
Isn’t it time for a skills exchange for the public sector…and why stop there?
I’ve been carrying around an question in my head for some time. How could the public sector harness the expertise it has in a way which increases sharing and value to those who receive its services, whilst at the same time minimising the cost to the public purse. This post is about that question and an idea about how to move it forward. It’s an idea in formation so I welcome thoughts to help me shape it further.
At the start of my career, about 20 years ago, I worked for the National Centre for Volunteering, now part of NCVO, where I was introduced to the concept of timebanks. Essentially, timebanking is a system where people and organisations can exchange, as the name suggest, time. In the timebanking system, time is the currency and for every hour participants ‘deposit’ in a timebank, they are able to ‘withdraw’ equivalent support in time when they themselves need it.
In a timebank, all time is of equal value, so one hour of my time is equal to one hour of your time, irrespective of whatever skill or service is banked or withdrawn. A classic example might be someone who can lay bricks banking their time and withdrawing time to get help with their accounts. No money changes hands; the only deposits and withdrawals are the time needed to fund a mutually beneficial exchange.
Whilst the concept of exchange of time and skills is as old as thought, the formalisation of timebanking started in the early 19th Century where Robert Owen, a Welsh socialist reformer in the 1830s established The National Equitable Labour Exchange in Birmingham, even issuing time ‘bank notes’ (see image below by Percy Benzie Abery — This image is available from the National Library of Wales).

The term ‘timebank’ was popularised (and trademarked) by Edgar Cahn, legal professor and speech writer for JFK. He worked to build a timebanking movement in the USA in the 1990s and it has been developed in the UK by organisations such as http://www.timebanking.org.
As a philosophy, timebanking is founded upon five principles, known as Time Banking’s Core Values: (Source: Wikipedia)
- Everyone is an asset;
- Some work is beyond a monetary price;
- Reciprocity in helping;
- Social networks are necessary; and
- A respect for all human beings.
A great example of this in action (there are many across the UK) is local to me and is run by the Sheffield Creative Guild, where members exchange credits with other members for things they need and things they can do:
“But let’s be clear, the timebank is not about working for free. It’s about taking those exchanges, favours and interactions that we already do and putting them in a system where each person gets something tangible out of it”.
Members who join the Guild are given some credits to start with and they can use these to access the services and skills of other members. There is no reason why this couldn’t operate at scale — say at a sector level, certainly within a city or other locality. Well, that’s my hypothesis at least.
I’ve worked in and around the public sector for all of my career and during that time worked with some phenomenally talented people , most of whom had a clear commitment to public service — to me, that means they really believed in helping to make the lives of people in the communities they serve better.
In the same time I’ve seen the use of external support (primarily consultants) to provide expertise where that expertise already existed ‘in the system’. Let me be clear, I am not saying that there is not a need for external support sometimes (there is) and I am not saying that external consultants are a bad option (they’re not) — I was one for the last two years before returning to the public sector and I know that I added significant value to the clients I helped in that time.
My point is that the public sector has already invested in much of the expertise it is seeking, building up these people and knowledge assets over years, decades even. Alas, in recent years, the sector has been losing these assets at a rate of knots for obvious reasons. Whilst it would be fair to say that the remaining expertise might not always be in the right place at the right time (thinking at a sector level) it is ‘in the system’ and if there was a way to more cleverly identify, extract and exchange it, the focus of external support could then be about filling clear gaps.
Thinking about my own city — Sheffield — the knowledge and expertise across local government, health, bluelight and others is a significant public sector asset that could be “banked” and withdrawn at marginal cost to the participating organisations. This could have a massive gearing effect on the city’s public sector ecosystem — building capability, making connections, fostering innovation and saving money.
Think about how this banked resource could be used to deal with a surge in demand in one part of the sector without the normal lag in ‘procuring’ external support or employing full time roles or having to deal with a multitude of bi-lateral sharing agreements.
The use cases are endless. I could deposit an hour of my digital strategy development time and withdraw an hour of enterprise architecture. As well as time, the bank could include intellectual property. How many times has the public sector produced the same toolkit?!
I suspect there is millions of pounds that could be saved nationally in such a system of skills (and IP) exchange in the public sector, and even more value generated through capability building, collaboration and innovation. Savings could be reinvested in protecting front line services or developing new, sustainable models of public service delivery. This could work within and across public sector organisations and my thinking has recently gone further. I don’t see why this shouldn’t include other sectors too — voluntary and private.
A skills exchange could help a startup with crucial support in areas where they lack expertise — maybe business planning or legal advice — and the public sector could benefit from some time from the next big thing. An hour for an hour. This example could contribute to the growth of the local economy, bring innovation into the public sector and create a collaborative ecosystem which grows social value through the act of exchange.
Individuals could benefit from a timebank that traverses sectors too. It could help build confidence and capabilities at an individual level and help people make connections with others in their community or organisations that may seem (and be) distant from their day-to-day life.

I don’t think it would be that complex to get this off the ground (please note that I’m a glass half-full kind of guy)— I think it would need :
- Organisations (and individuals) to commit;
- Some rules of engagement;
- A simple system for managing banking of time and its withdrawal (app based probably);
- Some kind of rating system – it should be self monitoring; and
- Some seed funding to make it happen (I don’t think it would need much).
I really think there is something worth developing here and would welcome feedback on the idea. If you are interested in helping me develop this further, initially in the Sheffield City Region area, leave me a comment and I would be delighted to talk to you.

