If the Local Government Association (LGA) didn’t exist, we would have to invent it. The question is, would we invent what is there today?
The problem is not so much whether the association is currently performing well: readers can make their own judgment from the recent peer review. Instead, we need to ask whether the whole model of policy making upon which the LGA and other trade associations are based is becoming obsolete.
Three big trends are emerging to disrupt the world of policymaking. The first is collective intelligence, the idea that policy should arise from hundreds of people working together to contribute ideas in real time.
The second is the blurring of the line between policy and practice, which suggests that thinking and doing must become completely integrated, with frontline practice constantly feeding back into overall regulatory frameworks.
The final trend is radical openness, which implies that organisations must do a lot more of their thinking in public, sharing and discussing their evidence bases and ideas online and by using forums like twitter.
As the networked society tightens its grip on the structures of government, policy making and influencing is likely to be a bit less about the backroom chats favoured by lobbyists and civil servants, and a lot more about the co-creation of policy, using the process of developing ideas as a way to win hearts and mind in order to have them implemented.
The internet has already disrupted industries ranging from music to minicabs. No one has got digital policy making right yet, still less digital democracy, but it is only a matter of time, and these developments all imply smaller, more agile and more innovative types of organisation.
The test for the LGA’s response to its peer review is not whether it can show that it is fit for purpose today, but how it is preparing for a very different world.
Simon Parker is director of think-tank the New Local Government Network
