View: ​D-Day landings: Do less, but do it better

The stakes could not have been higher but, throughout, the Allied Command knew exactly what they were trying to achieve. Their objective was crystalised a year earlier and plans for the operations, along with numerous ‘deception campaigns’, were developed and implemented.

Notwithstanding, many parts had to change and evolve as other factors came into play – right down to allowing the commencement date to slip by a day to accommodate poor weather - but the galvanising factor was having a clear, agreed objective that the leadership and millions of participants were united upon achieving.

Then, as now, the private sector played a massive role in providing the equipment, logistics, innovation and resource that the public sector needed, with Northern Ireland innovators and industrialists prominent in the effort.

Today, our Executive faces different challenges, but key amongst them is to get an agreed plan that sets out ‘what they are trying to achieve’. For various reasons, we are still without a programme for government, and it looks likely that we won’t see one before the autumn, even though it is to cover the financial year that began in April.

Without a laser-like focus on what they want to achieve, it will only be by chance that we might see outcomes align with activity, effort and resources. That’s deeply unsatisfactory.

Throughout all the wrangling of recent weeks at Stormont, we see constantly heightened expectations of what the public sector can and should be doing, but set against a backdrop of restricted resources. If we have a limited budget, we have four options. The first is to seek to expand the budget, but that is at a time when the UK government’s own finances are under intense pressure. The second is to work within budget and spread that limited resource ever-thinner, with the effect that all services continue to decline – the ‘equal pain’ approach.

The third is to grow the economy massively. That has to be the key policy that all of our politicians get behind – but even the most optimistic recognise that the lead-in time for such a change to take effect means that the benefits will take some time to occur.

That leaves the fourth option – to do less, but better. We need to focus on what ‘must’ be done by government, rather than what has always been done, or what would be nice to do. We have too many examples of failure to take responsibility; to pass the buck; to squander time and opportunity and money. We need to demand that laser-like focus; high standards of decision-making and delivery; doing the basics better.

Whether it is the decades that slip past without delivery of public water, sewerage and road infrastructure, that has a stultifying effect on lives and the economy; or failure to reform the delivery of health services, not least by addressing demand in tandem with supply; or the duplication in our education sector; or even the many months that elapsed before businesses flooded last autumn started to see funds trickle through – we need to do less, but do it much better. We have global innovators and world class companies in Northern Ireland, excellent people, and many other things of which to be proud; we punch above our weight.

But we also have a dissonant ‘drum beat’ of declining public sector services that lead to a malaise; a sense that we never deliver well, whether that is in incentivising renewable heat, or responding to a global pandemic, or stepping up to deliver support for flooded businesses. So let’s draw on the spirit that fuelled those events of 80 years ago and raise our game so that future generations will look back with pride on our collective efforts at this challenging time.