The cold war Home Office

Apparently, Reid really did say this:

We will create a new top team with enhanced leadership and delivery skills, underpinned by an improved working relationship between ministers and officials.

They just don't get it, do they? To the managerialist, the solution to bad management is always just different managers and more manager-speak. It's never to ask the questions: is management inherently limited? Could it be that any managers will fail, because of the problems of bounded rationality? Are there alternatives to monopoly and hierarchy?
Reid seems not to have noticed that the way to improve efficiency is not to hire different goons, but to introduce competition.
Take the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. The first-best solution is abolish this pile of trash. Reid is going to make it an executive agency, with more autonomy from the Home Office. This is the business model that led to the Child Support Agency being such a huge success.
But why can't market forces be introduced here? The IND's functions are largely information processing and bounty-hunting. There's no reason why these must be state monopolies.  However, in neither his statement to the Commons nor his reform action plan (pdf) does Reid any indication of having questioned this.
There's one final quirk. Reid says:

Many of the fundamentals that underlie the systems in the Home Office were designed for a pre-cold war era.

Leave aside the question of which side Reid was on in that war. The irony here is that the characteristic institutions of the cold war - the Soviet Union and the US military-industrial complex - were hierarchical and largely monopolistic. In this respect, Reid has entrenched the fundamentals underlying the Home Office.

Comments

[Igor Belanov]

Reid was quoted as saying that the Home Office was 'unfit for purpose'. Surely the solution would be to change it's purpose rather than these managerial tinkerings. For example, does the HO really need to know how many failed asylum seekers are out and about in Britain? Some of the tasks that the HO is expected to fulfil are basically unachievable.

[angry economist]

One of the reasons for underperformance is surely the tinkering and volte faces of the politicians over the years.

Restructuring creates the illusion of a big fix. But its actually quite destructive in real life, and it takes years to recover. Especially if its designed by a politician - its best designed by people who really know the business, in response to a clear remit and priorities.

Most public sector or quasi governmental organisations are poor or average performers though. This is usually because they are asked to deliver to an impossibly large remit and range of objectives, rather than just concentrate on a few things.

The IND - it already costs £250 for an appointment to get your residence visa renewed in person, or £170 by post. Maybe privatisation would bring down costs for consumers and for the public.

[deariemoi]

The bounty hunter idea is a good one. It might be best to combine it with the reintroduction of the concept of the outlaw. By golly, then all these illegal chappies would rush off to return whence they came. Which is almost always France.

[1skeptic]

Mr Dillow, your ideas are far too sensible to ever be put in practice. The underlying assumption may be wrong - that the home office is actually interested in what the public at large want, instead of, for example, what labour donors want. The desired output may just be 'signalling' to the electorate and mass media as an end in itself, rather than achievement of actual outcomes desired by them.