Standardisation & Simplification

STANDARDISATION & SIMPLIFICATION POLICY

Current unresolved issues.

There are many issues that arise from over complexity and lack of standardisation in the processes we use to manage all areas of our life and economy. It is difficult to assess or exaggerate just how vast this problem is, but it goes largely undealt with, indeed many peoples experience is that everything is getting more complex and difficult. These are just some of the main issues that arise because of over complexity and lack of standardisation in the wat we run all aspects of our country:

Huge extra costs in nearly all areas of society.
Increased stress at work, and in private life.
Confusion and lack of understanding in how the country works, and how to achieve the tasks we need to carryout.
Increased chances of dispute and conflict as a result of the above points.
Increased opportunities for fraud, manipulation, unscrupulous business practice, corruption, and crime.

We believe all of this can be avoided, and explain our policy as follows.

There are many tasks that are repeated throughout all businesses and institutions. The extent of this is vast, for example by law, all organisations of 5 or more employees have to carry out many written individual assessments, such as health and safety, stress at work, fire assessments, COSHH, DSEAR, the list is long. It is time consuming and stressful producing these assessments, and in many cases the company does not have the resources or skills to carry them out properly, they are a great burden to businesses, and their running. Companies essentially have three options; to ignore the regulations, to struggle to find, understand and carryout the huge volume of statutory requirements they have, or to pay many expensive professionals to carry them out for them. If they succeed in meeting the statutory requirements, the large body of policies and assessments produced by an organisation is far too much for it's employees to remember and process, as it can easily run into many files. In general these files will sit on a shelf in an office, files that few ever read, even fewer remember, and even fewer follow. The only purpose the file serves is to meet the legislation, and protect the employer rather than the employee from prosecution. Generally these assessments are ineffective, for example how many risk assessments sit in files on shelves and have very little effect in actually reducing risk. However when all the time to produce the assessments, and therefore the money, is added up across every organisation in Britain, the cost is huge.

Forming business contracts is another example where there is massive opportunity for improvement. Consider one small area of business contracts, for example, leases between landlords and tenants. Possibly hundreds of thousands of these leases are formed every year across Britain. In many of these cases lawyers will be employed on both sides to draw up these contracts. The costs of drawing up a single lease will be many hundreds at the minimum, can easily be thousands, and in major commercial deals could be tens of thousands of pounds or more. All of this can be simplified and standardised into one freely available contract algorithm.

Consider also how many times when buying something, we tick a box saying 'I have read terms and conditions'. How many times is this done every day in Britain, how many actually read the terms on account of them being too long or complex. Everyone of these sets of T&C's is different, resulting in extra time and costs for the company and everyone, people are not aware at all of what they are signing up to. This makes the process pointless, and as a result increases the chance of dispute when issues arise.

Tax collection is another example, we have dozens of different types of tax in Britain, just consider one of these; business rates, the process of visiting commercial properties, measuring them and rating them, and then collecting the tax, is hugely complex and therefore costly. It does not have to be this way, all of the above examples could be standardised and simplified saving huge amounts of money and stress.

There are fundamental problems caused by not having standardised and simplified practices. People may feel that they wish to have full freedom to carryout their work as they wish, and form any set of terms they wish, when forming contracts for example, this seems entirely reasonable at face value. However, the problem with this is that no one knows what are the generally accepted rules by which business and work is carried out, as the contracts and agreements made by everyone are all different. This will always encourage misunderstanding, difficulty, stress, and ultimately conflict. How many money, business, and trading disputes are there across Britain every year, a single set of simply rules for everyone would greatly reduce all these problems. Another issue created by this freedom is that it allows companies in privileged positions to put unfair pressure on other companies, for example when companies negotiate extended payment terms, so that they do not have to pay their supplier until many months have passed.

Our Policy - How it resolves the issues and achieves our aims.

Our policy will do the following things:

Create a single system of law, that governs all aspects of human behaviour, in any circumstance, that can be written on one page, see our Supreme Law Policy. This system of law would replace and therefore eliminate much of the huge volume of internal policies organisations are required to produce, and create the basis for a fully fair and simple business environment.
Eliminate all processes that do not have a significant positive effect, such as assessments and written policies that sit on shelves doing very little other than meeting legal requirements.
Remaining processes, that are required, and do have a positive effect, will be dramatically reduced in size, simplified, and standardised, across all relevant organisations. This process will be done through extensive consultation with the relevant business, organisations, and consumers in that industry sector.
Once all policies have been simplified and standardised, they are taught throughout school where relevant. Thereafter, whenever someone begins a new job, all the standard training they require for that specific job will be available online for them. This not only improves the training of all employees, it removes most of the training burden from employers, other than that which is specific to their company, a win win result, see our, Support & regulation Policy.

Some of the areas we will standardise and simplify:

All law.
All business law and regulation.
All business policies.
Many business procedures and codes of practice in all industry sectors.
All policies, procedures, and codes of practice in the public services, and in institutions.
The design and specification of manufactured products.
Education.
Tax collection and spending.

Examples:

Consider all businesses in Britain, how we will simplify and standardise the running of them all? It is done in four layers, firstly you have Supreme law, this will guide most of business practice, on one page. Then you have underneath this a statutory business code of conduct that is relevant to all business (and anyone who transacts money or provides services). This code of conduct will be short, deal with all areas that are specific to all businesses but not covered in supreme law, and will run into a few pages only. The third layer which sits underneath this, is a code of conduct and practice specific to each industry, this would cover all the areas that are not covered in the more general codes above, and again this would be as short as is possible, pages, rather than books. Finally, industries that are more technical, and require more complex regulations, for example electrical installation regulations, would continue to have these detailed rules, however these would be simplified as much as possible. The supreme law, and the second layer would start before school, and be taught extensively throughout all schooling, so everyone would already have this knowledge before entering the work place. The third layer of industry specific knowledge would be taught as people enter their industry, through open source videos and literature published online. These three layers would then provide businesses with the entirety of their statutory obligations, in a simplified and standardised form, without any time or resources being required on their part. The fourth layer, if necessary would be taught largely through apprenticeships or training courses.

Many contracts would become statutory, simplified, and standardised. This means everyone would have to use them, and it would be illegal to form other contracts. They would be published online, either as a fixed contract, or as a simple questionnaire which on completion by both parties, delivers a contract. Some examples of the statutory contracts we would produce, include all types of insurance contracts, leases, construction contracts, manufacturing contracts, service contracts, license contracts, wills, power of attorney, prenuptial agreements, loan and mortgage contracts. These contracts, even when relating to large sums of money, would in general be very simple and short, as supreme law, and general business law, would have dealt with most contractual issues already, and these issues would not therefore need repeating in the contract. Businesses will have much less legal costs, and they will all be much clearer on how to deal with each other on a set of standard terms, therefore greatly reducing costs, stress, misunderstanding, and contractual disputes.

The majority of all lessons in schools would be prepared by the education department, and delivered through open source videos and literature. This vastly reduces the workload on teachers as they do not have to repeatedly prepare the same lessons in all schools across Britain, enabling more time to be spent with children. It will also improve education as far more resources can be used to produce one set of lessons, in comparison to every teacher having limited time to prepare their own lessons. It also means that the entirety of the curriculum will be taught, without the need for teachers to check that they have met all its requirements, further reducing their workload, and finally it means that if any lessons are missed by teachers or pupils, it is a simple matter to access the videos and materials, to catch up, at any time. This is a win win win policy, pupils are better and more flexibly educated, teachers have much less stress, and much more time to work with their pupils, and the tax payer pays less, as the overall cost of education is reduced. See our Education Policy, and our Open Source Education Policy.

Our policy will not restrict human freedom and ingenuity, it only simplifies and standardises areas of life that occur routinely over and over again. There is nothing in our policy that stops people from being creative and doing what they want, indeed it liberates people to have more time and energy to do this.

All this standardisation and simplification would be carried out by us when in power through the legislature, and our research centres, and would consult directly with all relevant businesses, institutions, and experts at all stages, to ensure the needs of all parties are fairly represented.

The choice we have:

We have a simple choice, we can operate by standardised and simplified processes, or we can have the huge extra time, money, stress, and conflict of reinventing the wheel over and over again. Adopting our policies will take the burden off of everyone at work to carryout stressful bureaucratic processes, that have little beneficial effect. They will simplify all statutory requirements for all organisations, so they have a simple set of rules, that everyone knows, and can easily follow. Many tasks will be greatly simplified, they will be quicker, less stressful, and quite often cost nothing, when they could have cost many thousands. The amount of training organisations will have to provide will be dramatically reduced, and at the same time all staff will be far more qualified, having been educated in relevant areas their entire life from pre-school onwards. The ease with which all work can be carried out will be increased greatly, both internally within an organisation, and externally between all other organisations that they trade and interact with, as all organisations will be working to the same simple set of rules that they all know. Misunderstanding, confusion, communication error, lack of knowledge, and conflict will all be greatly reduced.

Well being and cost benefits of this policy.

It is difficult to estimate the overall extent of unnecessary, repeated, and overly complex, processes that are carried out in Britain every year across all places of work. It could be hundreds of millions of processes costing hundreds of billions of pounds? Similarly the improvement of people's working experience, and reduction in stress and conflict is also difficult to quantify, but we believe the work place would be a far more comfortable and enjoyable environment for everyone.

Supporting policies.

Supreme Law Policy

Support & Regulation Policy

Law & it's practice Policy

Research Centres Policy

Manufacturing Policy

Education Policy