The consulting industry is not in a good way. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has unveiled plans to end all non-essential government spending on external consultants, with the aim of halving the consultancy bill in years to come. Scrutiny of the value consultants bring continues to mount, with particular attention to their cost at a time of strained public finances.
But what has gone wrong? The most obvious answer is that the sector, in its current form, is not offering the value government wants. Rather than a seamless, end-to-end journey from designing a service through to executing it, consulting firms often parachute into organisations, provide advice and exit before implementation. Many of the solutions they recommend also lack grounding in practical reality, making them difficult to put into practice.
This has not gone unnoticed, with concerns mounting that some consultants have little knowledge of the problems they are being asked to help solve. Fundamentally, it seems that there is a lack of real-world expertise to advise on many of the areas they are consulting on. And yet, it remains true that expert advice and good counsel are critical to government work, as are many of the skills that consultants often bring with them, like project management, data analysis and problem-solving.
Moreover, governments recognise this – as evidenced by the creation of an in-house consultancy arm staffed by civil servants during the last parliament. But the consultancy unit was closed in January 2023, owing to difficulties in replicating the range of expertise offered by external consultants. Good expert advice, it seems, is hard to come by.
So where do we go from here? It’s clear there is a need for expertise and knowledge, particularly with governments facing a multitude of increasingly complex challenges – from rising health and care costs for ageing populations to the need for green solutions in the drive to net zero. And these challenges cannot be met without the contribution of the private sector, a fact the government also recognises. Just look at how the new National Wealth Fund aims to funnel public and private sector funding towards key projects and clean energy infrastructure, or how Labour’s plan for a new partnership in government business relations sees public and private sectors working together to tackle Labour’s five missions.
What is not working is the old model of providing counsel to government. Without the real-world operational experience of what it is to run a service, advice is often confined to the “theoretical”. Increasingly, this isn’t what governments are seeking any more – they want far-reaching operational support, seeking tangible results from firms offering both strategic advice and the ability to execute them. Consultants are too often hands off, helping policymakers define what they want to achieve, but without practical applicability, their ideas remain just that – ideas.
This is especially important given that public services are themselves on the brink of a revolution: the deployment of generative AI, already widespread in the UK public sector, is improving productivity and cutting bureaucracy. But here again, imagining AI as a panacea to all our woes lacks understanding of how things operate in the real world, and risks botching the implementation of a powerful solution.
Fundamentally, what cannot be replaced is the expertise and the insights of the people who know front-line operations, who have been proven to deliver time and again. It is these insights which must inform the government as it looks to better our public services, and therein lies an opportunity. That’s why it is time for a reinvention of the advisory world.
With the new government pledging to repair the UK’s public services, it will need the very best expertise that is on offer, but only if the advisory industry is itself able to adapt. A new kind of advisor is needed, then. Real-world knowledge of public services and how to execute them, brought together under one roof. Bringing in experienced advisors who not only offer expert advice but can execute the services they plan will mean that both vision and implementation remain aligned. A single provider, with a profound understanding of a project’s goals, context, user base and nuances, is best placed to realise its full potential, enabling effective decision-making and greater accountability, and setting the project up for success.
This consistent vision can only benefit the quality of the public services themselves and, ultimately, the citizens who use them. Huge PowerPoints for six-figure fees, explaining in various diagrams the solutions to all ills, just won’t cut it any more. It’s why the future belongs to a different type of advisor. One where real-world insights, gleaned from the experience of running services, matters above all else. Such an advisory firm might just be what government needs to usher in a new era of public services, delivered jointly in partnership between the public and private sectors.
That is why Serco has launched +impact. Founded earlier this year, +impact offers a new kind of advisor, drawing upon proven insights of service delivery and the hands-on experience of a global workforce of over 55,000 people, with a commitment to only advise where Serco has operational expertise.
Related
