Public Service Agreements

The new performance management framework

Since their introduction in the 1998 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), Public Service Agreements (PSAs) have played a vital role in galvanising public service delivery and driving major improvements in outcomes. Building on this success, over the past two years the Government has been working with frontline professionals, the public and external experts to renew the performance management framework for the next decade.

2007 CSR announces the culmination of this work, with 30 new PSAs setting a vision for continuous and accelerated improvement in the Government's priority outcomes over the CSR07 period.

What are PSAs?

New PSAs set out the key priority outcomes the Government wants to achieve in the next spending period (2008-2011).

Each PSA is underpinned by a single Delivery Agreement shared across all contributing departments and developed in consultation with delivery partners and frontline workers. Delivery Agreements are available below and set out plans for delivery and the role of key delivery partners.
They also describe the small basket of national outcome-focussed performance indicators that will be used to measure progress towards each PSA. A subset of indicators also have specific national targets or minimum standards attached, and details are set out in the relevant Delivery Agreement. All other national indicators are expected to improve against baseline trends over the course of the spending period.

A Government-wide commitment to build services around the needs of citizens and businesses will be integral to the achievement of each of the PSA outcomes set out above. The Government has today also published a Service Transformation Agreement, which underpins delivery of the new PSA framework, setting out the Government's vision for building services around the citizen and specific actions for each department in taking forward this challenging agenda.

The PSA Delivery Agreements and the Service Transformation Agreement are all available below.

Sustainable growth and prosperity (PSAs 1-7)
Fairness and opportunity for all (PSAs 8-17)
Stronger communities and a better quality of life (PSAs 18-26)
A more secure, fair and environmentally sustainable world (PSAs 27-30)

The Service Transformation Agreement is available below in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer you can download the software free of charge from the Adobe website. For alternative ways to read PDF documents and further information on website accessibility visit the HM Treasury accessibility page.

Service Transformation Agreement (PDF, 513KB)