WRITTEN ON September 28th, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

The Austrian perm sec for agriculture, Werner Wutscher, makes a series of good points. We have to take a holistic approach, listening to citizens and stakesholders but aware of the limitations of the process and sceptical about how representative the people we hear from really are. The public are well-informed, and grasped 9-11 faster than the US President. If you’re researching energy saving, talk to plumbers and roofers – these voices are more authhentic for the public than officials. But if you get 89 replies to a consultation they could still come from a couple of NGOs. Given evidence of insecurity and loss of trust, he calls for a leaner and more open-minded culture. (As somenoe who once tried to research attitudes to e-government and outsourcing among Austrian civil servants I do say a hearty Amen to that).

This speaks to the “critical friends/love your enemies” agenda which I’ve started calling “integrative complexity” because of that marvellous news story about George Bush 2. I hope I get to meet Werner, but the good ones always rush off.

The IT/technology agenda lurks everywhere here, implicit in much of what is presented and occasionally busting out as a subject in its own right.

Meanwhile, conveying dry humour via an interpreter, director of regulation in the Russian economic development Ministry Andrei Sharov tells us 14% of Russians are satisfied with public services. He calls them the optimists. Imagine a Russian village, he says, where the only resources are land and closed minds and it takes three years to do anything and registration processes are corrupt. Take that through ISO9001.

Mr Sharov is from Krasnoyarsk, I wonder if he deals with the energy industry. He must have some war stories. But he’s pretty resolute, speaking frankly about tackling corruption and taking other government departments to court when they’re unwilling to play ball. He’ll know they’ve succeeded when he and other senior public servants get decent public services without having to make special phone calls.

Yesterday we heard from Finnish Finance Minister Ulla-Maj Wideroos. She’s resolutely focussed on citizens and trust, and related the day’s breaking news about Finland being the most competitive EU economy to trust and good governance. It’s by co-operating that we develop trust, she says. As far as I’m concerned, the Finns can preside over the EU as long s they want, perhaps alternating with the Swedes. Alright, and the Dutch.

This whole thing will be written up by three academic rapporteurs, Geert Bouckaert, Chris Pollott and Elke Loeffler the UK-based German chief executive of Governance International

(all this is E&OE…not written up to NUJ standards. I don’t do shorthand, and sometimes think I only hear what I want to)