A rational systemic approach is urgently required to make UK government perform as effectively and efficiently as possible.

What kind of system is government really? What exactly is its purpose? How to structure government best, so it serves the nation and the people best? How to make government perform optimally? How to set up an effective Government Performance Management System?

The UK government, generally speaking, is responsible for protecting and enhancing the wellbeing of around seventy million people. That is a huge and daunting task in our complex and challenging world.

As a consequence, when someone is entrusted with running government, they are obliged to ensure they do their job properly, or better even, optimally. Every degree in performance of the government will affect the lives of seventy million people in one way or another. The failure to get the job right can ruin the well-being of people and ultimately destabilise and destroy the entire nation.

Presently, only three months into the new Labour government, news have leaked out about infighting and chaos in Downing Street. Now ministers are calling for Keir Starmer “to get a grip of Number 10”. [1]

What the chaos shows is that a convincing rationale is missing for making Number 10 work. That is devastating for the nation. If the “head office” of government is not working properly, the entire government machinery won’t.

So, what exactly must Keir Starmer do, to bring order into number 10 and to make government perform optimally?

Systems Thinking provides a rational and transparent approach to answer this question.

A system is shaped by its purpose. So, the first thing Starmer, like any responsible head-of-government in our world, must ask is: What exactly is the purpose of “a” or “our” government system?

Systems Thinking also tells us how to get to the best answer to this initial question and to finding the solution to the overall problem of making government as effective and efficient as possible. It is by using all know-how distributed in society, and ideally in the world, through comprehensive research and consultation with the people. One of the fundamental typical mistakes in British government is that it is run by a narrow “boys’ club”, by people who consider government their private turf and think they personally know best how to run it. Most  governments on earth suffer from this fault in one or another way.  The attitude has caused much harm to the British nation. Not to engage in comprehensive consultation on how to structure and run government optimally at the beginning of one’s time in office, or ideally beforehand, amounts to negligence towards the seventy million inhabitants of the UK. Since the world depends on effective and efficient governments and leadership, not optimising government performance amounts, moreover, to negligence towards the entire world.

So let us assume for now the consultation on the exact purpose of the government system were to conclude: The purpose of governing is the identification, weighing, and the management of public issues in the most effective and efficient manner possible, so that the work of government maximises the wellbeing of the British population, today and in the future.

This definition tells us that our government system requires four fundamental sub-systems: One sub-system to make government perform in the “most effective and efficient way possible”, one sub-system to identify public issues, one sub-system to weigh and prioritise them, and one sub-system to manage them.

Systems and sub-systems are organisational units. They must translate into the organisation chart of government. Presently you will probably not find these four sub-systems on the first sub-level on line two of the organisation chart of the British government. This is a key reason why government cannot work optimally and will commit blunders. Evidently, if you do not have an effective system to make government performance as effective and efficient as only conceivable or, in other words, to “optimise government performance”,  then you will probably not have a government capable to handle the extremely difficult political problems of our time adequately. Government will fail, disappoint voters, it will not be trusted and get into trouble, by the latest at the next election. Moreover, you will undermine trust in democracy altogether, you might cause discontent and riots.  

What structuring government work in a rational, systemic way allows concerning the relationship to the public is to make government work absolutely transparent. It allows you as a head of government to lay your books open and to inform the people: This is how we optimise government performance. You can, moreover, involve the people in shaping government and tell them: This is your government. If you have a better proposal for optimising government work, please let us know. You can precisely show:  This is how we identify public issues, this is how we weigh them, this is how we manage them. You can again involve the people by stating: If you have proposals how we can improve the performance of these systems, let us know. We will examine your proposal and feed it into our open consultation process on government optimisation.

Each of the initial four sub-systems will have many sub-systems on their own. The system for “managing” public issues, for example, will require a sub-system for strategy making, one for strategy implementation, and one for evaluation. The system for strategy making itself will require a system which identifies and confirms the exact goal of each policy, a system which identifies all factors affecting the achievement of the goal specified, and a system which builds strategies which incorporate all factors of relevance identified. If one omits any factors of relevance, the policy will not work, and resources will be squandered.

As regards the concrete identification of policy issues, one policy issue which is probably never properly recognised is the specific task of “stabilising UK democracy”. In a time when all democracies are threatened by populist tendencies and are at danger of sliding into destructive dictatorships, the issue of “stabilising democracy” is of critical importance for the nation, like for any democratic state.

How to stabilise UK democracy? One key factor would be to create contentment with it. To achieve this goal, one would have to make UK democracy work optimally, meaning concretely that one would need “a system to make UK democracy work optimally”. But making a machine work optimally alone does not suffice to create contentment. One would also have to communicate to the client, how exactly the machine is constructed and why its way of construction would be optimal, so people really see that their democratic system is the best they can get. What this requirement tells us that we need an effective system of communication with the citizens. We also need an effective citizenship education system to maintain the stability of democracy and to avoid that people are being misled by populists. What is the present state of the UK citizenship education system? Does it comply with the requirements? We would need to check, but it is highly unlikely.

While the individual lay-out of each system and sub-system largely depends on its specific purpose, all systems must have two effective standard systems for them to function properly: Effective control and effective communication. No system works effectively without effective control, and all system needs effective communication systems, both inside the system and with stakeholders on their outside. In case of government those stakeholders are primarily the people. How to set up effective control and effective communication? It will again depend on identifying all aspects which influence effective control and communication and on incorporating all relevant factors into the system.

For us as citizens it is important that democracy is “government by the people”. This means that it is ultimately our responsibility to make democracy and government, as its key part, work. We must set up an effective chain of control from us, over our control institutions, to the head-of-government, and to ultimately all policy making units. Presently Parliament and House of Lords are our key “control systems” over government work. Do they function effectively as control systems? If members of the House of Lords give presents to government, at worst they might do this to bribe government, at best they might simply be more like friends to members of the government. In any case, they will not be acting properly as “controllers” on behalf of the people and unlikely to control government work effectively.  Yet, if our control systems do not work, we cannot be astonished if we are not content with the work of government.

How can we set-up effective control over government? Systems Thinking tells us that, we, the people, need to form a driver to achieve this goal, an organisation which deals with the question of “how to set up an effective democracy and an effective government”. Without the people forming a driver, an organisation which deals with the question of how to optimise democracy and government performance, we will not get an effective democratic system, and we will not have a government which performs optimally.

But back to government itself. What must Keir Starmer now do to ensure his government works optimally?

I suggest he now needs to do two things: First, he must ensure that government runs optimally on the basis of its present organisational set-up, and, second, he must set up a system which develops a new government structure on the basis of Systems Thinking, a structure which optimises government performance. For these tasks the Prime Minister needs to hire two persons: One person familiar with present government operations who ensures government works as smoothly and efficiently as possible on the basis of its current organisational structure, and one person whose task it is to optimise government performance. For the task he or she needs to understand Systems Thinking and to set-up an effective “Government Performance Management System”.  The time frame for developing a new, systems based organisational structure for government would perhaps be a year. As soon as the new, systemically sound system would be developed, the organisational structure of the government system would be adapted to it. To gain the confidence of the people, Starmer should inform the public about these actions.

After years of turmoil in government the British people finally need and want a government which works optimally. Starmer must explain to the public how he will build it.

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[1] Andrew Rawnsley, Urgent memo from his anxious ministers to Sir Keir Starmer: you need to get a grip of No 10, The Observer, 29 September 2024https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/28/keir-starmer-no-10-ministers