The concept of public transformation is increasingly part of the lexicon of political and economic debate in Northern Ireland.
Although welcome, this discourse remains confined to public sector transformation as opposed to a wider socio-economic transformation agenda.
It was just over three years ago that, when working in the UK Parliament, I drafted a paper to the NIO and UK Treasury to make the case for transformation funding for NI.
This pitch was based on the erosive trajectory in NI public services, underlying finances and an associated inability for the Executive to carve out fiscal space to invest in improving future outcomes.
My perception at the time was that specific, future orientated funding was needed to create the requisite fiscal room to ‘invest to save’ – something that was otherwise virtually impossible in an exceptionally tight fiscal context.
During subsequent restoration talks at Hillsborough Castle, the provision of the £235 million Transformation Fund was agreed with Treasury, enabling a renewed focus on public sector reform.
The transformation projects that have since materialised within the NI Civil Service provide a source of optimism and a potential basis for a more widespread culture of transformation.
However, this is just one piece of the picture. To truly transform Northern Ireland into a highly skilled, productive, sustainable and equitable region we must acknowledge a wider conceptual framework for economic transformation.
Such a framework should comprise of four key pillars, built upon an underlying foundation.
The first pillar I perceive is ‘Public Sector Reform’, incorporating the reconfiguration of services, improved productivity, a renewed focus on prevention and early intervention, outcome and zero-based budgeting, an outcome-based PfG and a revised fiscal framework.
This pillar should also include an Enhanced Transformation Fund incorporating matched funding from Treasury to scale up or replicate successful projects, with the effect of altering incentive structures facing the Executive and contributing to a wider transformation ethos.
This pillar then both contributes to and draws from the second pillar, which is ‘Human Capital: Skills and Productivity’, focusing on economic participation, AI, digital and future skills literacy, FE and apprenticeships, lifelong learning and the requisite reform of HE funding to fuel future skills development.
‘Private Sector Growth’ is a third pillar, which is linked to pillar two in a two-directional manner, both contributing to and drawing upon human capital and skills, while driving exports, indigenous and FDI growth, innovation, R&D, AI and digital adoption, subject to cost effectiveness and the ease of doing business.
The fourth pillar currently stands alone yet is a fundamental and crucial component of successful transformation, which I suggest might be entitled ‘Future Foresight’.
This perspective is largely absent in Northern Ireland policy discourse, and is consequently among the areas that the UU Strategic Policy Unit is focused.
This includes factors such as demographic and climate change (including potential implications for both private and business insurance coverage), costs of policy inaction, fiscal buffers, incentive structures, utilisation of behavioural insights and strategic capital spending, including an Investment Strategy for NI.
It is also important to acknowledge the foundation that the pillars rely upon, which I have entitled ‘Trust and Stability’, incorporating political stability, institutional and fiscal credibility and transparent decision-making to engender public trust, including across electoral cycles.
Driving any meaningful and sustained change will require a strong and enduring foundation.
All four pillars, their inter-relatedness and the requisite underlying foundation ought to be considered from a macro perspective to acknowledge cross-cutting policy linkages and drive less piecemeal, siloed and countervailing policy-making here.
One way we might approach this is by having a Transformation Advisory Group with representation across key pillars.
Resource should also be allocated in a much more strategic manner to enable this wider transformation – essentially a high-level ‘invest to save’ approach to expenditure. This is challenging, but also doubly required, given the current fiscal context.
It is for this reason that I believe we need to be much more focused on capital expenditure, and how we might best deploy it as a catalyst for both growth and change.
We arguably should be questioning whether NI’s capital funding allocations are aligned with the region’s relative need, aside from the current focus on resource related relative-need.
In this context, there is a crucial impediment with regards to Northern Ireland’s comparative inability to access key capital funding, including that of the National Wealth Fund.
The terms of this fund are incompatible with the Executive’s current capacity to borrow and the relative size of our private sector – minimum private drawdown has recently increased from £5m to £25m, further exacerbating this asymmetry in opportunity for NI relative to other UK regions.
These are big picture issues and conversations required in NI, beyond those that pertain to any individual minister or department and we need a governance structure to both facilitate and drive such dialogue.
Jodie Carson is a professor of strategic policy in practice at Ulster University (@Matt Mackey)
It is my hope that seeking to create an overarching framework to transform this region marks a first step in this regard, and that we can navigate the transition to a more strategic approach to policy-making in Northern Ireland, for the greater good of this region.
- Jodie Carson is a professor of strategic policy in practice at Ulster University