Where I’m up to in my research

In my non-domestic, other life, I’m researching public accountability for the use of external consultants. That is, I want to know something about how public services use, justify and account for employment of consultants that are bought in from outside. They could be independent consultants, or people from a big consultancy company.

This research follows from my study 14 years ago of the use of consultants and the market for consultancy services in the NHS. Since the 1990s, consultancy services have boomed from £3.7 billion in 1998 to £8.7 billion in 2005 (MCA) and the UK market is the largest outside the US. In 2005-6, central government spent £1.8 billion on consulting (NAO). Yet there is little obvious explanation or public justification for this use. After the event, if something has gone wrong, then the newspapers publish how much was spent, how over budget a project is or what a new system can’t do that it should have been able to do. There may be a public enquiry (e.g. tax credits) and perhaps a government department will write some new guidelines, but it seems government ministers and managers will still be able to ignore those guidelines. At least, that is what the media seem to say, at for example the transcript of a File on 4 programme on management consultants in 2006. It’s a problem because if it cannot be justified, then more money will worthlessly.

However, I want to find out if at least some public sectors have managers who are able to account for their use of consultants.

So what I am doing is:

1. Reading up the literature on accountability and consultants to make sure that I know what is already known and discussed
2. Looking for managers in UK public services (e.g. councils, fire services, NHS) who are willing to share their experience of using and working with external consultants.

I don’t know what uses will emerge. There may be several findings:

1. Evidence that accountability does exist for such use of consultants, so there’s no story
2. Evidence in some form of accountability but not specifically for the use of consultants
3. No evidence of any sort of any accountability.

These findings could mean:

1. that my volunteer managers are a self picked bunch who want to prove that they’re good, and to justify their decision making
2. the lines of accountability don’t cater for use of consultants
3. there is some accountability but I just haven’t found it.

So there may be few lessons from all this effort and it’s a waste of time.

No - I remember: "Never ever give up". I'm writing this now because I'm half way through writing the literature review and finding it difficult, so on the basis that any writing is better than none, I'm telling you (family and friends) what I'm doing and where I'm up to, even if I'm not up to where I want to be. Yet.