“The DNA of Government”: Consultants, Calculative Technologies, and the Politics of Municipal Benchmarking

More than just experts for hire: A conceptualization of the roles of consultants in public policy formulation

“…Acting thus as liminal actors, consultants can promote policy convergence by providing similar lenses for governments to interpret their policy environment, prompting convergence through their policy response. Hurl's work on KPMG's dissemination of the municipal “smart budget” reference and benchmarking technologies suggests such impact, as over time, these methods prompted multiple municipalities in Ontario, Canada to respond with budget cuts to over‐performing municipal services (Hurl, 2021).…”

“…In the traditional, stage-based model of the public policy process, policy formulation takes place after an issue was put on the government's agenda and culminates in policy implementation (Howlett et al, 2020). Research in policy sciences suggests some important insights on refining this linear model through real-world policymaking, in ways that are important to the current discussion.…”

“…They assist the government in making sense of the concrete policy subsystem, and in creating an image of the policy landscape. In practice, this type of work includes evaluation, audit, benchmarking, and measurement of the work of service providers and government programs, as well as mapping and surveying the policy subsystem, so as to produce concrete knowledge about policy actors in the relevant policy area (Bortz, 2019; Hurl, 2021). The use of consultants for these purposes also reflects governments' adherence to managerial ideas, involving outputs measurement as an important governance tool (Boston, 2016).…”

“…For example, during the 1990s and early 2000s, KPMG introduced municipalities in Ontario, Canada with “smart budget” reference and benchmarking technologies, aimed at better analyzing cities' performance in service provision. Rather than serving merely as an analytical tool, the model also fostered a competition regime among municipalities, targeting services deemed “above standard” and appropriate for cutbacks (Hurl, 2021, pp. 153–155).…”

“…In this role, then, consultant work is both reflective and constitutive of creating the policy picture. In “seeing for the government”, consultants transfer methods and concepts that governments use when analyzing the policy landscape – from other jurisdictions, as well as from other sectors (Christensen & Skærbæk, 2010; Frenkel, 2005; Hurl, 2021). While their access to the policy network is more limited in these roles, they still have important impact on how the government understands its policy environment, in ways that feed into policy decisions.…”