Efficiency

While efficiency in the public sector is not a new concept, the Gershon efficiency Review has put this issue back at the heart of the public sector's agenda. Making the best use of resources and paving the way for long-term efficiency improvements are major challenges that local and central government are addressing.

PricewaterhouseCoopers works with clients in the following ways to improve efficiency:

• Consumer strategies - understanding service provision from the perspective of citizens or consumers, and adapting the service, often radically, to improve outcomes, and/or reduce expenditure, for example in relationship breakdown, domestic violence and debt
• Performance management frameworks - developing frameworks which incentivise efficiency improvement, for example, through retention of savings, performance scoring and learning engines
• Balanced scorecards - to hardwire strategy and objectives to front-line tasks and performance, align processes and produce coherent organisation
• Process improvement - process redesign, preferably undertaken collaboratively with the managers and staff affected, and implemented by them, for example, in housing benefit payments, motoring offences and correspondence
• Agency/NDPB (non-departmental body) governance - holding Boards to account in appropriate and effective ways
• Corporate service performance - benchmarking services (finance, HR, IT, procurement, legal), and preparing and implementing performance improvement plans
• Shared services - assessing their real potential, securing internal support, managing their implementation
• Intervention - intervening in failing operations to turn them around
• Cost reduction - using participatory approaches to prioritising, agreeing and implementing cost savings
• HR policy and practice - rebalancing employee-centric terms and conditions, using pay as a performance lever, advising on effective performance management
• Procurement - analysing and managing markets; identifying potential for efficiency through bulk purchasing, negotiating, establishing centres of excellence and recovering discounts and debts