Efficiency in the public sector - getting more for less
Just lately I’ve been noticing that there seems to be a growing consensus that the severe economic outlook not only brings significant challenges, but opportunities to be siezed.
July’s McKinsey Quarterly, presenting ‘The case for government reform now’ argues that:
‘The idea that “a crisis is too good an opportunity to waste” is becoming commonplace.
Businesses around the world are seizing this opportunity to rethink their operating assumptions and even reinvent themselves, often radically. Governments must do the same.
The crisis may well mark a “structural break from the past—a moment when many of the critical assumptions that have driven our previous behavior and attitudes no longer seem correct or appropriate.’
The widely distributed John Harris Memorial Lecture ‘The Implications of the Economic Downturn for Policing’ by Richard Lambert, CBI Director-General, positions itself in the same territory. Mr Lambert stating that “The country faces a choice. It can decide to get out the salami slicer, and keep it whirling through our public services for eight hard years to come. Or it can determine to make necessity the mother of innovation. To look at radically different ways of delivering services to citizens of the quality and breadth that they have a right to expect. We can use the opportunity of a crisis to think about ideas that might have seemed impossible in calmer times.”
Mr Bartlett’s contention is that ‘The way to make savings in the public sector is to make sure it is effective. Effective services are personalised — driven by people’s needs, they take aim at the cause of problems rather than the consequences and they are delivered collaboratively.’ In common with other commentators he suggests that ‘The current climate offers a real opportunity to transform the way services are delivered’ and that ‘Efficiency comes from solving problems not managing them’.
The paper, which outlines three routes to efficiency: Peronalisation through personal budgets, Prevention and Collaboration, looks at the application of these three routes across a wide range of public services. It provides a really useful look at the commissioning role, it’s uses, strengths and difficulties and suggests a new approach to defining ‘performance’, suggesting that the public sector needs ‘new approaches to efficiency that are less about streamlining individual processes and more about service redesign’
In terms of the development of policing, commissioning and collaboration, it’s not hard to see that the concept of a local authority stimulating and then commissioning services from a varied and vibrant supply side has interesting potential and application to, for instance, the delivery of neighbourhood safety services.
The paper argues that ‘The general view is that accruing efficiencies out of partnerships is the ‘next phase’ of the agenda’ but ‘for such efficiency gains to be realised, there needs to be a change in the way that partnerships work.
The new landscape of local service delivery points to a different kind of model. Traditional partnerships have involved a very linear form of contracting or performance monitoring. The commissioner sets goals, provides managers with the freedom to meet those goals, and then links payment to delivery. Citizens benefit because, in theory at least, the service improves. Accountability is assumed to operate through central government inspections and the electoral system, but the prime relationship is that between commissioner and deliverer, with the public and other agencies seldom involved. Efficiency in this model is about the way that an individual service delivers the outputs that the commissioner wants — how much it costs to produce a particular level of improvement in recycling levels, for instance.
However, partnerships of the future will need to work on different principles. Councils seeking to deliver place shaping outcomes for their local area will need to broker collaboration between different parts of the public sector, and bring private and third-sector organisations together to work on problems too. In this model, efficiency has to be sought not just within an individual service, but through whole area efficiency, where outcomes are achieved for less’.
This is clearly the intended model through which area services will increasingly be delivered and the paper provides a good overview of some of the issues and challenges associated with it. The paper can be downloaded here or in the sidebar under Miscellaneous.
July’s McKinsey Quarterly, presenting ‘The case for government reform now’ argues that:
‘The idea that “a crisis is too good an opportunity to waste” is becoming commonplace.
Businesses around the world are seizing this opportunity to rethink their operating assumptions and even reinvent themselves, often radically. Governments must do the same.
The crisis may well mark a “structural break from the past—a moment when many of the critical assumptions that have driven our previous behavior and attitudes no longer seem correct or appropriate.’
The widely distributed John Harris Memorial Lecture ‘The Implications of the Economic Downturn for Policing’ by Richard Lambert, CBI Director-General, positions itself in the same territory. Mr Lambert stating that “The country faces a choice. It can decide to get out the salami slicer, and keep it whirling through our public services for eight hard years to come. Or it can determine to make necessity the mother of innovation. To look at radically different ways of delivering services to citizens of the quality and breadth that they have a right to expect. We can use the opportunity of a crisis to think about ideas that might have seemed impossible in calmer times.”
Ploughing straight into this agenda is a booklet, published today by Demos, called ‘Getting more for less - efficiency in the public sector’ and authored by Jamie Bartlett.
It’s not a particularly light read, but it is an interesting one and raises a number of thought provoking issues.The premise is that ‘For the next decade the most urgent public policy question will be: how can public services achieve more for less — providing services that meet people’s needs, while costing less?’Mr Bartlett’s contention is that ‘The way to make savings in the public sector is to make sure it is effective. Effective services are personalised — driven by people’s needs, they take aim at the cause of problems rather than the consequences and they are delivered collaboratively.’ In common with other commentators he suggests that ‘The current climate offers a real opportunity to transform the way services are delivered’ and that ‘Efficiency comes from solving problems not managing them’.
The paper, which outlines three routes to efficiency: Peronalisation through personal budgets, Prevention and Collaboration, looks at the application of these three routes across a wide range of public services. It provides a really useful look at the commissioning role, it’s uses, strengths and difficulties and suggests a new approach to defining ‘performance’, suggesting that the public sector needs ‘new approaches to efficiency that are less about streamlining individual processes and more about service redesign’
In terms of the development of policing, commissioning and collaboration, it’s not hard to see that the concept of a local authority stimulating and then commissioning services from a varied and vibrant supply side has interesting potential and application to, for instance, the delivery of neighbourhood safety services.
The paper argues that ‘The general view is that accruing efficiencies out of partnerships is the ‘next phase’ of the agenda’ but ‘for such efficiency gains to be realised, there needs to be a change in the way that partnerships work.
The new landscape of local service delivery points to a different kind of model. Traditional partnerships have involved a very linear form of contracting or performance monitoring. The commissioner sets goals, provides managers with the freedom to meet those goals, and then links payment to delivery. Citizens benefit because, in theory at least, the service improves. Accountability is assumed to operate through central government inspections and the electoral system, but the prime relationship is that between commissioner and deliverer, with the public and other agencies seldom involved. Efficiency in this model is about the way that an individual service delivers the outputs that the commissioner wants — how much it costs to produce a particular level of improvement in recycling levels, for instance.
However, partnerships of the future will need to work on different principles. Councils seeking to deliver place shaping outcomes for their local area will need to broker collaboration between different parts of the public sector, and bring private and third-sector organisations together to work on problems too. In this model, efficiency has to be sought not just within an individual service, but through whole area efficiency, where outcomes are achieved for less’.
This is clearly the intended model through which area services will increasingly be delivered and the paper provides a good overview of some of the issues and challenges associated with it. The paper can be downloaded here or in the sidebar under Miscellaneous.
