Module 8: Strengthening capacity and accountability for progress
A useful process
Of course, the changes in Wales have not necessarily all come easy. Setting a society-wide change process towards a wellbeing economy in motion is hard. An ongoing challenge is the fact that the power of the Future Generations Commissioner is limited in that they cannot force or stop a public agency doing anything. Yet, they can hold a public mirror up to government to which the public bodies are required to respond. As Sophie Howe reflects on her 7 years of being a Future Generations Commissioner: “That doesn’t mean that we always get everything right and that they always do that, but it is a useful process” [1].
Another ongoing challenge is getting policymakers to come out of their silos and to ensure that a multidisciplinary lens is used when developing plans and strategies. The Public Service Boards that were established as part of the Act have nonetheless proven to be a useful structure for this. For example, through the Public Service Board in Cardiff, a public health consultant was seconded into the local authority to lead on the development of the local authority’s transportation strategy and to apply a health lens to the transport problem. “If you put highways engineers on that, they would probably find ways of building more roads. However, the consultant, (…), started looking at the areas with the highest levels of air pollution, the lowest levels of life expectancy, and so on, and started to redirect resources to public transport and active travel there” [2].
One of the recommendations by former Future Generations Commissioner Sophie Howe to further strengthen preventative action has been to establish a Minister for Prevention, with a 10% top slice of every budget across government at their disposal to coordinate action across government and invest in preventive interventions.
There are still many things to get right, but the way in which Wales has strengthened accountability for intergenerational wellbeing provides an inspiring example for governments around the world.
References
[1] Howe, S. & Nutbeam, D. (2023). Interview with inaugural Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Sophie Howe: embedding a wellbeing approach in government. Public Health Research and Practice, 33 (2): 3322314, doi: 10.17061/phrp3322314