Whitehall Watch

My attention was drawn to this article by the head of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Some commentators have been highly sceptical, pointing out the massive recent failures of the queen of quantitative social science, economics, for example.

My own initial reaction is that whilst King’s claims may be somewhat overblown, and they do minimise the problems, both within social sciences and between social scientists and policy makers, they do point to some very interesting developments and possibilities in the development of social sciences. I am wondering what others think? Comments welcome!

Restructuring the Social Sciences
Gary King* January 1, 2013
Abstract

The social sciences are undergoing a dramatic transformation from studying problems to solving them; from making due with a small number of sparse data sets to analyzing increasing quantities of diverse, highly informative data; from isolated scholars toiling away on their own to larger scale, collaborative, interdisciplinary, lab-style research teams; and from a purely academic pursuit to having a major impact on the world. To facilitate these important developments, universities, funding agencies, and governments need to shore up and adapt the infrastructure that supports social science research. We discuss some of these developments here, as well as a new type of organization we created at Harvard to help encourage them — the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences. An increasing number of universities are beginning efforts to respond with similar institutions. This paper provides some suggestions for how individual universities might respond and how we might work together to advance social science more generally.

http://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/iqsss.pdf

When the Cabinet Office advertised their “outsourced” project to get advice about how some other countries manage the relationship between Ministers and Mandarins they made it clear they wanted a think-tank or University to bid for it. This is the (brief) version of how I was part, and then not part, of the winning bid. Continue reading →

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 54,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 12 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

I’ve just been on the sharp end of HMRCs rather dodgy tax computers. I read stories about them spitting out incorrect tax codes and causing all sorts of mayhem, but I never thought it would happen to me. Continue reading →

The final point I want to make is about the “dog that didn’t bark” in Mr Osborne’s Autumn Statement. What could, and should Britain look like After Austerity? Continue reading →

The second major thing wrong with today’s Autumn Statement was the usual political spin embedded in Mr Osborne’s “it weren’t me guv” plea.

According to the Chancellor, supposedly aided and abetted by the OBR, the poorer than expected economic results, and knock-on poorer than expected public finances, is all down to those rotten Continentals over in the Eurozone (EZ). Continue reading →

George Osborne delivered his Autumn Statement today to general critical declaim.

Let me begin with a rather geeky gripe about the Autumn Statement. It was a mini-Budget, indeed a mini-Spending Review, rather than an Autumn Statement. In this George Osborne has gone one up on his predecessor, Alistair Darling, who has famously said he delivered 6 Budgets in his 3 years as Chancellor (in his book ‘Back from the Brink’). Continue reading →

In a couple of weeks I’m attending a (private) seminar on Lessons from the History of Whitehall Performance Measurement Systems.

I have fairly well developed views of my own on this already, but I’d be very interested to get any input from colleagues, especially those with “insider knowledge” of how these things have worked and evolved. Continue reading →

Please see below for details of available funding for PhDs starting 2013.

If anyone is interested in applying to research in the areas of public sector performance, civil service reform, general public management, etc I would be willing to consider supporting an application and being named as a potential supervisor. But please note these schemes are highly competitive. Continue reading →

I appeared briefly on BBC TV nationally and in the NW after the PCC election farce and made some remarks I thought it might be worth just expanding on a little.

There were two issues about these elections: were they a good idea in the first place? And were they badly implemented? Continue reading →

What do health care, education, symphony orchestras and hairdressing all have in common? They all seem to get remorselessly more costly to produce. A new book – The Cost Disease by William Baumol and others – sets out to explain why. Continue reading →

The Institute for Government is pleased to bring to your attention the following event hosted by the Better Government Initiative.

Good Government – a Mid-Term Review An event to mark the launch of a new report

Wednesday 14^th November 2012, 18:00 – 19:30 Continue reading →

Out first ‘Policy@Manchester’ Week – 29 Oct to 2 Nov – is now finalised with a great set of speakers and events.

For more details got to http://www.manchester.ac.uk/policy and follow the link to the Week.

To reserve a place at an event email policy@manchester.ac.uk Continue reading →

I am currently (re)exploring some issues around the nature of the British “administrative elite” – which, for reasons I’ll explain in a later publication, I am restricting to mainly the Senior Civil Service (SCS) for the moment. Continue reading →

The inestimable Atul Gawande (author of The Checklist Manifesto) has done it again with a brilliant little column in the New Yorker.

Continue reading →

So, it appears fairly certain now that the Coalition Government is going to announce – sometime next year – Spending Review 2013. Continue reading →

Here’s the summary of my contributions to yesterday’s discussion on the Guardian Public Leaders Network. Continue reading →