Sustaining public services in the digital age and in a time of fiscal constraint
We live in an age where medical science offers ever more effective treatments extending life expectancy. This plus a rising birth rate in the UK has created a considerable burden on our limited financial resources. These factors are generating ‘unsustainable’ calls upon health and welfare services. Our public services (particularly health and social care) are under pressure to deliver more and more, often without a commensurate rise in the level of resourcing, inevitably this sponsors a greater use of technology. But the benefits of using technology comes at a cost, not just in fiscal terms but from the detachment that it sometimes creates between the human being and the professional practitioner. New ways of managing these problems need to be considered as a matter of urgency.
The challenges are complex, multi-dimensional and traverse traditional boundaries between services. Health, housing, social welfare, social services and education are all linked in some way; the response to a problem in one area inevitably impacts upon others. This complex web creates a messy and demanding scenario for service managers and planners who are tasked with solving them “today”.
What can we Systemists offer? Clearly we cannot ignore the many value judgments and ideologies among sections of UK society and those with the responsibility of managing this challenge, but the problem will not disappear; doing nothing is not an option. We have tools and techniques at our disposal to examine these complex problems without the day to day pressure managers face. To this end the focus of the conference is to explore the question:
“What can systems thinking and practice offer public services, such as the NHS and local authorities to ensure economic, social and clinical sustainability?”
We welcome submissions from any area of the systems community – hard, soft or critical – that seek to apply coherent systemic analysis to these challenges, as a contribution to debate. Please submit a preliminary abstract of 500-800 words by the due date shown below. Authors of accepted abstracts will then by invited to submit a paper of 6-8,000 words. Subject to review selected papers will be published in the International Journal of Systems and Society as a record of this debate.