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Picture credit: sopranos.com
Are there lessons from the world of organised crime for the world of disorganised government?
Sometimes the juxtaposition of two items in a news broadcast catapults my mind towards unusual targets. A report of yet another Government IT fiasco preceded a headline about mafia arrests in Sicily. My mind made the connection between the two stories: joined-up management.
The first element of my unusual nexus concerns the story of how the UK government has failed, once again, to effectively join up shared services, by massively overspending and underachieving. Clearly the ambition of joined-up management in government remains unfulfilled while the legendary hard-working taxpayers foot the bill for yet another cock-up; which is not news to anyone who has seen similar failures persistently emerging over the past decade.
The second element relates to the story of Operation Perseus by the Italian Caribinieri, targeting the strategic reorganisation programme of the Sicilian Mafia, previously hobbled by legal action against key management structures. The apparently successful police operation was supported by an effective information network that allowed the Caribinieri to achieve realtime intelligence about mafia activity and communications.
Living system
I applaud the police actions taken in Sicily but I also recognise the underlying desire of the crooks to achieve strategic management. I do not condone the mafia, or any other criminal activity for that matter; but having been damaged by earlier (2006) police activity, the Sicilian Mafia clearly illustrates the properties of a living system: emergent behaviour and self-organisation. Such is the natural tendency of all human activity, regardless of purpose or legal propensity. Despite setbacks, a viable system will self-heal and sustain.
They are not known as Disorganised Crime
The mafia is one of the better-known criminal groups that we sometimes refer to collectively as “Organised Crime.” This nomenclature seems well attributed, given that the crooks appear to manage their clandestine business on a trans-national basis, without the benefit of government assistance to ease their passage – unlike many of our ailing legitimate organisations, who are now unashamedly queuing up for public handouts.
Of course, behind the scenes, the underworld may suffer the same (or worse) failures of management; but the consequences are rarely subject to open scrutiny, unlike failures in the management of public services.
Although there are interesting parallels to be drawn between the mafia’s legendary vow of silence (omerta) and the UK government’s equally strongly held paranoia about avoiding accountability for failure.
Forget the wise men, try the Wiseguys?
Given the Government’s renowned dependence on big-ticket Consultancies to design and support change programmes, we really should not be seeing the apparently never-ending pattern of failure in public sector technology-driven change. Everything should be tickety-boo if they could cut the mustard. But clearly they need some help.
If the legitmate business routes don’t work, I suggest that Gordon Brown should mandate an urgent order for a few thousand copies of this genuinely useful book:
Tony Soprano is a fictional character but in the real world we also have the much larger fiction of public sector competence in technology-led projects. We can’t afford to keep paying for the cock-ups. A change has gotta come soon, or as Tony Soprano might say: There will be consequences.
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