The Heywood Foundation Contest, is effectively, and very commendably, a “Suggestion Scheme” for Government. Suggestion schemes are common in industry and business but have mixed success. Often, especially for radical suggestions, the scheme adjudicators can be quite negative about ideas originated in unexpected areas or that conflict with company policy. Nevertheless, “an additional channel of ideas back to UK policymakers” (Heywood Foundation) must be a Good Thing (Sellar and Yeatman, “1066 and All That”)
This is not a self-advertisement but this proposer’s experience as a defence contractor in Gulf 1 and re COVID since March 2020 illustrates some aspects of problems that the Heywood Foundation is seeking to solve.
The proposer has decades of experience in system modelling, especially for MoD. Not being attached formally to a University, however, this proposer only heard of the Royal Society RAMP initiative for COVID, too late, on BBC Radio 4. Old clients in MoD could not be contacted and the Cabinet Office Secretariat was rushed off its feet, as were Crown Commercial Services. Even three dons approached at Cambridge either had no suitable contacts or could not utilise assistance, as the proposer was not a member of a University Department. Consequently, no proper tasking from HMG could be discussed when certain trade-off studies might have informed the discussion and reduced the damage caused by lock-downs.
Eventually, after more than a dozen assorted approaches, including to .gov and .ac web sites, contact was made via an MP who had helped on a previous matter in 2017. In 2020 an old study, into estimating dual-voting fraud using sampling mathematics, was adapted to estimate actual COVID infection rates and sent to DHSC staff via Sir Peter Bottomley. This was a followed up more recently through the same route with a study into combined effects of vaccination and natural immunity acquired through the spread of infection. This could offer an alternative strategy to continuing indefinite lock-downs. An email address was also found for HMG Science Advisors but this apparently should not have been available to the public. The submission was redirected, however, to SAGE SPI-M.
Had a clearer route of approach been available, these studies could have been delivered weeks or months earlier and might have helped policy discussion.
By contrast, during 1990 the proposer had been quite well acquainted with Fleet Operations Analysis Staff at JHQ Northwood. Over Christmas, a flash of cunning analysis suggested a critical new solution re the defence of warships against incoming missiles. A short call to a senior science civil servant at FOAS, long since retired, led to a meeting two days before Desert Storm began. The civil servant knew that but the proposer didn’t.
After a short discussion, the specialist Civil Servant said, in effect, “With all essential procedures, we can’t implement this immediately but I can see you are absolutely right. Please will you look at an associated problem for us. This will be of great importance shortly and for a few weeks. If that is in the press tomorrow you will be arrested. I cannot give you a contract but I promise I’ll bust a gut to get you paid somehow, one day.” The proposer then delivered several weeks of useful work until the potential threat was overcome. A contract and payment followed about two years later. This is possible with two professional people of complete mutual respect, trust and high integrity.
By knowing precisely the right solution to a significant problem and precisely the right contact at precisely the right time, a valuable supply was made, despite wildly informal procedure.
Finally, this proposer had checked every day when the final closing date would be of the Heywood Foundation Contest, while refining several entries. The web site on 25th March said “Not announced yet but around end of March.” On 24th March entries were still open. On 25th March, this proposer began to submit entries only to discover that the contest as closed, without precise prior warning.
An attempt to place a plaintive call to the Cabinet Office led to an automated response that “The Cabinet Office is not answering.” The publiccorrespondence@cabinetoffice.gov.uk did not work either.
This illustrates supremely why the whole process of communication with government should be made more open.
In neither national emergency nor for routine policy advice should it be the case that is whom rather than what one knows that should be important.
Hence, as a matter of policy, all Government Departments should be far more open to specialist advice from the public. They, rather than the Heywood Foundation, should conduct annual competitions similar to this Heywood Foundation Contest, with process and prizes funded by Government. The competitions should be in a rolling schedule through the year, so that prolific entrant groups will have more time to make entries in more than one Department per year. Perhaps, in fitting memory, this should be known as the Heywood Process.
Where possible too, the policy setters and advisors should be identifiable in a published directory with addresses to approach. Perhaps each department should have a point of contact for submissions of specialist advice other than a normal “enquiries@” email address.
Both of these initiatives could give rise to a lot of superfluous and spurious inputs to Government but the modest additional workload to handle and review these approaches could be hugely rewarded by just one valuable suggestion, even in several thousand of little or no significance. In a future pandemic for example, how much might the economy save by avoiding lock-downs with no net increase in pandemic deaths? The right expertise might well achieve that.
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