 May 2010, Northamptonshire released details about its senior officer's salaries and began the process of publishing expenditure above £500, launching www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/transparency as the hub of our activity in this area. A phased approach was chosen to release spending above £500 and avoid burying the public in data. With this in mind, we added a different set of directorates' spending to our transparency webpage each month. On 27 August, this process was completed, and since then, we have published all council spending above £500 on the last Friday of each month. Yet, all of this is the what and the when, so what about the why? The short answer is, we want to use transparency as a tool – a weapon to wield when trying to adapt to new challenges. How can being a transparent council achieve this, though? Transparency can increase the scope for competitive tendering and enable us to achieve further value for money in the contracts we hold, and we look forward to more central government guidance on the publication of contracts. Making local authority expenditure publicly available also increases accountability. It promotes organisational discipline from those managing budgets, no matter how big or small, who have to actively challenge their own decision-making in how they use their resources. Beyond that, I am also excited about the implications transparency has for customer participation in local government. If more people understand how local government spends its budgets, then they are more likely to question, or indeed, support the decisions that are made. Transparency represents one element of a culture we are trying to foster at Northamptonshire CC. As part of our core financial vision, and of our ‘strategy map', we are striving to optimise our delivery costs, maximise our income and funding, and target our spend and investments. In this context, transparency fits in well with what we are trying to do in Northamptonshire. Our work on the transparency agenda has given us the chance of working with the CLG, trying as we are to be a leader in this field and share with the Government our journey and the challenges we face as a council in striving to deliver its agenda. We have approved plans to implement further additions to our transparency webpages prior to 1 January 2011. I believe it is because of this fluidity that Northamptonshire has found transparency so exciting. In any programme that has the capacity to improve both your business and your connection with your customers, the possibilities then begin to expand well beyond the horizon. Dr Paul Blantern is chief executive, Northamptonshire CC

Title

WHITEHALL

Why we back transparency

By Paul Blantern | 05 April 2011

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