The further transformation of Higher Education?

US newspaper The New York Times has announced plans to provide distance education and higher education course content. In the case of its distance education initiative, The Times will be providing technology and marketing for a range of high quality non-credit courses taught by college and university professors. Whilst tuition rates will be set by the colleges and universities, in some cases with in-state and out-of-state rates, funds from tuition revenue will be split (with the precise formula varying) between the institutions and The Times. A number of higher education institutions, including New York, Northern Kentucky and Stanford Universities are already committed to using the new technologies, and several others are in negotiations to start doing so. Given that some of the online courses will make use of The Times’ content, the newspaper’s enterprises could help some colleges to establish or expand distance education provision whilst reducing academic reliance on printed texts. Academics at institutions that subscribe to The Times’ service will be able to use such packages alongside their own content to develop customised course Web pages.

I wonder what the quality of the learning environment will be?

Can the new Rudd government genuinely learn from the Blair years - or will it duplicate the same mistakes?

It is surprising how easily governments and their agencies destroy relational capital. In our research we have come to understand relational capital as the glue the holds all the other forms of capital together. So, for example, as Simon Caulkin points out, the UK Treasury has 'singled out five 'levers' of productivity - competition, innovation, enterprise, investment and skills - and subjected each to major programmes of reform'. No doubt their prime focus is on economic and just perhaps, social capital. Despite the Stern report, natural capital still takes a back seat! For the treasury 'best practice' is the glue but it does not work!

The concepts of 'productivity, and 'best practice' are both problematic. As Caulkin outlines, 'productivity...is not primarily about inputs but the messy, complex, human process of turning them into usable outputs - i.e, management [I would say managing...as an active process], not economics'. Hence the need for capability in systemic praxis - practice which builds, sustains and facilitates relational capital through social learning.

Caulkin bases his article on Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) 'which suggests that [UK] ministers' views of management are naive. Broadly, the government thinks that improving company performance is about supply-side economics and best practice'. Best practice is a misnomer because practice that is best can only ever be contextual - so it has to be reinvented all of the time as contexts change. Which is not to say that we cannot learn from what others do - but then it becomes best praxis - taking the thinking and applying it to your own context!

Simon Caulkin's diagnosis: the real British disease - call it management dyslexia

On Sunday November 25 2007, Simon Caulkin in the Observer wrote:

'The real British disease is the unerring talent for putting together entities that are less than the sum of their parts. The comical inability to think in systems terms - call it management dyslexia - was on dazzling display last week, all over the front and back pages.' Read on!

Public - private partnerships. Are they systemically desirable?

My experience of PPP's in the Blair years in Britain make me highly suspicious of PPPs. George Monbiot captures many of my concerns. What I am keen to understand is whether they are systemically desirable, or not, and what purpose could legitimately be assigned to them from the perspective of good governance? It is not easy to discern the answers to these questions. My understanding from the British situation was that they were a convenient means to do business with the private sector as well as being a device to keep debt out of the calculations that determine credit ratings for a country or state (i.e., Moodys!).

I am thus interested to see that there is significant dissent with the Victorian Labor Party following a push by the new premier to use PPPs to build new schools as well as the new desalination plant and associated pipeline. It is easy to see this policy shift as 'copy cat' tactics but are those responsible for pushing them the same people as pushed them when Blair was in power? What learning has occurred with whom about their effectiveness in Britain? I hope the growing dissent in Victoria will allow these questions to be explored and thus bring greater transparency to the role of PPPs.

Victoria's green report card in the red

In Victoria it is obvious to even the casual observer that the 'environment' has taken backstage to economic development in the recent switch of Premiers and the subsequent Ministerial and Ministry reshuffle. This is apparent in the new ministerial arrangements for water. Tim Holding, one of the new Brumby 'kitchen cabinet', is now responsible rather than the Environment Minister as was the case before. Insiders point to how decisions are now made - as with the scrapping of environmental flows on the Yarra, which some sources suggest was a decision handed to Gavin Jennings.

An Envirowatch report released yesterday outlines where the government is keeping its environmental promises (10%), on target to keeping them (40%), at risk (46%) and broken (4%). What is missing from the report is the recent decision taken by Premier Brumby to reverse ALP policy and release GMO canola. I anticipate on-going agitation to change this decision.

'Like Latin, Ricardian economics is dead'

All explanations arise in social relations - as Sir Geoffrey Vickers argued they give rise to our standards of fact and value and our ‘relationship maintaining or breaking’. Moreover all explanations arise this way but some are conserved over longer time frames than others. Explanations also ‘enter our bloodstream’ as we live our lives – throughout our biological and social development. Maynard Keynes’ oft quoted remark that in his experience those who claimed to be practical men (sic) were usually victims of some theory 30 years out of date is a variation on this point.

Klaus Krippendorff also points out how oppressive certain theories, or more precisely 'theorizing', can be. In this light Martin Fell has written an insightful article pointing out how the conservation of certain economic theories, in this case the theory of comparative advantage explicated by David Ricardo in 1817, is part of 'the terminal disease suffered by economists'! See this image.

Systemic Environmental Decision Making - the need for praxis

The current meeting in Bali to plan beyond the Kyoto agreement, the new directions for Australian policy following election of the Rudd Labor Government and the needs in the UK to ensure that Government commitments to 'sustainability' are honoured, all draw attention to the need for new forms of praxis for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Praxis is theory informed action and is as relevant, or more relevant, than many of the claims for evidence-based practice. At the Open University our course on 'Environmental Decision making: a systems approach' has a focus on praxis which is proving popular. This is one of the core courses in the Masters in Environmental Decision Making.

Policy needs praxis, or perhaps more importantly a praxiology - an understanding of effective action. Effecting action on the back of good policy is where systems-based practice approaches can help. In a climate-change world systemic environmental decision making praxis is needed to engage with and 'improve' complex situations characterised by uncertainty, connectedness and, often, conflict and multiple perspectives. In the world as we now understand it any approach to dealing with wicked problems, or managing 'messes' or effecting 'joined up' or 'whole of government' actions necessarily has to take the environment into account.

As the images show the course has four set books (one for each block of the course) supported by a Techniques book as well as Readings for each block. The course is presented over 23 weeks twice a year. In the coming presentation 123 students are registered. Some of the course materials, which also includes a DVD can be purchased directly from the Open University.

Conversations of the journey

are rewarding when the travelling is in convivial circumstances - in this case a very uncrowded suburban train in Auckland and the venue created by the Australia - New Zealand Systems Society (ANZSYS) conference. It is even more convivial when one is among those who appreciate, and contribute to common concerns and who share similar intellectual lineages. The special case is when the conversation triggers mutual enthusiasm as it did with my (now) colleagues here!! (My thanks to Jack M for the photo).

The best 'gravy train' in town?

The National Programme for IT (NPfIT), Connecting for Health (CfH) must be one of the best ‘gravy trains’ in town?

Climate change in Australia!

In my blogs I made a decision to avoid the recent election campaign - I was engaged right up till the actual start of the official campaign but after that I found my quality of life to be severely undermined if I listened or read too much. There was little to fire the imagination. I realised my own thinking was well outside that of mainstream Australians when, after leaving a Greens event in Melbourne addressed by Bob Brown, I felt his policies were not radical enough! This experience in itself triggers some reflections - is it that Europe is so different or is it merely that the discourse has been so different there for so long I have come to believe it is very different? Of course we started developing Open University course in the 1990s that took climate change seriously and the EU and UK government's attempts at institutionalising sustainability are much better developed than here. For example, last week I attended a meeting hosted jointly by the University of Melbourne and the Ambassadors of Latin American countries. The aim was to talk about and foster collaboration with Australia, the themes for the day being mining, agriculture and foreign relations. What particularly struck me about the day was how much of the discourse was in a 'business as usual' mode even though climate change was mentioned in passing.

The election of a Rudd government is to be welcomed. It is indeed climate change of another form. Climate change marchers (see photo), of whom I was one, now have government with whom they can hopefully be in step!

Of course I have a number of aspirations as well as fears like most others. I sincerely hope that the new government will not take too much from the Blair years - something they have already done in adopting the so-called 'education revolution' and choosing to populate it with new computers. As we know from UK experience computers per se do not enhance learning! At the moment I am toying with offering my agenda for action if for no other reason than all democracies need new insights and a healthy 'critical' community if they are to thrive.

On this point Clive Hamilton offers a well argued analysis of the implications of a Rudd victory for Australia's re-engagement with the international community on the matter of climate change.

The need for action is urgent. I noted on a recent visit to the magnificent Mountain Ash forests in the Yarra Ranges National Park that these trees looked stressed. If they are then this does not bode well.

The systemic impacts of data centralisation along with command and control thinking!

This Observer article makes a powerful case - worthy of citing here in full:

"Ministers will quickly lose their shame over the missing 25 million files and continue to stockpile our most personal secrets. There's no time to crow over the government's loss of 25 million people's details; no time to rejoice at the obvious mortification of Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, his sidekick, Andy Burnham, Jacqui Smith and Harriet Harman. These people will not be deterred by the calamity of last week. They are shameless. In a month or two they will bounce back. The ID card scheme will be relaunched and Jacqui Smith will continue with her plans to demand 53 pieces of information from people before they travel abroad. The Children's Index, the Children's Assessment Framework, the National Health database, the ever-expanding police DNA database will all continue to scoop up information. Why? Because the control of the masses is coded in the deepest part of Labour's being.

So let me just say it now: the politicians we saw ranged before us on the front bench last Tuesday, like defendants in a mass trial, are dangerous, misguided and incompetent; and they are still in a position to cause havoc. Under a plan known by the reassuringly dull title of Transformational Government, a huge process of centralisation has taken place, creating countless opportunities for security breaches, as well as abuse by the state. At the time, the government defined it as 'transforming public services as citizens receive them and demonstrating how technology can improve the corporate services of government so more resources can be released to deliver "front line" services'. Anyone emerging from this phrase with a clear meaning in their mind deserves an award, but it has resulted in the demonstration of an almost mathematical truth. The larger the database and the more people who have access to it, the greater the lack of security.

Professor Ross Anderson, the leading British expert on this kind of engineering, believes it is impossible to go for scale, security and functionality without one suffering. . . Some 300,000 people will have access to the NHS database. There are already stories about the records of a well-known patient being viewed for entertainment by 50 hospital staff in the North East. 'Imagine a doctor or professor leaving a laptop on a plane that includes the entire nation's health records,' said Anderson. 'It's not impossible.' Indeed, at the last count there had been 14 lapses in major government IT projects in the last two years. It's not just about patient privacy or the outrageous decision by Whitehall to override the need to gain people's consent before their records were uploaded; a failure of the internet or large-scale power cuts could leave hospitals without access to x-rays or medical records. . . Each of us should understand that personal information is exactly that - personal - and that the government has only limited rights to demand and retain it. The scale of its operations and the innate weakness of the systems is a very grave concern to us all. What is needed - and here I hope someone is listening - is a mass movement on the lines of the Countryside Alliance, which goes across all parties and absorbs the skills and expertise of countless activists. Now is the moment to create a movement in defence of our privacy, security and freedom."

An accident waiting to happen - the systemic failure of centralised record systems

The announcement yesterday by the UK Chancellor of the loss of two computer discs containing the personal details of 25 million people is a disaster in and of itself but it also draws fresh attention to the on-going saga associated with the UK's Connecting for Health IT project. Those who have read some of my earlier postings on NPfIT, as it is known, will appreciate that I have been part of a group of 23 academics calling for an independent review of the multi-billion pound project. Despite a strong case for such a review the government has dug its heels in. Perhaps this event will lead to a reappraisal?

As one commentator has said: ". . . It is beyond farce, past comprehension, criminally irresponsible and beneath contempt. All those lectures from government and authorities about keeping our personal data safe; every statement ever made about the security of the proposed NHS database of everybody's personal medical records; each claim that the Children's Database containing all their personal details will somehow make our kids safer; and of course each and every promise about the safety of the national identity register - exposed as quite, quite worthless. . . "

Some other recent developments include:

'Doctors' support for the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has declined sharply in the past three years, the latest survey from medical research company Medix has revealed.' ........BUT ....'Angela Eagle, exchequer secretary to the Treasury, told parliament last month that the NPfIT was a success. "Without the programme, the NHS could no longer function, and it is already providing essential services and significant benefits to tens of thousands of clinicians and millions of patients. It is therefore a success story that ought to be acknowledged"'

The government has rejected calls by the Commons Health Select Committee for NHS Connecting for Health to hand over greater contractual power to trusts and strategic health authorities as part of the NPfIT local ownership programme.

The Department of Health's response to the Health Committee report on the Electronic Patient Record rejects the committee's recommendation that sealed-envelope data should be kept out of the secondary uses service (SUS). Sealed-envelope data is the stuff you don't want shared, and SUS is the database that lets civil servants, medical researchers others access to masses of health data. 'Critics of the National Programme for IT have attacked a Government report as ‘simply untruthful’, after it backed security measures used in the controversial Secondary Uses Service.'

NHS IT bosses have launched a review of security surrounding the Summary Care Record amid fears it will be targeted by blackmailers and identity thieves.

More 'teething problems'

There was no squalor when sister ran the ward: ....'the Health Care's Commission report highlights is that the top-heavy hospital administration ostensibly in charge at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells were so pre-occupied with jumping through the hoops of centrally imposed targets as to be unaware of what was going on in their wards.

Former OU academic critiques moves towards nuclear power in his Quarterly Essay

In the most recent Quarterly Essay, entitled 'Reaction Time. Climate Change and the Nuclear Option', Ian Lowe describes how he arrived in the Technology Faculty at the Open University (OU) in 1971 as 'a believer in nuclear power' but whilst there his 'views were shaken by some colleagues who asked awkward questions about the economics and about waste management'. Ian's reflections are testimony to the ethos of the Technology Faculty which prided itself in developing a style of teaching in cutting edge courses which 'asked the awkward questions'.

Ian is now President of the Australian Conservation Foundation as well as being an Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology & Society at Griffith University. He has been an articulate and brave critic of the Howard Government in relation to a range of environmental issues. This essay continues that commitment. It is a powerful, systemic analysis which I commend to all who are concerned about how we respond to climate change and to securing our energy futures.

The questions that numbers reveal II

A colleague , Doug, in response to my earlier posting on this matter says:

'Just saw your blog post about the death rate in Iraq versus Washington DC. I've seen similar figures around the place, but what they all-but-actively conceal is that being a civilian in Iraq is much more dangerous than being a civilian in Washington. The comparison made is heavily-armed and -armoured troops in Iraq versus the entire population in Washington. The force protection measures the US takes to safeguard its troops work, in that they keep the death rate of the troops down, but at huge cost to the civilians. Take the recent Blackwater issue: their boss - rightly - claims a 100% success record in the job they are assigned (protecting diplomats). To do that job, they shoot first, and ask questions only if international outrage obliges them to later. It's appallingly tough on innocent civilians, and tough on the overall mission of the coalition forces in Iraq, but they are doing what they are organised to do. I think it links back to your other post about targets: they (and the regular US forces) are optimising to a single target measure that doesn't include a more systemic consideration of what the troops are there for.

(Though my personal view is that the work that needs to be done in Iraq isn't stuff that you can do with heavily-armed troops even if you could find squaddies who were selflessly devoted to a nation-building mission and unconcerned about their own personal safety.)'

I couldn't agree more. Thanks Doug for taking the time to make these important points.

'It takes more than Mr Targets to get results' - another Caulkin 'must read'

Lest anyone remains that thinks that targets work to effect results for which they were intended then read this excellent article by Simon Caulkin. To any systemist targets epitomise all that was wrong with the Blair years. As Simon points out:

'As someone said, carrots and sticks are useful for donkeys and if the object is direct and simple. Likewise targets. Of course, as Barber [Sir Michael Barber who set up and ran the Prime Minister's delivery Unit - PMDU - from 2001 to 2005 and was Blair's 'Mr Targets] writes, it is important to know what success is and devise measures to track progress towards it. But it's bad faith to try to motivate people with financial incentives then complain they are self-interested; and disingenuous to pretend that the unintended consequences of crude numerical targets are trivial.'

'Even Barber concedes that getting from 'adequate' to 'good', let alone 'great', can't be done by central fiat. It needs to enlist hearts and minds. It also requires the ability to look at and manage the system as a whole. Barber acknowledges the need for 'whole system reform' in passing, but only in passing, and gives no hint of the extent to which the blunt, soviet-tractor-style techniques of PMDU Mark 1 (targets, carrots and sticks) are incompatible with it.'

In his argument Caulkin makes the case, I believe, for 'delivery' based around systemic practices that acknowledge the complexity that has to be engaged with. Indirectly he makes the case for significant capacity building in systems thinking and practice skills. As he says:

'As an easy solution to a complex problem, this is what targets do. It's not that they are too ambitious or can't be made to work, at least temporarily; it's that optimising the parts is the enemy of the much greater returns that only system reform can deliver.'

To think and act differently - to appreciate systemic complexity and act purposefully to improve complex situations is one of the major needs of our times!

Mushrooming numbers of managers may actually be stifling UK enterprise…

In a very perceptive article Simon Caulkin, Management Editor of the Observer points out the litany of unintended consequences arising for the professionalising of management, as in MBAs, and the unquestioning adoption of flawed theories in the social realm. He argues that 'it can seem that the principal role of management these days is to make life a misery'.

In explicating his argument he draws on the work of Russ Ackoff:

'Russell Ackoff, the distinguished systems and management theorist, memorably described the self-set trap as “doing the wrong thing righter”. Most of our current problems, he maintains, are the result of managers and policy-makers trying ever harder to make something come right that they shouldn’t be doing in the first place. “The righter we do the wrong thing,” he notes, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.” The wrong thing that managers have been striving to do righter — and in support of which a whole industry has grown up to amplify the wrongness — is, not to put too fine a point on it, central planning: an amoral, dysfunctional (and dangerously self-reinforcing) command-and-control management model that would not have been out of place in the Soviet Union.'

He concludes:

'In every sense, today’s dismal discipline is not economics but management.'

I hope there are folk out there taking notice of Simon's insights!

Can you believe it?

I have been surprised that more has not been made of the British Conservative Party's new policy document: Blueprint for a Green Economy. Perhaps it has in the UK but in Oz it has mostly slipped below the radar - with a few exceptions! It is in many ways a radical document and although not yet adopted as Conservative Party policy it seems to move the debate, in some respects, light years ahead of where it is here in Oz. If only the current Oz election campaign involved discussion about these matters!! The description on the Conservative's home page says:

The Quality of Life Policy Group, chaired by John Gummer and vice-chaired by Zac Goldsmith, released their final report on Thursday September 13.

The Group have spent 18 months developing an agenda to make Britain a world leader on green growth by:
- Using markets to help create positive change
- Helping individuals change their behaviour
- Making industry use resources more efficiently

They have outlined a series of proposals to reduce pollution and improve the wider environment and quality of life.

Refreshingly the paper addresses a number of complex issues systemically. For example co-author John Gummer said:

"If we are to create a way of living that can sustain, then water, waste, transport and energy, as well as farming, food, fishing and the built environment, have to be thought of as a whole."

This can be interpreted as a need for investment in building systems practice capability. Systemic insights can be found elsewhere in the document:

'It is increasingly clear that the global economy must be retooled in order to ensure that it operates sustainably, within environmental limits. In this urgent task, it will be the world’s developed countries which lead the way. Over nearly three centuries we have grown ever richer but we have done so at the expense of the environment upon which our lives depend. We have therefore both the means and the obligation to repair the damage.'

'Yet, although Conservatives understand the vital role of markets, they recognise too that markets are mechanisms not gods. The market is crucial to our vision, but cannot deliver it alone. The strength of the market is its unique ability to meet economic needs. Its weakness is myopia. The market lacks the dimension of time. Unrestrained, it will catch till the last fish is landed, drill till there is no more oil, and pollute till the planet is destroyed. Its efficiency in creating material wealth is both its strength and its weakness.'

'We believe that growth and progress need to be redefined for a new century. ‘Growth’ should also encompass growth in the value and richness of society, of tolerance, diversity, and variety and of the strength and empowerment of family and community As a leading American economist, Herman Daly, has argued, economic growth is focused upon quantitative expansion and the notionally ‘limitless transformation of natural capital into man-made capital’. Sustainable development, by contrast, is about qualitative improvement, promoting increased economic activity only insofar as it does not exceed the capacity of the eco-system.'

'The social cost of material growth is becoming increasingly clear. Even as the global economy continues to consume beyond its ecological means, the long-assumed link between increased financial wealth and increased social wellbeing is showing signs of stress. Levels of income and consumption have soared over the last three decades in most developed countries. Yet consistently, the people of those same countries report no increase in their sense of contentment or wellbeing. In many cases they report a decline. It seems that in wealthy countries, a continued increase in economic growth, is not increasing wellbeing. '

'A measure of wellbeing that takes such environmental accounting into consideration needs to respect the four interdependent ‘securities’ of nature – energy security, water security, food security, and climate security. All overlap in complex ways. For example, if we put huge areas of fertile land over for production of biofuels to gain energy security or increase climate security, what will be the effects on food and water security? Failing to understand how these things mesh together ultimately damages us all.'

Not for one minute am I recommending the uncritical acceptance of all that is here. But as a report for a major political party in a western democracy I hope it has the effect of taking us collectively onto a new, much needed conversation and policy space.

For fresh insights turn to the Centre for Policy Development (CPD)

The Centre for Policy Development was set up to foster a diverse, cross-disciplinary community of thinkers who are interested in changing Australian policy for the better. CPD provides authors, public intellectuals and policy entrepreneurs who care about Australia’s long-term future space to grow and develop their ideas, and sets out to connect these ideas with a wider audience of concerned citizens, policy makers, and the media.

A recent paper by Geoff McAlpine addresses a number of key systemic issues in regard to how we understand and engage with 'the environment'.

The questions that numbers reveal?

Thanks to my friend Ric for the following.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of the U.S. involvement in Iraq , here's a sobering statistic:

There has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,112 deaths. That gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 persons for the same period.

That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capital than you are in Iraq .

Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington

Understandings and a sense of place - my visits to the Battye Library and Rottnest Island

Whilst in Perth I managed to squeeze in several hours in the Battye Library on the trail of my great-grandfather, Gus (Augustus Horatio Arthur!) Coleman who taught at primary schools in WA from 1900-1909. I also managed an overnight stay on Rottnest Island, 12 miles off the coast from Freemantle, which was the last school in WA at which Gus taught. He went home (to NSW) on Christmas leave in 1909 a broken man never to return to WA. In fact he died in 1913 aged just 42 leaving a widow and five children. Having heard stories of her time in WA from my grandmother, Rottnest had stayed with me - stories of Quokkas and aboriginal Australians (the history is quite shameful - it was in fact a prison for aboriginals for many years with about 365 deaths in custody!). I had imagined the stay on Rottnest to have been a significant part of my grandmother's life in WA but the records show that she and her family only lived there for a bit over a month at the end of 1909. By this time the prison and the boy's reform school had been closed and the island was already becoming the leisure and tourist destination it is today.

I did however locate the school in which Gus must have taught and the house in which the family would have lived. Although in a parlous state, in terms of funding, the archival material available enables those who are interested to recapture through research an understanding of the Europeanisation of this continent and thus to better appreciate our place in it. The photos are a selection from this journey into place [they include (i) the chapel/school where Gus taught; (ii) a triple terrace, one of which was the teacher's house; (iii) a Quokka and (iv) a view from Bathurst Point.]