Fostering Allies

Hi Tathra and CBSM-List, could you please be so kind as to include me in the exchange? I will be working with "lower-level" bureaucrats and have been working in bureaucracy for a while myself.

Thanks a lot,
Angelika

Angelika Wilhelm-Rechmann

Hi Tatha,

'Not sure what part of the world you come from but I can assure you you're not alone in being frustrated by the bureaucrats...and many working outside the Public Service would see me as one of them. In Western Australia 'cost shifting' is now an 'art form' practiced by senior public servants in various departments as the means by which budgets are controlled. It works like this: Firstly, state departments identify their 'core priorities'. This is done by senior management and can be as narrow as the Ministerial Office allows. That in turn is set against a background of election commitments that can't be 'revised down' or retreated from after the election. Holding a Government to its pre-election promises may well fall to interest group lobbyists. Once the departmental priorities are set, resource requests that can be argued to fall outside them are either rejected out of hand or, if inherently sound, are then subjected to inter-departmental 'cost shifting' . This means that another government department's programs or policies are targeted as being more closely aligned with the resource-action request. Sometimes it works but more often it falls victim to ongoing 'negotiation' between program/project level managers in the affected departments. My own experience was, in 2000, to see my own school cycling development budget 'reassigned' to another area. We lost both our Bike-Ed training centres and a well attended school Vacation Bike-Ed program for 8 to 12 year olds . This contributed to the demise of the state wide Police Bike Ed program last year when the WA Police decided that this program fell outside their 'Front-line First' policing priority. They used our own department's withdrawal from school cycling to part justify their own withdrawal ( some of my pre 2000 budget was used to support the Police program). I'm now attempting to 'negotiate' within my own department and with Police to recover some of what was lost (four highly experienced Bike-Ed Area Managers and three well equipped Bike Ed trailers + other equipment, including the nationally developed Bike-Ed Teacher Resource pack). The opportunity to do this was created by the state's bicycle policy committee which has the authority to take actionable recommendations to the Minister. It does not always work but it does provide the opportunity to take an issue to a level above the senior public service executives, with some chance that their budget decisions will be over-ridden. The downside is that good programs can languish in a no-man's-land for a long period, during which time valuable expertise and equipment disappears and the program has to start from nothing, if it does so at all. My advice is that you somehow need to be able to work 'top-down', which I know is the antithesis of the principles of Community Based Social Marketing. What draws the distinction is usually the reliance on significant resources and this of course includes 'purchased expertise'. This may require that you attempt to establish links with a high profile sustainable transport organisation which has sufficient political influence to set clear political party level pre-election policies that, if elected, the incumbent Government is held accountable to. Even if they can't do that they may have the capacity to generate state or national level awareness publicity of the issue. That works for you when negotiating at local government level. It may also provide for matched funding grants whereby the go- nowhere 'cost shifting' becomes more productive 'cost sharing'...which both state and local governments (here) find far more acceptable. I'm also basing that observation on my 2001 post-cycling education position, which required that I reinvent myself (i.e. create an alternative program or face extinction).

From 2001 I commenced the planning and introduction of Walking School Buses for WA schools. This has been very well received. It's main strength from my point of view has been that it's a classic CBSM type program because it engages parents as volunteers at a very local level and other than my own salary, requires a minimal budget to operate....which makes it attractive to the departmental budget controllers. I'm currently temporarily 'recycled' (pardon the pun) back into the Cycling Unit to see what I can do to get the cycling education program back up and running. That's going to be more difficult than introducing WSB's, mainly because we have to try to support teachers with experienced instructors, who are not going to work in a volunteer capacity as do the WSB parent volunteers. If that fails I'll be going down a similar path to the WSB and offering proficiency training to small groups of parents so they educate their own children. That will include cycling with them to school. The difficulty is that 'Cycling Trains' are more risky than WSB's because of the speed differential between children on bikes and the greater difficulty at safely controlling them on roads and road crossings. TI trust this explains why I've made the distinction in the strategic divide between programs that can engage the local community as volunteers and those that rely on hiring expertise. Hope some of this may be helpful (or at least comforting to know you're not out there alone).

Regards
Terry Lindley

A/Cycling Development Projects Team Leader
Dept for Planning and Infrastructure
Western Australia.