The Chickens Come Home To Roost

One of the features of modern commercial life is the way in which the boundaries between the private sector and the public sector have become blurred. The thinking behind this approach is that, whilst the public sector may commission work to be undertaken on its behalf, it by no means follows that the work needs to be delivered by the public sector. It is often asserted that the private sector is in a better position to deliver public services more efficiently.

It is worth unpicking this host of assumptions to look at the constituent parts. To begin with, is the private sector more efficient than the public sector? Efficiency and productivity are elusive concepts in the context of the public sector. By definition, productivity is the relationship between inputs and outputs. However, many of the outputs in the public sector are quite elusive.

For example, take the military, how do we measure the output of a battalion of soldiers in peacetime? Or to take the NHS, how do we measure whether or not it has delivered a healthy population? It is normally the case that, where outputs cannot be defined other than conceptually, we either resort to surrogate measurements (for example, grades attained as a surrogate for an educated population) or we revert to measuring inputs as a surrogate for outputs (for example, the numbers of nurses employed as a surrogate for a healthy society). 

Efficiency is the obverse of productivity. As productivity rises, ipso facto, so will efficiency. However, this is a major flaw in our way of thinking. If we can only measure public sector productivity in input terms, then we are tempted by the view that a more efficient public service is one that costs less. This is the conceptual under-pinning of austerity - ever more productivity savings to ensure less money is spent on public services - which is now starting to get us into a mess.

In a short statement, wrapped in econo-speak, and largely unnoticed in the November 2017 budget statement, the Chancellor announced that the OBR had revised the trend growth path of the economy downwards by 0.5%. This went unchallenged by the Opposition. What does it mean? In plain English, it means that our ability to grow the economy, to increase our prosperity, is lower now than it was in 2007. We needn't look too far to see why that might be the case. Funding restrictions in the NHS are leading to a less healthy workforce. Funding restrictions to transport budgets increase the time it takes to get to work and to undertake our work, if it includes travel. Funding restrictions are delivering a less well educated workforce. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that our reduced productivity has something to do with austerity.

The outsourcing of public services to the private sector has not escaped this trend. We now have a situation where the economy is more stagnant than it has been for a decade, public services have been awarded to the least cost supplier, and the suppliers of public services are now starting to run out of money. The collapse of Carillion, rather than being an isolated event, might be better seen as a portent of things to come. To date, many private sector providers of public services, mainly in the care sector, have been forced to cease supplying the public sector owing to budgetary pressures. We get a different picture if we consider Carillion as the largest to happen to date. The recent profits warning issued by Capita doesn't inspire us with a great deal of confidence.

Just under half of central government services are now outsourced to the private sector. The possibility of a good portion of that going out of business in the next few years is a scenario that we cannot afford not to consider. What will happen if the structure of outsourced services collapses? What will happen if the PFI funded infrastructure bankrupts the companies financing it? How will we cope if the state retreats away from it's core areas?

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

© The European Futures Observatory 2018 

The Future And The Multiverse

One of the more outlandish theories of modern science is that of the multiverse. This is the idea that we only inhabit one of an infinite number of universes, and that, somewhere, right now, there is an alternative version of us that hasn't made all of the mistakes that we have made in our lives. As I said, this is an outlandish idea, one more appropriate, possibly, of the realms of science fiction rather than science fact. And yet, over my lifetime I have seen a good deal of science fiction become science fact, so perhaps we ought not to dismiss the idea just yet.

The concept of the multiverse derives from the possibility of alternative futures. In the physical realm, it derives from events that didn't happen. For example, what would the world be like if the asteroid that collided with earth to render the dinosaurs extinct, actually missed the planet? However, intriguing as these might be, my attention is drawn more to the human realm, thinking abut what might have been, but didn't happen. The road not taken, if you like. There is now a well established realm of fiction - alternative histories - that deals with such cases. For example, 'The Man In The High Castle' deals with a world in which the Axis won the Second World War, or 'Bring The Jubilee' in which the Confederates won the American Civil War. My interest arises from the possibility of alternative pasts being the corollary to alternative futures.

We are accustomed to the idea of alternative futures, that the choices we make today determine the options we have in the future. But what if we could explore the choices we didn't select? Explore them in the sense of living them rather than as an academic exercise? In order to do this, we would need to tap into the multiverse. Obviously, at present, we are unable to do this. But if it is possible in theory, then it is a matter of time before it is possible to actually do so.

There are some scientists who claim to have evidence of the presence of the multiverse - the cold spots at the edge of the observed universe. The veracity of this evidence is beyond my knowledge, but assuming it to be true, the question becomes one of how to access the multiverse. It would appear that the best hope currently is through the quantum. Apparently, the quantum permits a state of being and non-being, and all stages in between, simultaneously. These ideas are currently being used to develop a quantum computer, but the idea has resonance elsewhere. If we can be and not be at the same time, the geographical space in which this happens must, by definition, be the multiverse.

This type of thinking is quite useful in developing scenarios. It is not revolutionary to think in terms of alternative futures. One way to express those alternative futures is through the construction of timelines that map events as they radiate out from the present. The timelines are a useful device to manage the future because they provide a roadmap of where we are heading, and, if we are not happy with the course of events, we can take remedial action to switch onto a timeline more to our liking.

I do feel that the development of timelines is a useful research agenda. We have started to develop some around the issue of Brexit, which we may unveil in later posts. What is most exciting, for me, is that, if we get it right, then we have taken a step towards Hari Seldon's 'psychohistory'. It is paradoxical that these ideas themselves originate in science fiction.

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

© The European Futures Observatory 2018