Professor Nina Smith: Six major reforms - and no plan for reality
Six major reforms are on the way, but they are far from being designed for the reality they will encounter in the municipalities. When Christiansborg does not pressure test their reform ideas in the municipal reality, it can affect the future welfare, warns economics professor Nina Smith in KOMPAS - a new podcast from the think tank INVI.
As many as six major reforms will be pushed out to municipalities in the coming period. And the reforms affect all parts of our society:
The public school agreement, the elderly reform, the employment reform, the health reform, the social reform and not least the Green Tripartite.
But the reforms are not coordinated, and this creates a lot of pressure on the municipalities, warns Professor Nina Smith:
"I don't think we'll have a good welfare society if we don't get Christiansborg and Slotsholmen to work a little better with the municipal government and the civil servants who sit there," says Smith and states that it is crucial that Christiansborg pressure tests their reform ideas with the municipal reality.
Reforms are getting in each other's way
One of those who has to make the reform puzzle fit together is Nina Brünnich Kragesteen, Head of Policy and Organization in Lyngby-Taarbæk Municipality. Every day she feels the consequences of an uncoordinated reform storm:
"Overall, these reforms are as comprehensive and pervasive as a full municipal reform - they are just not coordinated up front," says Nina Brünnich Kragesteen and elaborates: "It moves the work of coordination and integration from the state level to the municipal level."
Kragesteen is responsible for Lyngby-Taarbæk Municipality's IT and digitization area, where she sees how the reforms can, in the worst case, interfere with each other:
"When you read into the healthcare reform and the elderly reform, both of which will affect the same center in many of the municipalities, there are two completely different views of the citizen in the two reforms in terms of digitalization."
The storm risks breaking municipalities
Nina Smith goes even further and says that the reform storm is "bigger and harder" to realize than the municipal reform.
"This is bigger. This is harder. It's more complex," Nina Smith states in the podcast.
It's going to require a huge amount from the municipalities, emphasizes Nina Smith, and most of all extremely strong and professional leadership from the classroom to the council chamber.
And the storm of reforms will land differently across municipalities, Smith states:
"We have 98 municipalities and they will do things differently, no doubt. What happens when the neighboring municipality does things in a slightly different way, and then the citizens come and say that what you do here is really bad. It's going to be difficult."
Municipalities are faced with a wild and complex puzzle. And they have no idea what the finished picture will look like if they are to succeed with implementation.
"But there is no way around it for the municipalities," Nina Smith states and continues:
"Because there is no plan B."
Christiansborg governs without contact with the municipalities
As an economics professor and former head of the reform commission, Nina Smith has a special eye for what it looks like from above.
"My impression is that when you sit on Slotsholmen and do otherwise sensible things, you haven't thought through how it should be implemented and managed," says Nina.
With a reform storm rolling out from Borgen to the citizens, it is crucial that Slotshomen has that insight, says Smith.
Listen to the full interview with Nina Smith in the podcast KOMPAS.