Long live commissioning! But what shall we call it?
What do you call an approach that moves #publicservices
from
- ‘spending money on services to meet needs’
to
- ‘intervening and learning in the complex systems that actually shape our lives’?
The former sees ‘services’ as the whole universe, brought into being by our public service cash.
The latter sees that people are busy living their lives and that funding is just part of the influence we can have on citizen and community outcomes.
The word we’re stuck with, like it or not, is #commissioning.
It’s been five months since I last wrote ‘it ain’t dead!’ (I checked). And I have to keep saying it.
Yet because commissioning covers that (still vital) process of deciding which services (in-house, outsourced, third sector) are funded and which are not, it still gets bracketed with procurement, outsourcing, and contract management.
It’s much more than that, and since 2011 we’ve been working to show how it much more deserves to be part of #systemschange #systemsleadership and what’s now called #humanlearningsystems
My latest piece in the Municipal Journal is at https://www.themj.co.uk/Long-live-commissioning-/221192
How would you try to get this message across? What would you call it?
See also
Our core positioning piece: ‘commissioning is an approach to transformation’
Can commissioning truly start from the assets and capabilities of citizens and communities? As we inch towards the post-Covid era, what opportunities and risks are opened up by the massive release of citizen and community assets during the pandemic?
Commissioning is dead, long live commissioning
