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30 How. J. Crim. Just. 1 (1991)

handle is hein.journals/hjcj30 and id is 1 raw text is: The Howard Journal Vol 30 No 1. Feb 91 ISSN 0265-5527 Calling on the Experts: The Financial Management Initiative (FMI), Private Sector Management Consultants and the Probation Service CHRISTOPHER HUMPHREY Lecturer in Accounting, Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Manchester Abstract: This paper examines the Home Office's attempts to apply the Financial Management Initiative to the probation service in England and Wales, with particular emphasis being given to the use of private sector management consultants in the development of a Financial Management Information System (FMIS) for the Service. The details of the FMI's application are set out and the processes whereby the aims of the initiative were attenuated and deflected are identified. In consequence, the case adds support to the literature questioning the application of such initiatives in the public sector by illustrating how even the 'experts' cannot provide simple solutions for the complex problems facing public sector managers. In attempting to reform the management and accountability of organiza- tions remaining in the public sector, two particular strands in the policies of the post-1979 Thatcher administrations have gained increasing prominence. First, the development of financial management information systems and secondly, the broad ranging use of private sector manage- ment consultants to assist both in the design and implementation of such systems. Both aspects of policy have been promoted by the central government as bringing much needed private sector management skills to what it regards as rather anarchic and disordered public service organisations - bureaucracies belonging to an age of inefficiency. This approach to management was perhaps most clearly encapsulated in the Financial Management Initiative (FMI), launched in 1982 (see Govern- ment White Paper 1982), which Fry (1984) classified as akin to the Conservative's grand strategy towards central government departments. Its emphasis on objective setting, performance measurement, delegated resource management responsibilities and critical scrutinies of the value for money of service provision has been seen as having an appealing rationality. As Plowden (1985) noted: it must also be right to identify the tasks to be done and the resources used in carrying out each of the multifarious activities of government to ensure that someone is clearly responsible at each level for managing these resources, and to devise information systems that provide people at each level - including ministers 1

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