The trouble with targets

One of the recent trends in the UK has been for government to micro-manage major services. In the absence of grand political ideas, politicians are portraying themselves as the best equipped to run services rather than having a vision for transforming society. The upshot is the proliferation of targets. But if you focus solely on the meeting of targets, they tend to get met at the expense of other things.

This is neatly illustrated by a story today about the National Health Service. The government is auditing hospitals for their accident and emergency response times. The reaction from some hospitals has been, allegedly, to take on extra staff for the one week when they are being audited. Firstly, it completely defeats the object of the audit. Secondly, it means that resources are wasted meeting a target that could be used better elsewhere.

So, what will happen? We will end up, no doubt, with an even greater number of targets so that hospitals can't get around them so easily. But the more targets, the harder it is to meet them all, and the less the targets coincide with actual need.

A&E survey 'fiddle' claims, BBC News, 21 March 2003