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Last updated: 08 December 2009
1. This paper has sought to highlight some of the ways of enabling citizens and services to forge new, more empowering and productive relationships. Such connections enable people’s aspirations for personalised services to be better met; for the emerging challenges of chronic health conditions, retraining, the need for greater social mobility and community security to be more effectively addressed; and for people’s sense of control over their own circumstances to be affirmed.
2. We have not sought to extrapolate an overall theory of public service governance from a series of specific case studies. The Government’s framework for public service reform has already set out such an approach (see ‘Excellence and Fairness’ box on page 9). Rather, the innovations are intended to illuminate some of the most important likely dimensions of future improvement.
3. Looking at the examples of leading-edge practice as a whole does, however, provide some insights into the opportunities and challenges for government over the coming years.
4. Firstly, the innovations help demonstrate that it is possible to further improve the effectiveness and efficiency of many services in the current period of global recession. Australia’s Centrelink, the Sundhed.dk health portal in Denmark, Health Buddy in the Netherlands and the Justice Reinvestment programme in Texas, for example, are improving outcomes and delivering greater value for money. CLEAR Map in the USA and Joint Care in Denmark help harness the power of civic action to tackle crime and aid patient recovery. Chains of school providers appear to be raising school productivity. A revolution in transparency should magnify the pressure on services to improve and reduce waste.
5. Secondly, looking at the best relationships between citizens and services has highlighted the importance of government effectively providing strategic leadership, while also opening up the space required for services to innovate and personalise. Some people point to the importance of productive relationships between citizens and services to argue that government should simply get out of the way. The innovations we found do not generally support such an assertion. Rather, they point to the importance of government setting the right frameworks and providing effective leadership.
6. National governments in Scandinavia set core citizenship entitlements, for example, to help facilitate more decentralised service management in health, education and welfare by ensuring fairness and clear accountability. More broadly, effective decentralisation of management is supported by improvements in accountability systems. Leading-edge personalisation, such as Crossroads Bank in Belgium or Wraparound Milwaukee, may be driven by nimble public, private and third sector organisations; but systematic joining up of services also relies on government setting standards and creating financial incentives for agencies to work together. Looking across the examples we have studied, three particular objectives stand out for governments that want to act more strategically:
7. These broad conclusions and the insights from specific innovative practices already underpin many recent approaches to public service improvement. The recent Schools White Paper, Your child, your schools, our future, for example, sets out new guarantees for parents and pupils, improves transparency through a new School Report Card and encourages the development of partnerships between schools. Building Britain’s Future, the Government’s plan to work with the British people to respond to the economic downturn, sets out similar measures across public services.
8. As we noted in the introduction, services in Britain are also already ahead of many other countries and equally good learning will come from within our own services. Further innovation will therefore be supported through better listening and learning from citizens and professionals on the front line, and from supporting those with the best ideas. 95
9. Looking across the world does, however, reinforce the scope for further improvements. It should remind service leaders of the potential for new technological opportunities, workforce improvements and new practices to build stronger and more productive partnerships between citizens and professionals.
10. Over the coming months, the insights from international examples such as those in this paper, together with innovation and learning within services, will therefore help inform the work of HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office and other government departments in considering ways of delivering better services for the user and driving greater value for money for the taxpayer. For example, departments will be setting out more details about the development of ntitlements in health and education in England. Across services, the Government will be looking to increase transparency. Within services, major programmes are under way to personalise and simplify the support provided to citizens. From services, the Government is seeking to better learn from the challenges professionals face and the proposals they have for improvement. Through such measures, we are confident that the improvements in public services which have characterised the last decade can be accelerated in the years ahead.