2.8 The election of the Labour Government in 1997 on a pledge to put partnership at the heart of its strategy for modernising public services is often viewed as pivotal point in accelerating the trend towards partnership working in the public sector. While this may be the case, the partnership approach in the public sector is in many ways as old as government itself and clearly predates the late 1990s. However, what has changed is the fact that it is now at the very heart of the public sector policy framework as a key tool in the modernisation agenda.
2.9 Since the 1970s there has been a significant growth in the nature and number of partnerships in the public sector. This growth is often attributed to the "the interconnectedness of complex social issues"8 and the recognition that increasingly governments are dealing with interconnected problems, cross-cutting or wicked issues which cannot be addressed by a single strand of government, the assertion that 'joined up problems require joined up solutions'.
2.10 The ability of government to respond to such interconnected problems has in many ways been made more difficult by the historical evolution of the public sector since the Haldane reforms (1918) established public administration on the basis of functional organisation. From that time there has been a marked trend towards fragmentation and specialisation within the public sector. In the Northern Ireland context, this process was further accentuated in the 1970s following the implementation of direct rule and the reform of local government, and across the United kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of government policy.
2.11 The emergence of specialisation has greatly increased the skills available within government to deal with specific problems. The difficulty is that the fragmentation of organisations and services has also increased the obstacles to effectively addressing the more complex problems facing government.
2.12 The ambition to overcome these obstacles provided the impetus for the modernisation programme introduced by Government post 1997. A key aspect of the modernisation agenda is a commitment to improve public services, making them more responsive to their users. The fragmented nature of services across the public sector was seen as a major obstacle in the realisation of this objective. To overcome this, the Government's modernisation agenda proposes major reform of the civil service and stresses the importance of multi-sectoral working across the public, private and voluntary sectors.
2.13 The development of partnership approaches may, therefore, be seen in part as a necessary response to both the changed environment and structures within which the public sector operates. As government increasingly deals with complex problems that cannot be addressed by a single strand of government, joined up working, of which partnership is one approach, becomes an imperative in the development and delivery of effective policies and services across a fragmented public sector.
2.14 Institutional factors have also accounted for the rapid expansion of the partnership approach in recent years. The European Commission, for example, favours partnership approaches for the delivery of regional / area specific development. In addition government initiatives, including community safety and early years education, are increasingly giving agencies statutory duties to work together. Public bodies, therefore, often have little choice and are effectively obliged to pursue a partnership approach.
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8 Know, Colin. Review of Public Administration, Briefing Paper, Partnerships, UUJ, September 2002