December 2004
Christmas wishes
Rocket Science would like to wish you a Merry Christmas. We will be making a donation to charity, rather than sending cards this year, so we'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all the best for 2005.
Have a great holiday - we look forward to working with you next year.
Personal touches
Personalisation will soon be coming to a public service near you (if it hasn't already arrived!). Personalisation is about changing the approach within existing services to ensure staff empowerment and user participation. It is not about new strategies or policies, nor is it about simply improving the services that already exist. Rather it is about fundamentally changing the way end users are engaged in designing, developing and receiving the services they are offered. It is about giving people choice - not between different providers, but about the service they are offered.
Rocket Science recently attended an event arranged by DEMOS, the independent think tank on public service delivery, at which chief executives and senior managers from the Scottish Executive, local councils, the NHS and other public sector organisations considered the possibilities and challenges of the personalisation approach.
Personalisation is a new way of thinking about public service delivery, or a new 'script' as one key speaker, the leading business adviser Charles Leadbeater, described it. According to Leadbeater, the normal restaurant script is: Enter the restaurant, order food, eat and pay. That script was rewritten by fast food restaurants to: Enter the restaurant, choose your food, pay - and then eat. The script for public service delivery could be changed in the same way.
What is the main challenge?
'Personalised services are not just for the few, for those who can afford to buy them in the market. Personalisation is not opposed to equity; it is at the very core of what equity means.' Gordon Brown MP.
One of the biggest challenges in personalisation is the danger that it may especially benefit the able and empowered, and let down the disempowered and vulnerable. Crucial to the approach is the need to build capacity, engage in conversations and raise aspirations before asking people to make choices or to make their voices heard.
What does personalisation mean for you in practice?
Do you deliver services to the public or engage in any way with organisations and agencies that do? Perhaps you are already delivering personalised services to people? 'The future is already here; it is just unevenly distributed' wrote William Gibson, the science fiction author. No matter whether you are on the receiving end of services or involved in delivering them the movement of personalisation is likely to have consequences for you.
Central to the personalisation approach is the leadership it requires. Rather than numerous meetings sorting out new strategies and policies, the leadership required by the personalisation approach is about setting the right tone, attracting staff with the right attitudes or developing those attitudes among existing staff. Clear and strong leadership is needed to set the direction, while at the same time leaders must allow people to get on with their jobs without too many limiting requirements.
For more information, including a PDF report, Personalisation through participation, visit http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/personalisation/
To hear more about how Rocket Science can assist in this process contact Tine Kleif
Let everyone take part
Meanwhile, on the road to personalisation, many of us are still struggling with good old 'participation'. The practice of participation is not as easy as the rhetoric but there are some great examples of good practice. A Participation Practice Centre is being developed by the Carnegie Young People Initiative to support sharing and learning in children and young people's participation.
The Carnegie Young People Initiative (CYPI) is an independent think-tank, primarily funded by the Carnegie UK Trust. It aims to promote the involvement of young people aged 10-25 in decisions that affect them. Rocket Science has recently completed a review of the work of the Initiative on behalf of the Trust. CYPI is a respected organisation and has contributed a lot to the landscape of participation. The organisation is working in partnership with the National Youth Agency, National Children's Bureau, Children's Rights Alliance for England and the British Youth Council to develop the Participation Practice Centre. The group has received initial funding from DfES (the Department for Education and Skills) to explore the feasibility of such a centre, and is developing some of the foundations for it. In time it is hoped that the Participation Practice Centre will be a useful resource for organisations across the UK.
See www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/cypi/home
For information on Rocket Science's work in this area contact Debbie Adams
Olympics please Santa
Sports stars, politicians, policy makers, Londoners and people across the country have pledged support for London's bid to host the Olympics and Paralympics in 2012. This support recognises the longer term benefits that the Olympics could bring, not just to London but the whole of Britain. Rocket Science has been closely involved in the bid, which will bring the Games to the UK for the first time since 1948, and be the key to the country's biggest ever regeneration programme, located in the Thames Gateway.
We recently documented the long-term benefits of a future Games, both to London and to the Regions and Nations of the UK, drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary data sources. The London Development Agency will seek to use this evidence to win the hearts and minds of those who may remain sceptical about what our hosting the Games could achieve. At a local level, consultant Natasha Wilson is engaged as the five Olympic Boroughs' Health Champion, working as a conduit for information and project ideas between the East London Boroughs, the North East London Strategic Health Authority, Mental Health Trusts and London 2012 in the run up to the IOC's decision next July. For further information contact Natasha Wilson
Ringing in the changes
Capacity building takes on new meaning as thousands of projects up and down the country brace themselves for life beyond the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) and the European Social Fund (ESF).
Grant funding will change significantly over the next 18 months as the SRB ends and new regulations governing the ESF are implemented. Becoming 'investor ready' - whether for further grant funding or for other forms of investment - is critical if the best of these projects are to survive and continue to thrive.
There are a range of products and tools available (several of which are now available on line) to help publicly funded organisations enhance the quality and productivity of their projects. From small-scale ESF initiatives right up to complex regeneration partnerships, there is always a need for easy-to-implement processes and techniques that can make a real difference to performance throughout a project's lifetime and help ensure long-term sustainability.
A Bid Assessment Tool developed by Rocket Science allows funders such as the ESF Co-Financing Organisations to be far more rigorous and transparent about their commissioning and the scoring of project applications.
Our Social Economy Self-Assessment Scorecard has been piloted with a range of social enterprises and helps projects identify areas of weakness which need some management time and focus. We are linking this with the Investment Readiness Tool (IRT) developed by Community Enterprise in Scotland to provide a way for projects to prepare for a future beyond grant funding. The IRT can help them assess their potential for mainstreaming by statutory funders, or for taking on other types of investment including loans and equity finance.
Rocket Science has been asked by the Government Office for London and the London Development Agency to develop a range of practical resources that will help projects which are facing the run down of SRB and ESF funding over the next year. Contact John Griffiths
'Party' invite
We would like to invite to join us on the 15th February 2005 for a glass of wine and the chance to meet and network with other agencies also engaged in the government's quest to realise greater efficiencies from the procurement of publicly-funded projects and services.
We will briefly draw on our recent experiences working with a number of clients to demonstrate a new commissioning tool and stimulate a discussion about how agencies can get the most out of the money available, effectively procuring services that respond to demand and meet their strategic objectives.
This event will be held at our London office: 70 Cowcross Street, EC1M 6EL.Please contact Ruth Evans or 020 7253 6289 for more information and to reserve a place.
We look forward to seeing you there
Nice surprise
'I thought it was all going to be all lectures but it's not. The mix of information and interaction works well...' 'It has been really helpful to learn all this today. Now I have the challenge of going back to my workplace and trying to put it into action.'
This is just some of the feedback from our first training course, Marketing and promoting your project. We have developed a range of modules suitable for a variety of participants. Click here to find out more or contact Ruth Evans
Santa's little helpers
New faces, new responsibilities. There are all kinds of new developments at Rocket Science.
We're expanding. Rocket Science is pleased to welcome three new crew members, David McNeill and Sefton Laing in Edinburgh and Annabel House in London. Great addition to the teams! Read more about them on our website
Congratulations. We're delighted to congratulate Tine, who has been promoted to Senior Consultant.
Didn't he do well? Roddy Ferguson is leaving Rocket Science to be a Project Manager for Audit Scotland. Roddy was the first Rocket Science employee and we wish him well in his future career.
Musical Chairs
Rocket Science Director Richard Scothorne has just been appointed Chair of one of the workstreams that will inform the Scottish Employability Framework. Fellow Director Willy Roe has been appointed Chair of Highlands and Islands Enterprise (until 2007) and Chair of the Scottish Executive 21st Century Social Work Group (until October 2005).
The workstream Richard chairs within the Scottish Employability Framework will produce recommendations about appropriate interventions to promote employability. It will also consider how to organise funding, roles and responsibilities to get more coherent and effective routes to and through work. The group will report in March 2005.
Willy has been appointed Chair of Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) for three years from September 2004. HIE is the economic, skills and social development agency for the Highlands and Islands, an area that covers half the land mass of Scotland and has 8% of the population. It has an investment budget of £105m a year and a staff of 550 across 12 locations - the head office in Inverness, technical support cente in Benbecula and 10 Local Enterprise companies from Shetland to Kintyre.
The Scottish Executive 21st Century Social Work Group was set up to look at:
the role of modern day social workers
the profession's leadership and management
how to improve quality assurance and how best to deliver services
whether the current legislative framework is still suitable
New legislation is likely in 2006-07. The group is accountable to Peter Peacock MSP, the Education Minister, and a Cabinet Sub-committee. They are about to launch a major programme of consultation and engagement with all stakeholders.
Christmas quiz
A dashing icon of the whisky industry was forced out of his signature tailcoat and into a black hooded sweatshirt recently, in an 'haute couture' makeover. Who was he?
As we're filling up with Christmas spirit, there's a bottle of his favourite tipple for one lucky reader who replies by e-mail
Congratulations to all of you who knew that the late great who topped the earnings chart, making $40million last year, was Elvis Presley. John Lennon's estate earned $19million. (Source: Forbes magazine).