OK, read it? So what do we have? On the face of it we have a Government Department that has gone quite barmy to the tune of £7m. By the time you get yourself down to marking out your desk with tape, and discussing the value of an idle banana, you'd have expected that they'd have secured the basic principles of risk management and control some time ago. Apparently not. But why is that?
Well we can't factor out the fact that large organisations have their politics. In amongst a system containing a load of people just trying to get the blinking job done and go home for their tea, you've also got a sizeable number of people at all levels trying to look after their own political or career interests. However what works for Peter does not always work for Paul, and here we have our first conflict of interest. Transparency and traceability within a system is generally considered a good thing, but it is not necessarily in everyone's best interest. In a highly politicised organisation there will be a significant number of people who will prefer to manage information on a "need to know basis"
The Government has been accused this week of not knowing what is going on, and whilst this is likely to be perfectly true, it should not come as new news to anyone, least of all the opposition parties. There are likely to be a lot of people within the system following the "knowledge is power" philosophy, and whilst it has gone on for decades, this is the inevitable consequence when things go wrong. It is virtually impossible to track anything back to its source. Blame is one thing, and we humans love a good blame, but from a root cause corrective action perspective it identifies an impossible position. We've got nothing to go on, and that is by design
So we can lean all we like, mark our desks out with tape, our fruit, whatever, and whilst this might create a smoke screen or a veneer of modernity you will always look a bit of a moose when something catastrophic and, frankly, fundamental happens. So the moral of the story? Well, it's don't run before you can walk. In quality terms the foundations have to be set, and if principles of things like quality control, record keeping, traceablity, auditing and, most importantly, risk management are not understood, we need to keep the tape firmly in the drawer. Good old quality management is not dead!
Back to basics boys and girls ...
