Profits, performance measurement and management

Over on my personal blog, I have had two posts looking at profits (here and here). Here I just wanted to flag a specific point.

My problems with our current focus on profit fits within the concerns that I started to outline in my reforming Australia's public policy series: the combination of focus with systemic rigidities.

Profit is a good thing. No profits, the business goes down, the economy suffers. In any market system, there will be businesses that can't make enough money and will go the wall. That's part of the economic adjustment process. But what happens when a focus on short term profits starts building instabilities into the whole system?

My view is that we are at this point now.  

Lessons from the national school build program

The Australian National Audit Office's report into the operations of the National school build program makes for fascinating reading for someone like me interested in the details of management. While the report does not provide the type of smoking gun that the Australian opposition would have liked, it does provide an insight into the problems created by the Rudd Government policy approach and associated administrative structures and styles.

Although no-one so far has looked at the connections, this is in fact the second report into the operations of what are called National Partnership Agreements. The first came with the release by Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin at the end of August 2009 of a report reviewing the initial operations of the $672m Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program. This program became part of the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing and was intended to deliver 750 new houses by 2013 in Northern Territory remote indigenous communities. My then analysis of the report can be found here.

The ANOA report describes the overarching framework that is meant to guide Commonwealth-State arrangements in these terms:

Delivery of programs that span Commonwealth, state and territory
jurisdictions has been the subject of recent Council of Australian Government
(COAG) reforms. The reforms aimed to enhance public accountability for
service delivery by clarifying roles and responsibilities between levels of
government and improving collaboration. Rather than dictating how things
should be done, the new framework focuses on the achievement of mutually
agreed outputs and outcomes, providing the states and territories with
increased flexibility in the way they deliver services to the Australian people.

National Partnership Agreements are one element in this. These generally involve:

1. Negotiation between Commonwealth and States of a framework agreement setting out objectives and broad approaches.
2. Development of an agreed implementation plan setting what will be done and how, along with reporting arrangements on progress.
3. Both agreements and implementation plans contain provisions for variation.  

On the surface, this all seems very sensible. However, problems can arise where:

1. The Commonwealth as funder actually dictates the detail of what is to be included in the partnership on a like-it or lump-it basis. The problem is compounded where terms dictated ignore regional diversity, with a one size fits all approach. The only thing that the states can do in these cases is to try to negotiate on points of detail.
2. The Commonwealth essentially dictates what must go into implementation plans. These may include, for example, requirements that require Commonwealth approval of particular and detailed expenditure plans before any action can commence. They may also include a plethora of requirements and sub-objectives.
3. The Commonwealth is inflexible in implementation.

Problems are compounded because all states and territories have their own rules and accountabilities regarding expenditure that must be complied with, including formal legal requirements. These National Partnerships often involve very large sums of money.  The central coordinating agencies in the states and territories are concerned not just with efficiency and probity issues, but also with the management of cash flows.

Very real problems can be created for things such as state budget processes when the timing and scale of payments from the Commonwealth is uncertain. Further, coordinating agencies are concerned about ancillary costs that can arise in implementation that are not covered and which can affect other parts of state budgets.

If we now look at the Northern Territory report into indigenous housing, we find that program delivery there suffered from, among other things, from a multiplicity of sometimes conflicting and unranked objectives with over-complicated decision structures including no less than six decision layers.

Turning to the school building program, the ANAO summarised some of its criticisms this way:

The program design and funding variation process, which is focussed at project/school and ties funding to individual projects within schools, has not allowed the states to manage BER at a program level. The complex and constantly amended funding variation process has not enabled states to readily transfer funds between schools in order to achieve the agreed outcomes. The variation process and adherence to a narrow definition of approved project is considered increased input control, which is at odds with the principles of the IGA (Inter Governmental Agreement) to focus on outcomes.

Without going into the full detail in the report, some of the problems that arose can be summarised this way:

1. The use of bands based on student numbers to determine project size created inequities between schools at the margin (a shift of a few pupils could have dramatic funding impacts), as well as an incentive to manipulate student numbers.
2. The way that funding was announced meant that was meant to be a maximum spend per school actually became a target spend.
3. The requirement that the Commonwealth approve spend on a school-by-school, project-by-project basis, together with over-complicated objectives and reporting requirements, increased administrative load and reduced flexibility. This was further complicated by a ruling that spend below maximum on particular school projects could not be transferred to other projects in the same jurisdiction but must be returned to the Commonwealth. School systems had no flexibility in adjusting spend between schools to achieve maximum value.
4. Conflict arose between the Commonwealth's approach and the centralised approaches to public education in the various states. This was complicated by Commonwealth rules that created tensions between principals and their state employers.
5. Budget confusions arose. In preparing costings, the Commonwealth Finance Department worked on the basis that spend would equal 90% of the maximum per school. This was interpreted by the Department as 90% of schools participating. Since the Department's aim was 100% participation, while the maximum spend had actually become target, it quickly became clear that spend would be greater than budget. This led to financial adjustments, including transfer of funds from social housing, to try to keep spend within aggregate budget approvals.
6. Given the size of the program, variations in Commonwealth payments created cash flow problems in the states. While these were resolved, it cannot have helped state budgeting.
7. In addition to difficulties associated with transfers of money between school projects, initial Commonwealth inflexibility created on-ground difficulties because of varying on-ground conditions. The intent was that all schools and areas should benefit from stimulus spend and in broadly the same time horizon. However, the actual impact of the downturn was quite variable across Australia, while there were also considerable variations in the available supply of skilled labour.
8. Not only were reporting requirements overly complicated, but the data provided inevitable contained so many variations and was based on so many assumptions as to be unusable in measuring progress. 

I said at the outset that the report was unlikely to provide the type of smoking gun desired by the opposition. Despite building delays of the type I forecast at the time, the report concludes that the program did broadly meet the stimulus objectives. Further, in criticising both the Department and other Commonwealth bodies involved, the ANOA explicitly recognised the size of the program and the difficulties involved. The analysis makes it clear that the Department did try within its limits to be flexible and responsive.

  To my mind, and putting aside the inevitable problems always associated with the delivery of such a huge program, the problems that arose were due to the combination of failures in the way the way the program was specified in combination with the broader systemic features such as inflexibility, over-complication, over-specification and over-control that mark the general Rudd Government approach to public policy.

You can see why some of us are so cautious about things such as the Health proposals. Regardless of the general in-principle arguments involved, there has to be a question mark over the likely effectiveness of the proposals in the absence of a change in the Commonwealth Government's approach to public policy and administration.

Puzzles with the Henry Tax Review

You can find the full Henry Report here. The Government's promotional web site here.

At the moment, we are dealing with two very different things. The first is the Henry review itself, the second with things that the Government has accepted, rejected or left up in the air.

With taxation matters, the devil always lies in the detail. You also have to look very carefully at the language involved.

I simply don't have a view on much of this at the moment. My assessment of the Resource Rent tax as proposed strikes me as a bit gimmicky with a complicated and still unknown pattern of winners and losers. Further, I am not sure that the proposed Commonwealth investment of 40% in new mining infrastructure makes a lot of policy sense.

I am sure that details will change as consultation proceeds. I don't think that the use of the Government bond rate as a benchmark from which to calculate "super profits" is in any way sustainable, ignoring risk among other things.

We can be sure that the various interest groups will pick over the entrails. I will read with interest.   

Australian house prices rise further

While there is anecdotal evidence that the boil may be coming off, the rise in house prices in Australia has been quite remarkable by world standards.

This graph from the Australian Bureau Statistics shows the weighted quarterly average increase in house prices in Australia's capital cities.

You can see how prices came of the boil during the global financial crisis, only to start ramping up again. Average weighted prices in the March quarter 2010 were up no less than 20% from 12 months before.

The biggest increase came in Melbourne (27.7%), followed by Sydney (21%).

According to ABS, both the Melbourne and Sydney increases in the most recent quarter came especially at the high end of the marketplace.

ABS does not give non-metropolitan figures. However, while not rigorous, the numbers I have seen suggest significant rises in regional Australia as well.   

Non-tradable's and the Australian CPI

At 0.9% for the March quarter, 2.9% for the full year, the Consumer Price Index figures released today by the Australian Bureau of statistics were a little higher than forecasters had expected.

One thing that interested me was the difference in price performance between the traded and non-traded sectors.

The tradable component where prices are largely set on the world market makes up around 42% of the CPI basket. Prices here rose by 0.2% in the March quarter, up 1.1% over the year. This compares to 1.4% in the year ending in the December quarter 2009.

By contrast, the non-tradable component (58% of the CPI basket) rose by 1.5% in the March quarter, up 4.2% over the year. The equivalent figure for the year ending in the December quarter 2009 was 2.6%.

As you might expect given Australia's relatively good growth, the price pressures are presently on the non-traded side. This can be expected to continue.

Leaving aside issues associated with the definition of core inflation, the CPI is now very close to the Australian Reserve Bank's target range of 2-3%, above it in some capital cities and in non-tradable goods.

The Bank may or may not raise interest rates at its next meeting, but the raw numbers do suggest that Australia is facing inflationary pressures. The real sleeper is the tradable side since world economic growth is accelerating.            

Hawke report into Australia's home insulation program

One of the problems that the Rudd Government has faced in Australia, one that I have commented on before, is simply that of delivery. In this context, the troubled home insulation program has finally been axed. 

The Australian has provided an on-line copy of the Hawke report into the program. The report is worth a browse for those interested in the practical processes involved in program delivery. 

Conundrums in the Australian economy

The release of the minutes of the Reserve Bank Board monetary policy meeting of 2 February 2010 contained no real surprises.

In terms of the economic outlook, the global economy was strengthening, if with some downside risks; underling Australian inflation was declining; while the medium term outlook for the Australian economy was good, the immediate picture was still mixed. In these circumstances, the Board felt under no immediate pressure to shift the official cash rate.

While the minutes are interesting and provide a useful summary of the current economic position, the 16 February speech by the Bank's Guy Debelle (Assistant Governor (Financial Markets)) is far more interesting.

In that speech Guy Debelle discusses the unfolding of the global financial crisis and the Bank's response. Certainly the Bank had a far easier time of it than its overseas counterparts simply because the crisis was less here. However, it also appears that the Bank's operating mechanisms - its experience, policies and processes - proved to be more robust. Crisis it may have been, but it could still be managed.

I found the description quite fascinating.

Looking to the longer term, Debelle made a clear distinction between the financial markets in the major Northern Hemisphere economies and those in Asia. To his mind, To his mind, there was still some distance to go before the effects of the asset bubble (my words) were fully unwound. This was likely to affect the US financial system outside the major banks. By contrast, Asian was expanding faster, while bank balance sheets were better there.

This brings me to the first conundrum in the Australian economy, China.

Reading Michael Pettis, I get the strong impression that Chinese banks are by no means as secure as Guy Debelle's analysis would suggest. The huge expansion in bank credit has been associated with something of an asset bubble, especially in real estate much loved by so many Chinese. The numbers I have seen quoted are staggering.

I just don't feel confident about China.

The second conundrum lies in the Australian data itself. Some economic data is good, some not. What does seem clear, but subject to China, is that a two stream economy is re-emerging again.

Management Perspectives - most popular posts 6

It is again a number of months since I looked at the most popular posts on this blog. Then the economics posts dominated because of the global downturn.

Looking at the last 100 visits, the most popular post by a considerable margin was Problems with computer lock-in, an economics/management post explaining what I meant by computer lock-in and its implications.

A way behind came two equal posts:

• The Importance of Demography and Demographic Change - update, a post from February 2007 now badly in need of updating.
• Common Management Problems Series 1 - managing up, always a reasonably popular post.

Then came three equal posts, again a bit behind:

• December quarter 08 - Australia's real net disposable income increases by 1%
• Australia's financial outlook February 09
• Rudd Government's problems with green policies

In all, a reasonably mixed bag combining economics, management and public policy.

Friday Economics and Management Review 12 Feb 09.

This post reviews some of the economics, management and professional issues that have interested me over the last week.

The announcement of the opening in Australia of UK law firm (here and here) interested me because of the sheer size of the raid (14 partners) on Australian national firm Clayton Utz. While I don't expect A&O's opening to have the same impact on the Australian marketplace for legal services as some of the breathless commentary would suggest (the story made the front page of Australia's Financial Review, for example, with supporting material later), it is still an interesting development.

I spoke of the troubles affecting Australian environment minister Garrett in Insulation, pressure cookers and Minister Garrett.

While the problems that have arisen in the national home insulation scheme are in fact an example of the type of systemic problems that I have been talking about in current public administration, I am more sympathetic to Minister Garrett than you might expect. The genesis of the trouble lay in the pressure cooker atmosphere of Canberra at the time the scheme was developed, decided and first rolled out, a time when people feared an economic Armageddon.

Just looking at the economic stimulus side of the package, this one pumped money into employment far more quickly than any of us (me included) expected. The very speed of take-up was central to later problems.

Unfortunately, one outcome is likely to be a reinforcement of concerns about risk as opposed to risk management. I still see this as a major impediment to improved management, especially in the fish-bowl world of the public sector.

This links to the post I wrote on Will proposed international bank regulations cost all Australians?.

Most business people are worried about the increasing burden of regulatory compliance. There are two different types of costs here. One are the transaction costs directly associated with compliance. Apart from costs to individual firms, the higher the proportion of national resources tied up in this, the lower the proportion available for directly productive activities. The net result is reduced growth. The second costs are those that flow from distortions to the market place and economic activity more generally.

My problem with the proposed international bank regulations lay in the possibility that they might increase interest rates, while actually increasing sector vulnerability, I accept that this was based on very simple, some may say simplistic, analysis. Still, it at least there is a basis there for further thought.

Monday in Problems with computer lock-in I looked at some of the effects of what I call computer lock-in, the way in which past investment in IT and all the systems based on It could adversely affect economic performance. This discussion was triggered by question on an earlier post by one of my old Commonwealth Public Service colleagues Winton Bates, formerly a senior official with the Australian Productivity Commission.

Winton suggested that I should look at some of the later material on institutional economics for another economic explanation of some of the things that I have been talking about. As I admitted to Winton, I am very out of touch here, but he has given me some leads to follow up to re-educate myself.

One of the points I made about IT and communications technology is the way they could facilitate cost shifting as compared to cost reduction. Your costs go down, but this is actually at the expense of someone else, often the customer. Measured by cash and opportunity costs for all, overall system costs may not fall at all and may even increase. 

In the commercial case, this type of cost shifting may yield immediate profits after taking into account any adjustment costs. However, the sustainability of the profit then depends upon customer and competitor response. Where customers make some gain, then they are more likely to accept the costs and frustrations involved.

A related problem is that one set of costs can be seen and measured, the other less so. This can be a significant public policy problem, for in cost shifting associated with the delivery of centralised services you have defined gains to the taxpayer on one side, sometimes hidden if unmeasured costs to taxpayers on the other. The issue is further complicated.

I became interested in the Bellingen Hospital case because I noticed a new Facebook page Tuesday this week. I have been interested for quite some time in the way that different social networking tools can be used and the dynamics associated with them. In this case, an un-official Save Bellingen Hospital Page was started Tuesday morning asking people to say why the Hospital should be saved. By the time I noticed it later that day,  it had already gathered over 200 fans.

To provide some background information, Bellingen is a small town on the New South Mid North coast with a population a bit under 3,000. Health authorities are considering closing certain service there requiring people to travel instead to the bigger Coffs Harbour hospital. This is a bit over half an hour away from Bellingen by road.

I know Bellingen quite well, was sympathetic and very interested in the comments. So on Thursday morning I wrote a sympathetic supporting story about it on my New England Australia regional blog, Bellingen organises to save hospital. By this morning, the Facebook page had 812 fans, and I followed up with a second story,  Bellingen Hospital, Facebook and the costs to the community, looking at some of the community cost issues.

These are the type of cost issues that are generally not measured. One side effect - and this is not unique to Australia -  is the way that service centralisation has in fact had a quite devastating on the economic and social life of many smaller communities.

    As I finish, the number of fans on the Save Bellingen Hospital Facebook Page has just reached 1,046.

Australian unemployment falls to 5.3% in January 10

Figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show a fall in the Australian seasonally adjusted rate of unemployment to 5.3% on a steady participation rate. Aggregate hours worked also increased slightly.

The numbers suggest a continued strengthening in the Australian economy. The Treasury November forecast of 6¾ peak unemployment that I mentioned yesterday in  Australia's financial outlook February 09 sure looks a long way away!

Postscript::

A number of commentators have suggested that aggregate hours worked have fallen, whereas I said they have increased. The reason lies in the difference between the trend numbers (just up) and the seasonally adjusted numbers (down).

Overall, commentators appear to be correct when they suggest that average hours worked had declined slightly (no of jobs worked, aggregate hours much the same).