Government Forum 2006 Briefing - Public Services: Delivering the Promise

July 2006

Senior public sector officials, ministers, MPs and leading PwC partners met at PwC's second Government Forum to discuss one of the big challenges facing the public sector. The theme of the Forum was 'Public Services: Delivering the Promise'.

Read the insights from politicians such as Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, Andrew Lansley MP and Julia Goldsworthy MP; senior civil servants such as Alex Allan (Permanent Secretary, DCA) and David Myers (Shared Service Programme Director, Cabinet Office) as well as experts on evaluating delivery such as Anna Walker from the Healthcare Commission and Peter Wilkinson of the Audit Commission.

The Forum raised three main themes:

• The challenge of doing more with less, with financial pressures being a catalyst for re-evaluating approaches and increased productivity. The impact of strong leadership and the importance of motivated people came through strongly, along with the recognition that we should not put the IT 'cart' before the delivery 'horse'
  
• Choice and capabilities, and the extent to which delivery mechanisms need to adapt to changing delivery situations. For example, the Forum highlighted challenges such as addressing child obesity where it is possible to influence but extremely difficult to actually control the final outcome
  
• Focusing on what is good in organisations to bring about change, rather than concentrating upon the negative. And taking a different perspective on the use of shared services to help improve organisations' effectiveness: 'the administration of carrots, not the application of sticks'
  

Covering a diverse range of delivery related issues from how to strengthen the links in public service delivery chains, the impact of the Comprehensive Spending Review through to delivering affordable housing and the impact of contestability, you can read a summary of key points from every session at the Forum. The briefing also includes articles from think-tanks Demos and New Local Government Network.