1. ‘Playing The Targets Game’
© ESRC Public Services Programme and Christopher Hood
‘Playing The Targets Game’
ESRC Public Services Programme and Oxford Executive Government Group Lunchtime Workshop Series Hilary Term 2005

2. Playing the Targets Game – Workshop 1
Introducing the workshop theme (Christopher Hood)
The case of targets for e-government (Helen Margetts)

3. Introductory Comments: Background and Aims of the Workshop
Targets and Control Systems
Targets, Observation and Measurement
Targets in Historical and Political Context

4. TARGETS AND CONTROL SYSTEMS
Simple or direct control
Homeostatic-type
Indirect control
Opposed-maximizers type

5. TARGETS AND CONTROL SYSTEMS
Simple or direct control
Homeostatic-type
Indirect control
Opposed-maximizers type

6. If targets are part of a system of control, we need to be able to identify and assess the fundamental components of any control system (usually difficult and contested in complex systems)
‘Director’
The mechanism by which goals are set
‘Detector’
The mechanism by which actual vs desired states of the system are observed
‘Effector’
The mechanism by which deviations from desired states of the system are corrected

7. Targets and Measures
Non-quantitative
Quantitative
‘Diagnostics’ 1 2 3 4
Targets

8. Targets and Measures
Non-quantitative
Quantitative
‘Diagnostics’ 1 2 3 4
Targets
(It can be tricky to assess the independent effects of targets vs. quantification (e.g. school league-tables vs. school attainment targets))

9. Targets and observational or measurement issues include
Synecdoche – taking a part for a whole
Observer paradoxes – observation changes behaviour
Both of which bring in issues of gaming and strategic behaviour (e.g. knights-to-knaves issues and redistribution of effort)

10. Targets in historical and political context
There are historical precedents for use of targets in public policy
at middle levels of government (e.g. case clear-up targets)
in other political systems (esp but not only the Soviet model)
in the UK (e.g. World War II aircraft-building targets, housing targets in the 1950s)
2) But the recent past in the UK seems to have been historically unusual in
the spread of high-level targets across government (over 300 PSA targets in 1998, down to 130 or so now, plus others)
The degree of prime ministerial involvement (monthly meetings over 20 key targets, outside the Iraq war period)
The invention of the PMDU under Michael Barber as a key new central agency in the Blair second term