Public Sector Reform: An International Overview …...in the public sector embracing more than 600...

Public Sector Reform：An International Overview

July 2007

效率促進組Efficiency Unit

EFFICIENCY UNITVISION AND MISSION

Vision StatementTo be the preferred consulting partner for all government bureaux and departments and to advance the delivery of world-class public services to the people of Hong Kong.

Mission Statement

To provide strategic and implemenlable solulions to all our clients as they seek to deliver people-based government services. We do this by combining our extensive understanding of policies, our specialised knowledge and our broad contacts and linkages throughout the Government and the private sector. In doing this, we join our clients in contributing to the advancement of the community while also providing a fulfilling career for all members of our team.

This Brief was researched and authored by the Serco Institute led by Gary L . Sturgess. The Serco Institute was established 13 years ago to study public service reform and in particular, the design of sustainable markets for public services. It acts as a practical source of ideas and information drawn from a continuing dialogue with public officials, think tanks and academic researchers. It also draws on extensive operational experience in the public sector embracing more than 600 contracts covering a wide range of public services in 30 countries over more than 40 years.

Other Efficiency Unit DocumentsThe Efficiency Unit has produced a number of detailed guides including on out sourcing and Public Private Partnerships (PPP). These may be found on the Efficiency Unit website at www.eu.gov.hk.

Introduction

This Brief has been commissioned by the Efficiency Unit to report on recent developments in public sector reform around the world. It is based on secondary rather than original research and the objective has been to focus on international examples, so that Hong Kong examples have been deliberately excluded.

The purpose of this publication is to present "at a glance" the key developments around the world on the public sector reform front. It is meant to inform and inspire our public managers who are required to innovate in their service delivery.

Each country or organisation devises its own public sector reform agenda to suit its social, resources and political circumstances. The wholesale transplant of one reform initiative from one country to another seldom works. Nonetheless, knowing what other public managers in jurisdications elsewhere are thinking, and how they tackle their policy and implementation challenges should present food for thought for us in Hong Kong.

Head, Efficiency Unit July 2007

Public Sector Reform: An International Overview效率促進組 Efficiency Unit

Executive Summary

Public

engagement The challenge of public engagement is to find new ways of encouraging citizens to be meaningfully involved in public policy-making, and in playing a role in the institutions through which they are governed in their local communities.

Customer-centric

government Customer-focused public services consider the public’s experiences as service users. They seek to engage through short feedback loops – from the service user direct to the service provider– rather than long loops – which flow from user to provider via policymakers.

P ublic sector reform is not new. But overthe past d ecade o r t wo, t here h as

been an in crease o f r eform a ctivity, ri ght around the world. While priorities have shifted over time, a nd t here h ave bee n different emphases fr om c ountry to country, there have a lso be en se veral persistent t hemes: re newed att empts to engage c itizens in th e pr ocess of governance; a m ove t o pla ce c ustomers and end-users a t th e h eart of pu blic services; a f ocus o n d elivery a nd im plementation a s o pposed to po licy formulation; managing fo r o utcomes; a n increased r eliance o n m arket in struments to improve value-for-money; a nd e fforts to coo rdinate the com plex var iety of dif ferent programm es across gov ernment.

It is difficult to find a precedent for such widespread and sustained interest in public sector reform, even if we go back to the progressive reformers of North America around the turn of the 19th century, a movement that was also managerialist in tone.

There are different views as to what underlies this transformation agenda, but throughout the literature, one finds a deep-seated belief that the business of government is fundamentally changing. Globalisation, technological innovation and rising public expectations – and the speed with which these changes are taking place – mean that the role of the public services in society and the manner in which they are delivered must fundamentally change.

This brief discusses some of the cutting-edge reforms to public services around

the world, focusing on those that have been widely adopted, those that seem to have delivered significant improvement, and those that promise interesting new directions in the reform agenda.

It is a sampler, a catalogue of short case studies that readers can investigate more closely on their own. This is the first in a series of papers, and it is meant to serve as a general introduction to some of the outstanding themes that will be addressed in greater detail in future papers.

Public Engagement The challenge of public engagement is to find new ways of encouraging citizens to be meaningfully involved in public policymaking, and in playing a role in the institutions through which they are governed in their local communities.

Right around the world, governments are struggling with this challenge. Information technology can assist with the provision of information to citizens and it can make consultation easier. But engagement requires much more than formal interaction, and governments are also experimenting with more personal consultation, creating innovative new forums for deliberation.

Customer-centric government Customer-focused public services consider the public’s experiences as service users. They seek to engage through short feedback loops – from the service user direct to the service provider – rather than long loops – which flow from user to provider via policymakers.

Public Sector Reform: An International Overview 效率促進組 Efficiency Unit


Page 3

Executive Summary

In a number of governments, the pro-ducer-led model of public services is gradually giving way to a consumer-driven model. The range of options extends from improving responsiveness to end-users, through to the personalisation of public services, and policies directed to giving the consumers of public services some choice of provider.

Policy to delivery The traditional emphasis on policy development in the senior ranks of government is being replaced with a focus on management and service delivery.

Many good ideas fail, not because the idea was wrong, but because the execution was flawed. Governments are paying much greater attention to strengthening the public sector’s competence in delivery. Initiatives have included increased flexibility in the recruitment of senior executives, greater openness in attracting expertise from the private sector, and particularly commercial expertise, the establishment of delivery units with cross-cutting responsibilities, and the deregulation of the public services, by giving greater autonomy to service managers.

Managing for results Performance management is concerned with the delivery of results rather than just compliance with rules.

There have been a wide variety of performance-based initiatives, from performance measurement and reporting, performance accountability (based on a cycle of management reforms), perfor-

mance-related pay, performance contracting and performance budgeting. Some governments are now experimenting with purchasing outcomes and not just outputs.

Market Instruments In the regulation of private activity, in the procurement of goods and in the delivery of public services under contract, governments are using market instruments to deliver better outcomes.

A variety of different market instruments are now being employed by governments to assist them in meeting public purposes, including online auctions, trading of environmental permits, competition and contracting, and the creation of new markets for public services.

Joined up government Governments are searching for new ways of overcoming the fragmentation and duplication in the public sector.

The lack of coordination in public services r emains a se rious ch allenge in t he stru ggle to im pr ove the q ualit y of the customer’s experience of government. Many of the t raditional s olutions, s uch a s merging d epartments an d ag encies and the use of ca se mana gers have li mited value. Web-ba sed technolo gies are openin g up new poss ibilitie s fo r delivering joined up governmen t, but t hey are also raisin g entire ly n ew qu estions , such as the desirability of joinin g up related pub lic and priv ate services .

Policy to delivery The traditional emphasis on policy development in the senior ranks of government is being replaced with a focus on management and service delivery.

Managing f or results Performance management is c oncerned w ith the delivery of results rather than j ust compliance with rules.

Market instruments In the regulation of private activity, in the procurement o f g oods and in the d elivery o f public services under contract, governments are using m arket instruments t o d eliver better o utcomes.

Joined up government Governments are searching f or new w ays of overcoming the fragmentation a nd duplication in the public sector.

1. Public Engagement

Public engagement The challenge o f p ublic engagement is to fin d new ways o f e ncouraging c itizens t o b e meaningfully in volved in public policy- mak ing , and in p layin g a ro le in the inst itutions throug h wh ich they are governed in their local communities.

Engaging the citizenry is a challenge for governments right around the world. It continues to be a dilemma for a variety of reasons: the ongoing 'nationalisation' of government, with decision-making authority moving from the local to the national level; the growing significance of supra-national institutions, such as the European Union and the World Bank; the technical complexity of modern government; and the lack of interest on the part of citizens, evidenced through low voter-turnouts and declining party memberships.

Information

At the most basic level, c itizens n eed t o understand w hat g overnment is do ing an d how it impacts o n them. T raditionally, t his has been d ifficult be cause o f citi zens' diverse interests , and the diffe rent ways in w hich they in terac t with publ ic s ervices .

However, information technology is making it easier to track the progress of legislation. Online bil l tracking services are provided by most state le gislatures in t he U SA - s ee, fo r example, that of the M ichigan Legislature (www.legislature.mi. gov/ (S(cwey1v555f1edr45fdw0nzfu))/ mileg.aspx?page=home). A nd s ome o ffer personalised bill tracking so that after identifying legislation that is of particular interest, subscribers can be updated regularly by email - N evada ( www.leg. state.nv.us/74th/subscriber)

is o ne s tate th at

offer s this s ervic e.

Individual departments, interest groups and commercial organisations also offer services that focus on specific issues. The

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the USA (www.nhtsa. gov/ncsl/)

tracks legislation on a range o f

road safety is sues a cross a ll ju risdictions.

But intermediating government information is no longer the exclusive domain of government. Concerned citizens are using the internet to provide fellow-citizens with a window into government. In the US, legislation trackers are being offered by individuals - see, for example, GovTrack (www.govtrack.us). In the UK, TheyWorkForYou(www.theyworkforyou. com) enables citizens to track their local member's speeches and voting patterns, and to check details from their register of interests and members' expenses.

Rules and regulations are more intrusive than legislation, requiring close consultation with those affected. But rule-making has also become more complex due to requirements in some jurisdictions for regulatory impact statements and cost-benefit analysis. This makes it more difficult for governments to attract meaningful comment prior to the promulgation of new rules. The US federal government now offers a web portal - Regulations.Gov (www.regulations.gov) - dedicated to consultation on rule-making so that it is easier for the public to track changes and file comments.

Governments are also able to provide their citizens with detailed information about particular aspects of public administration. Best practice is to be found in the US federal government website, FedSpending (www.fedspending.org), which enables citizens to obtain detailed (and user-



Page 5


friendly) information on federal government grants and contracts, by state, congressional district, contractor, service type or level of competition. Some governments provide highly-accessible ways of tracking new infrastructure projects in the state or city. See, for example, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (www.nycedc.com/Web). On a smaller scale, the city of Seattle provides residents with detailed maps showing road construction works (www.seattle. gov/transportation/map/default.htm)

.

Consultation

Citizens also want to be engaged in government decision-making, being consulted about forthcoming reforms and enabled to feed back their views on public services. Some government agencies and local authorities seek public input on the quality of public services and spending priorities, using surveys mailed out to local residents.

Some conduct annual surveys of a sample of randomly selected citizens. The City of San Francisco, for example, publishes an annual 'City Survey' summarising the government's performance across a range of measures, comparing results over time (http://www. sfgov.org/site/ controller_csa_index.asp?id=59064).

In 2006, the S ingapore G overnment restructured its feedback unit into a new service entitled REACH (http://app.reach. gov.sg/reach/def ault.a spx)

with e-polls

and online discussion forums, as well as more traditional consultation mechanisms. Some g overnments a re tailoring discussion forums to particular sub-groups in the community. H eadsUp (www.headsup.org.uk) is one such service directed to young people.

Web 2.0 - the latest generation in internet-based services - greatly expands the kind of contributions that can be made by citizens. These highly-democratic systems have sometimes been described as 'peer-production'. A leading-edge example of how this new technology might be used in improving the quality of public engagement is Politicopia, a wiki established by a state politician from Utah (USA). In this case, citizens are provided with neutral statements of major policy initiatives, with supportive and critical argumentation. The public are then able to make their own contributions online, and the politician operating the site has been able to take meaningful reforms to the legislature based on these comments.

ComNET (www.fcny.org/cmgp/comnet. htm)

represents a m ore a ctive f orm o f

public engagement. I t was d eveloped b y the Center on Municipal Governmen t in New York , and uses hand-held computers (similar to PDAs) , to enable community organisations to capture information about local potholes or streetlight maintenance ( along w ith photographs), and upload the data t o government. The system is n ow b eing used in a number of North American municipalities.


Page 6

One of the most c losely-watched consultation initiatives has bee n 'Participatory Budgeting' (http://www.participatorybudgeting.org/Whatis. htm)

,

introduced by t he city of Porto Alegre in Brazil in 1990, a nd t hereafter ad opted in some 250 m unicipalities a cross S outh America and around the w orld. Participatory Budgeting works at t he lo cal level, where there a re d efined ge ographic boundaries. It is based o n s tructured dialogue and d ebate a bout spen ding priorities over the course of the y ear, among lo cal peo ple e lected by t h eir fellow citizen s.

Deliberation

Deliberation implies that citizens have been given the opportunity to make a thoughtful contribution to an issue after consideration of the evidence. It suggests that a representative cross- section of the public has been provided with the information and allowed the time and the forum within which to reach a considered judgement.

In British Columbia, Canada, the government established a C itizen's Assembly (www.citizensassembly.bc. ca/public)

in 2004, t o r eview t he p rovince's

electoral s ystem. 160 re presentatives drawn from all elect ora l districts considered alternative r eforms at a series of fo ru ms ov er a perio d o f e leven m on ths. Submissions were r eceived by t h e Assembly from the g eneral publ ic. The recommendations were put t o t he pub lic in a popula r ref erendum.

Deliberative forums are large group discussions involving a representative sample of citizens who have been provided in advance with briefing materials, and are given access to subject-matter experts before participating in a deliberative process.

Case Study 1: Deliberative Polling in Wenling City

In 2005, Zeguo township in Wenling City, China, used 'Deliberative Polling' (http:// cdd.stanford.edu/polls/china) to engage with around 250 randomly-selected citizens to consult on priorities for local infrastructure projects. A scientific approach to the selection of participants was combined with traditional methods of deliberation used in the local community. Among other benefits, deliberation encouraged participants to take into account the financial consequences of their choices. Citizens' Juries typically involve smaller groups - 12 to 15 non-experts - to hear evidence from witnesses, deliberate and form a judgement on contentious policy issues. They have been actively used by governments and third party organisations in the UK in recent years.

Citizen-led reform

Some governments allow their citizens to initiate reforms, if they are able to attract a sufficient level of community support. In the UK, experiments are underway with a citizen-led initiative




Page 7

known as 'community call to action'. Under the Police and Justice Act 2006, citizens can raise community safety concerns with local councillors, who are under a statutory obligation to address these matters and respond. Frontline councillors in turn are able to insist on responsiveness from delivery agencies.

Citizen initiatives - which allow citizens to vote on a proposed statutory or constitutional amendment - have been used in Switzerland for well over a century. They have been actively used in some of the western states of North America in recent decades. (www. iandrinstitute.org). Votes or referenda are triggered by public petition, although issues are usually required to have a high level of support before they can be submitted for consideration.

Governance The most advanced form of engagement enables the public to be involved in the actual governance of organisations with responsibility for the delivery of community services. The most successful of these have been at the sub-local level, where local citizens have a greater capacity to make a contribution to the management of neighbourhood services.

One of the most successful initiatives of this sort have been Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), pioneered in Canada in the late 1960s, and adopted widely in the United States in the 1990s. BIDs are created on the initiative of local merchants and property owners, and financed by an

additional assessment on property taxes. The funds are allocated to the BID, which provides supplementary services in retail and commercial precincts. In New York City, BIDs financed additional security personnel and street cleaners, and worked with local shopkeepers to improve the visual appearance of the neighbourhood. BIDs have also been established more recently in some UK municipalities.

Another area where citizens have been able to become involved in community governance is in the management of natural resources. Local fishing communities are sometimes administered in this way. In Australia, there are around 4,000 volunteer community landcare groups, coordinated by government, that play an important role (for example) in helping to combat soil erosion (www.landcareonline.com)

.

The UK government is also looking to the directly-elected 'neighbourhood councillors' who will have delegated rights over spending on services within the local neighbourhood. Local councillors would have the option of raising additional funds by levying an extra charge on the local tax for specific neighbourhood services.

2. Customer-centric Government

Page 8

Customer-centric

government Customer-focused public services consider the public’s experiences as service users. They seek to engage through short feedback loops – from the service user direct to the service provider – rather than long loops – which flow from user to provider via policymakers.

'Putting customers first' through voice and choice was a central element of Al Gore's 'National Performance Review' in the US federal government in the mid- 1990s, and subsequently by the Bush administration. More recently, the UK government has actively sought to focus public service providers on the needs of end-users. In Singapore, ministers have exhorted public servants to 'Start with the User in Mind', and other govern-ments around the world have adopted a similar approach, particularly in relation to online services.

Service quality

The quality movement h as s erved a s a companion to customer-centric government. 'Citizen's Charters ' introduced by the UK government in the late 1980s pio neered t his a pproach, e stablishing explicit performance standards for customer service. This was followed by Quality Charters in Portugal, Clien t Charters in Malaysia, Service Users' Charters in Australia and Customer Service Standards in t he U S f ederal government.

Responsiveness

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports widespread interest in improving the responsiveness of government, although different governments pursue the concept in different ways. At a simple level, this involves surveying customer satisfaction, with a view to

better understanding what matters to service users. At a more sophisticated level, it involves rethinking public services in terms of the customer experience seeking to understand government programmes as a narrative told from the user's perspective.

The soft issues - whether consumers are treated with respect - matter as much to consumers as the hard issues -the effectiveness of the service they finally receive. It is now commonplace for government agencies to use 'mys-tery shoppers', a technique often used by private sector managers to test the quality of front-line service delivery.

Once again, information technology has made it easier f or governments t o s urvey and to respond to the concerns of service-users. CivicRADA R (www . civic rad ar.com) - being piloted in Connec tic ut - enables citiz ens to com- mu nicat e information to the city governm ent, make se rvice reques ts a nd re gister com plaints 24 ho urs a day. More import antly, th e syste m a llows them t o track th e response of the v arious depa rtmen ts an d agencie s o nline and when the r eq uests are res olved, com-plete a satisfaction survey.

In the private sector, price comparison websites now enable consumers to search for the best prices for standard goods and services such as airline flights. Websites have been launched enabling the public to compare the prices charged by competing public utilities



(such as electricity and gas). But many government services are heavily subsidised or provided free of charge, so that price comparison may be of little assistance.

On the other hand, a growing number of websites enable c itizens t o c ompare t he quality of services. The US Department of Health and Human Services (www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov)

allows patients

to compare the performance o f h ospitals across the United States a ccording to a range of performance m easures. I n t he UK , an independent guide to the performance of hospitals and m edical consultants is provided by a public-private partnership known as Dr Foster (www.drfoster.co.uk) . In the education sector, the UK government allows parents to compare the stan-dards o f neighbourhood schools (http:// schoolsfinder.direct.gov.uk ) and non-government organisations o ffer s imilar services in the US (www.greatschools. net).

Personalisation

Personalisation suggests t hat t he p ublic a re pro vided wit h a cu s tomer-friendly interface with government s ervices. Developments in information technol-ogy have opened up new w ays o f per sonalising public service s, with facilities availa ble 24/7 and the a bility to m ake appoin tm ents online. It is summ ed u p in t he 'MyG ov ' con cept -tail oring go vernment websites to individual nee d. As an ex treme exa mple

of personalisation, some North Ameri-can governments now allow drivers to order customised number plates o nline. T he state of Virginia allows customers to draw on any one of 180 d ifferent d esigns, some of wh ich are spon so red by comm unity organisation s and social ca uses (www.d mv.virginia.gov/webdoc/ citizen/vehicles/plate_search.asp).

Business Link (www.businesslink.gov. uk)

, an on line informa tion ser vic e for

small bus ine ss in Br ita in, is an exam p le of this n ew generati on of customis ed serv ices. For e xam ple, an in dividual wishin g to s tart a new bus iness can input deta ils o n t he kind o f bus iness they are pr oposing to esta blish , and the onli ne service will pro vide th em with a start-up organ ise r, with all of the re-qu ired links, and (say) pro mpted ass is-ta nce and precedent s f or prepar ing a business plan.

Increasingly, individuals are looking for private services to be incorporated into these personalised online facilities. This is leading to a debate a bout w hether governments' electronic services should be opened up to third party intermediaries who would a ct m ore a s th e ag ent of the citizen than as t he a gents o f government. Australian immigration visas are m ana ged throug h an inte rna tional netwo rk of trav el agents . In the UK , banks have explored the possibility of enabling customers t o lodge their r eturns and pay their taxes t hrough t he b anks' websites, and insurance c ompa-nies have sugge sted that m otor vehicle



Page 10

registration might be undertaken by them on their policyholders' behalf.

However, since many public services involve personal care, case management remains an important means of personalising public services to the individual. It is resource-intensive and must be prioritised on those in greatest need, but governments continue to explore new models. For example, the UK government is introducing a national scheme for case-managing offenders through the criminal justice system.

In the health sector, pilot schemes are being introduced for managing the long-term health needs of the chronically ill, with the objective of improving quality of life and reducing hospitalisation rates. Health Maintenance Organisations in the USA pioneered these models, with private health insurers and state social insurance providers elsewhere in the world adapting them to local need. South Africa introduced managed care in the late 1990s, and Australia started conducting trials with 'coordinated care' shortly thereafter. The UK is also experimenting with integrated care models for the management of chronic disease.

Choice

It was long assumed that the concept of customer choice had only limited application to public services, but the United States and Australia have

pioneered choice in education through voucher arrangements. In Australia, this has been accomplished simply by allowing government funding to be allocated across the public and independent sectors according to student numbers.

Where public services are provided free at the point of delivery, it is still possible for customers (or their agents) to choose between alternative providers. Under Australia's Job Network , job seekers can register for assistance with any of a range of approved service providers in their area, drawn from the private and voluntary sectors.

Concerns have been expressed that choice is not equally accessible for some disadvantaged groups. This can be addressed partly through differential vouchers, which offer proportionately greater benefits to the disadvantaged. In the UK, the government is appointing 'choice advisers' to assist families in making meaningful decisions about schools. Every local authority is to appoint a network of choice advisers from 2008.


Case Study 2: C hoice-based Letting in Public Housing

In 2000, Harborough District Council (a UK local authority) launched a choice- based letting system for the allocation of public housing. It was based on the so- called Delft Model that had been widely adopted in the Netherlands.

Instead of allocating housing to applicants with no alternatives and little explanation as to decisions, choice-based letting gave tenants the opportunity to register for and respond to advertisements for available properties. They were provided with information about the properties and neighbourhoods, and local market conditions. And simpler and more transparent selection criteria were introduced. Applicants who turned down offers were no longer automatically penalised. Choice-based lettings have since been adopted by many local authorities in the UK.



3. From Policy to Delivery

From Policy to Delivery The traditional emphasis on policy development in the s enior ranks of government is being replaced w ith a focus on management and service delivery.

Most public servants are involved in delivering services to citizens, and yet, in most governments around the industrialised world, the senior ranks of the public service have been dominated by policy generalists with only a few having a commercial or financial background. Governments have tended to be driven by policy models rather than delivery models.

Politicians and public servants are now paying much greater attention to questions of implementation, and the structures, processes and capabilities necessary to strengthen the public sector's competence in delivery. There has been a growing recognition that many good ideas fail, not because the idea itself was wrong, but because the execution was flawed.

Transforming the senior civil service

Traditionally, the core public service was career-based, with civil servants recruited on the basis of examinations or academic credentials, and thereafter enjoying lifelong tenure. They were transferred between positions as needed, which required them to be generalists.

In recent years, a number of countries have shifted to position-based systems, where the focus is on finding the best candidate for the job in question, often by competitive recruitment amongst internal and external candidates. Anglo-American governments have tended to

adopt this approach more often, although Sweden, Switzerland and Hungary have also been leaders.

In many countries, chief executives and senior civil servants are now hired on term contracts, with performance-related pay. Organisational structures are determined and public servants are recruited, employed and promoted by the chief executive of the individual department or agency, rather than a central public service board. And in an attempt to avoid a fragmentation of the public service and encourage leadership development, a number of governments have established a 'senior executive service'.

The US federal government was the first to introduce such a service, followed in the late 1990s and early 1990s by Australia and New Zealand, and later by the Netherlands and the UK. South Korea has a strong career-based tradition, but in 1999 the government introduced the Open Competitive Position System, with the objective of facilitating the transfer of skills from outside government. Ministries were to designate 20% of senior positions for open competition.

Even with a senior executive service, these countries have experienced difficulty in attracting significant numbers of external applicants for senior positions, and governments have sought to involve the private sector in other ways.



Page 13

Private sector expertise

In 2004, the Japanese Prime Minister appointed senior business leaders and academics to a C ouncil for the Promotion of Regulatory Reform

(www.cao.

go.jp/en/reform/previous_reform.html)

. This expert committee was u sed t o develop an important new initiative for market-testing public services that h as since been implemented by t he government.

North American governments have long appointed senior business executives to high-level 'commissions' to design and then to oversee the implementation o f financial and operational reforms. The Governor of Georgia , Sonny Perdue recently appointed a 'Commission for a New Georgia' (www.new-georgia.org), led by CEOs and senior executives from the private sector, to harness innovation and technology to improve cost efficiency and customer responsiveness.

In Virginia , Governo r Mar k Warn er created a 'Council on Virginia's Future' (www.future.virginia.gov) involving senior politicians , publi c officials a nd privat e sector exe cutiv es. The brief included pro viding a lo ng-te rm focus on hig h priorit y issues, im proving gover nment perfor manc e, and eng aging citizens in a dialogue about Virginia's future.

When it set about to create a new market for elective surgery in the National Health Service (NHS), the British

government appointed an e xecutive f rom the private sector as the n ew C ommercial Director in the Department of Health. He was given a s trong m andate fo r re form and he, in turn, relied heavily on secondments from the priv ate s ector t o support the initiative. The programme is regarded as having bee n a s uccess, although the sustainability o f t his m odel is un certain as m any of the staff hav e since return ed to the priv at e sector (www.dh.gov.uk/en/Policyandguidance/ Organisationpolicy/Secondarycare/ Treatmentcentres/DH_074351).

Driving delivery

Another way in which governments have emphasised the primacy of delivery is through the creation of specialist units at the centre of govern-ment to ensure that key targets are met. The New South Wales state government in Sydney, Australia, established a Premier's Delivery Unit in 2006, to drive improvement in the delivery of public services. A similar unit was established by the UK government in 2001, to oversee the government's performance management system.

In 2006, the British government established a Delivery Council (www. cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ public_service_reform/delivery_council), made up of leaders in operational delivery from across government 'to share best practice (e.g. on commissioning models) and to provide expert



practitioner input to the design and management of delivery models'. Key delivery departments in the UK have also been appointing 'Commercial Directorates', staffed with personnel with a strong commercial background.

Deregulating public services

One of the most important reforms identified for improving public service delivery has lain in the reduction of the bureaucratic red tape imposed on public service managers. In order for managers to be given greater autonomy, it has also been necessary to make them more accountable - 'making the managers manage' as well as 'letting the managers manage'. One of the four pillars of Singapore's public sector productivity reforms has been 'Maximise Discretion'.

Devolution of financial responsibility has been central to these reforms. Typically, governments have moved to three-year forward estimates, output budgeting, accrual accounting and charging general government agencies for capital assets. At the same time, chief executives have been made responsible for the financial performance of their agencies, with associated performance pay.

In human resource management, there has been a trend towards assigning the responsibility for recruitment and promotion to the chief executive rather than a central government board or commission.

Consistent with these developments, when the new US Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002, it was exempted from provisions of the civil service law relating to hiring, compensation and promotion.

Case Study 3: Iowa's CharterAgencies

In 2003, Iowa launched its Charter Agencies programme (http://charter. iowa.gov/default.htm). Agencies are able to volunteer for charter status, which ensures them greater financial and managerial freedom, in return for commitments to deliver measurable service improvements and savings. Six agencies stepped forward in 2004, and together they represent more than half of all state employees.

Charter Agencies are exempt from across-the-board budget cuts for three years; they are able to retain half of unspent appropriations and 80 percent of all new revenue generated; they can actively market goods and services to the public; they are exempt from restrictions on staffing numbers and may award employee bonuses. However, they are subject to the state's collective bargaining arrangements.

It has proven somewhat easier to give greater management autonomy to service delivery agencies. Where governments felt that it was inappropriate to privatise state trading enterprises,



Page 15


they corporatised or commercialised them, expanding their freedom to engage in business activities, whilst also increasing their financial and regulatory accountability.

A great deal of work remains to be done in ensuring that these reforms flow down to the managers involved in the delivery of front-line services - school principals, hospital administrators, prison governors and police commanders.

In the UK, there has been an attempt to increase managerial autonomy at this level. The most striking examples lie in the creation of semi-autonomous 'trusts' out of high-performing service units. The earliest of these were foundation trust hospitals (www.dh.gov.uk/en/Policyandguidance/ Organisationpolicy/Secondarycare/ NHSfoundationtrust/index.htm), followed more recently by city academies (www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/academies/ what_are_academies/?version=1) and trust schools (http://findoutmore.dfes.gov.uk/2006/09/ trust_schools.html), which enjoy greater commercial freedom than traditional public institutions.

4. Managing For Results

Managing for results Performance management is concerned with the delivery of results rather than just compliance with rules.

Over recent decades, many governments around the world have adopted some form of performance management. A recent survey among OECD nations found that three-quarters included non-financial performance data in their budget documentation, although half neglected to link expenditure to targets or apply rewards or sanctions.

The trend is for governments to move from simple and indirect forms of perfor-mance management towards more demanding models where budgets are directly linked to targets and governments buy outcomes rather than just paying for outputs.

Performance measurement

This is the most basic kind of performance management. It consists of monitoring and reporting accomplishments, usually in comparison with some benchmark -past performance, some ideal notion of best practice or external benchmarks drawn from the public or private sectors.

In one of the most comprehensive national projects, the Australian Productiv-ity Commission publishes an annual 'Report on Government Services' (www. pc.gov.au/gsp/reports/rogs/2006/index. html), comparing the performance of a wide range of public services across the various states.

Following an extensive programme of community consultation in 2000, the Australian state of Tasmania laid down a

number of high-level goals and detailed targets for improving the state's performance, under the title Tasmania Together (www.tasmaniatogether.tas. gov.au). Performance assessment and public reporting is overseen by a statutory Progress Board that is appointed on a bipartisan basis.

The government of Virginia (USA) is required by legislation to publish an annual scorecard reporting progress against long-term objectives, current service performance and productivity improvement. Performance against the government's key targets is tracked online at 'Virginia Performs' (www. vaperforms.virginia.gov), and the public are able to study the state's performance over time and against other states. Citizens are able to search detailed results by agency and by locality.

Performance accountability

This implies the existence of a management cycle, in which performance objectives are agreed, achievements are measured and reported against those objectives, reforms are made with a view to accomplishing the targets, and there is a system of escalating interventions where agencies fail to respond adequately.

North America have been in the forefront of this movement, with state governments setting targets for local school districts and intervening in cases of persistent failure. Two of the early movers



Page 17


were North Carolina and Texas, where significant gains in student performance were observed by the mid-1990s. In 2000, the Bush administration introduced the 'No Child Left Behind' Act (www. whitehouse.gov/news/reports/no-childleft-behind.html), obliging states to introduce annual report cards, with an obligation to take corrective action where progress is lacking.

Case Study 4: Intervention in Failing Schools

The UK established an independent inspections agency for schools in 1992, and published the first scorecards, based on public examination results, the same year. For some years, parents have been able to check the performance of local schools based on inspections by the Office of Standards in Education (www.ofsted. gov.uk/reports) or the examination scorecards (www.dfes.gov.uk/ performancetables) that are based on student performance.

Starting in 2000, the government built on these foundations, developing a comprehensive performance management regime, with around 1,400 failing schools being placed in 'special measures', and a further 200 closed for failure to reform. The evidence suggests that this programme was successful across the targeted measures.

Performance accountability can also be used as an intensive management tool for turning around underperforming

agencies. The best-known example is Compstat, a system introduced by the New York Commissioner of Police, Bill Bratton, in 1994. It was designed to direct police resources into crime hot spots and reliable and timely statistics about policing outcomes lay at its heart, with front-line commanders meeting regularly with senior management to account for their performance. Compstat was seen as having made a major contribution to the dramatic fall in New York's crime rates in the 1990s and within five years, more than a quarter of police departments across America were imitating the initiative.

Following Compstat's success, Baltimore introduced CitiStat (www.ci.baltimore. md.us/news/citistat/reports.html) in 2000, using a performance accountability model based on Compstat, to manage severe problems with employee absences, sick leave, workers' compensation and overtime. The scheme was later b ude other performance criteria and it is now being rolled out across the entire state of Maryland.

roadened to incl

Pay-for-Performance

Since the 1980s, more than two-thirds of OECD countries have introduced performance related pay for at least some of their public service, including the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and a range of European countries including Germany, Italy, the


Netherlands and Sweden. Korea has also adopted performance pay in recent years.

In New Zealand, which was one of the early adopters, the Public Service Commissioner determines the performance incentive, limited to 15 percent of the remuneration package. The performance of the organisation and the public service as a whole is taken into account. In Canada, a committee of departmental secretaries assesses performance, with the Prime Minister making the final determination. In the Australian federal government, ministers are consulted, but the Prime Minister and the head of his department play a central role.

Experts disagree as to whether performance bonuses are effective and appropriate in motivating individual employees in the public sector, and some have cautioned at the danger of politicisation. Some extend these reservations to the use of financial penalties in the incentivisation of underperforming organisations. While financial incentives may be of limited value where govern-ment agencies are budget-funded, the success of performance sanctions in managing contracts for the delivery of public services by the private sector suggests that they can be used successfully.

Performance contracting

Performance contacting involves purchasing outcomes or outputs from a public, private or voluntary sector supplier,

through a legally-binding or a quasi-contractual relationship. Competitive tendering and public private partnerships (PPPs) are dealt with later in this report, but performance contracting deserves to be considered separately.

Some countries have engaged in extensive competition of public services, and in the process, they have developed sophisticated models of performance contracting. Several UK government agencies, and local governments, are now using contracting to procure better social outcomes (such as diversity and sustainability outcomes), rather than focusing just on value-for-money.

Governments have also employed quasi-contracts (or 'service level agreements') between policy agencies and delivery units, in an attempt to adapt the lessons of performance contracting to public sector agencies. For example, Denmark employs perfor-mance contracts between ministries and line agencies, and between minis-tries and chief executives, with associ-ated performance-related pay.

Performance budgeting

At its simplest, performance budgeting may mean nothing more than presenting performance data as part of budget documentation. A stricter version attempts to link funding to outputs and outcomes specified in the budget papers. The promoters of performance budgeting hope to use these measures



Page 19


to drive budgetary and management decisions.

The US federal government introduced the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) in 1993, requiring agencies to develop strategic plans, annual performance plans and performance reports. GPRA was regarded as somewhat groundbreaking in giving the Congress a role in the process. In 2004, the GPRA was taken a step further, moving to align performance information with budgetary decisions, with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) asking agencies to submit performance budgets. Since the mid1990s, more than 30 US states have introduced performance measurement legislation, but Texas and Maryland are in the forefront of moving to true performance budgeting.

Some of the more rigorous forms of performance budgeting are to be found in the higher education sector (for example in the Scandinavian countries), where a proportion of the funding is based on academic performance. In the UK, this approach is also used for research funding. Case-mix funding (or 'payment by results') in the health system is yet another form of performance budgeting. The United States, Denmark, Norway, Chile and some of the Australian states have been using case-mix funding for hospitals, and the UK is part way through the introduction of such a scheme.

In the United States, health insurance funds and Health Maintenance Organisations have introduced pay-forperformance (P4P) programmes for physicians and hospitals. At elsewhere, there has been a movement in the past three or four years towards paying for outcomes, although efforts are still being made to improve the quality of measures. The federal government's Medicare and Medicaid programs are also experimenting with outcome-based funding methods.

From inputs to outcomes

There has been a distinct move from the specification of inputs to the funding of outputs, and while the shift to purchasing outcomes has proven more difficult, governments continue to experiment. Several local authorities in the UK are now contracting for outcomes in the cleanliness of their streets. Part of the contractor's profit is at risk based on local citizens' perceptions of cleanliness (as measured by independent research).

Australia's Job Network and the French equivalent partly reward welfare-towork providers based on the success of their clients in retaining their jobs over the medium-term. And experiments are underway in Australia and the UK, testing whether the risk of hospital admission rates for the chronically-ill can be shifted to private and voluntary providers.


Page 20

In the UK, the Highways Agency has adopted an 'Active Management Payment Mechanism' (www.highways.gov.uk/roads/2998.aspx) in new tollroads delivered under PPPs. This includes financial bonuses and penalties for road congestion caused by breakdowns, road works and special events, as well as adjustments based on the number of accidents (benchmarked against comparable roads).


Public Sector Reform: An International Overview

效率促進組 Efficiency Unit

Page 21

5. Market Instruments

Governments have always looked to the market to purchase some of their goods and services. But over recent decades, they have increasingly adopted market-type arrangements to assist them in meeting public ends. Unlike the privatisation initiatives of the 1980s, market-oriented government seeks to use the economic incentives created through these instruments to deliver public purposes.

e-Auctions

A simple example of a market instrument now widely used by governments to deliver value-for-money are electronic auctions. e-Auctions assist in creating a more competitive environment, as well as saving on procurement costs. Housing, medical, computing and other office supplies are just a few of the services being bought through reverse e-Auctions, which intensify the competitive pressure for sellers.

Online auctions are particularly valuable for local governments that may not otherwise be able to attract significant market interest. In the UK, consortia of local authorities have formed regional purchasing organisations to increase their commercial leverage. In the United States, the federal government has created a single site, FedBid (www. fedbid.com) to handle federal, state and local government online procurement services.

Governments are also auctioning restricted public services online. The Singapore Land Transport Authority conducts online bidding for 'certificates of entitlement' for vehicle ownership (the numbers of which are capped) (www.lta. gov.sg/ocoe). Oklahoma allows real-time electronic bidding on state bonds (www.ok.gov/ ostbid/index.php).

Environmental markets

Carbon trading, popularised through the debate over global warming, is a kind of environmental market designed to assist in the management of CO2 emissions. Also known as 'cap and trade', this form of regulatory system relies on a statutory ceiling on emissions within a defined geographic area, with companies assigned individual limits, which can be bought and sold. The benefit of such a system is that those companies capable of reducing their emissions at the lowest cost are incentivised to do so through buying entitlements.

The trading of environmental credits was pioneered by the US government with sulphur dioxide (SO2) trading introduced in 1990, and a variety of schemes have since been implemented around the world (http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/ trading/index.html). The Australian state government of New South Wales introduced salinity trading in the Hunter River in 1992, as a way of balancing the interests of coal mines and vineyards, both of which use the river. Trading is now undertaken online, with the public

Market Instruments In the regulation of private activity, in the procurement of goods and in the delivery of public services under contract, governments are using market instruments to deliver better outcomes.


able to monitor trends (http://hrs1.epa. nsw.gov.au).

Governments have also used tradable rights for the management of water extraction from rivers and groundwater systems, and for regulating the exploitation of fishing resources. Australia is one of the world leaders in the use of water markets, with online trading (www. waterfind.com.au). And the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority uses a trading scheme to control the number of tourist operators on the reef (www.gbrmpa.gov. au/corp_site/permits/emc).

Competition and contracting

Contracting of public services has become increasingly commonplace over recent decades, partly as a by-product of the information revolution, and partly because of the popularity of PPPs in the provision of infrastructure and the associated services.

IT-enabled change: Governments turned to the private sector for IT services largely because there was no in-house capabil-ity in this field and, given the pace of change, there was little point in developing it. What has changed in recent years is the expansion of the associated support services which private sector firms are capable of managing on behalf of clients. The term most commonly used is 'business process outsourcing', and the range of services variously includes asset management, financial management (including payroll, pen

sions and accounts), human resources administration, procurement and supply chain management and help desks and customer information.

A number of Asian countries, but most notably India, have developed a new industry in supplying these services to overseas companies, and particularly in the English-speaking world. Some governments struggle with the politics of outsourcing public services to overseas countries, because of the perceived impact on local jobs.

PPPs: Australian governments pioneered the asset procurement model that has come to be known as PPP or the private finance initiative (PFI), in the late 1980s. Until recently, they continued to be world leaders in PPP toll roads, although the US has recently overtaken them. The market leader in the PPP markets is the UK which has signed more than 800 PPPs since the policy was first actively pursued in 1996.

But the PPP model has now been adopted right around the world, with some countries such as Spain and Japan developing more sophisticated procurement models than the UK. In many of these countries, the service element in these contracts is largely confined to facilities management, but there are some important exceptions - prisons (UK, USA, Japan), hospitals (Japan), and tollroads carrying market risk (Australia, Canada, USA).



Page 23


Public service contracting: In addition to these developments, there has been continuous expansion in the range of public services delivered under contract, as governments have developed new models and private firms have developed new service capabilities. The following are some of the leading-edge examples:

One of the most successful areas of public service contracting has been the custodial sector, with private firms in some countries managing entire prisons, undertaking prisoner transportation and handling home detention with electronic tagging. Both the US and the UK have worked with the private and voluntary sectors in the provision of probation services.

In 1996, Mozambique contracted the management of its customs service to a private company originally established by the UK Customs Service, with a view to reconstructing its systems and pro-cesses and retraining its staff. More recently, this firm has advised Bulgaria and other countries on the modernisation of their customs programmes (http:// www.crownagents. com).

In the USA, the state of Georgia has recently contracted out the management of entire local authorities. Sandy Springs (www.sandyspringsga.org) was the first of these, in December 2005, appointing a private contractor to deliver all of its services. Contracted services

included: the call centre, accounting, purchasing, human resources, information technology and support for fire, police, water and sewerage, and garbage services, street design and maintenance, planning and zoning, inspections and permits. Some town councils in Singapore contract out the administration of all their common areas to managing agents.

Contestability

'Contestability' is not another word for 'competition'. It refers to the reform of public services by using the threat of competition. It is not necessary that the service in question actually be market-tested: only that there is a pool of alternative providers, and a mechanism for the injection of competition should the incumbent fail to improve.

The US federal government has been operating a contestability regime through its 'Most Efficient Operation' (MEO) policy in procurements. Agencies are able to defer competition by demonstrating that they meet an acceptable level of performance.

In the UK, the government has used this approach in reforming elective surgery in public hospitals, and the management of Local Education Authorities and prisons, and there is a commitment to use it in reforming probation services. For example, the Prison Service undertakes 'performance tests' of underperforming prisons, with the threat of market-testing


if an acceptable standard is not reached. Some Australian state governments have

also used this approach with their prisons, improving human resource management.

Public service markets

More recently, governments have looked to the design and management of entire public service markets. One of the most widely-studied examples is Australia's welfare-to-work market.

Case Study 5: Australia's Job Network

Under Australia's welfare-to-work market, assistance with job placement for the unemployed - historically a public sector monopoly - was changed to a case management model and then to performance-based contracts. Job Network is a managed market that has reduced costs and significantly strengthened performance accountability.

Similar markets for job placement are being created in France, Germany, the UK and Japan. In the UK, the government is investigating a market model where the private and voluntary sector providers would finance the initial skills-development and placement effort, and payments would only be made to the service provider once the beneficiary had remained off unemployment benefits for a defined period of time (www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/dwp/ 2007/welfarereview.pdf).

Japan has recently adopted a somewhat different approach to introducing public service markets. In May 2006, the Japanese Diet passed the 'Act Regarding the Reform of Public Services Through the Introduction of Competition', or the 'Market Testing Law' as it is popularly known. This was part of Prime Minister Koizumi's reform policy entitled, 'Leave to the private sector what it can do'. In piloting the programme, the government selected eight model projects in three fields. These were drawn from 119 proposals made by the private sector in late 2004, when the government invited external suggestions as to possible areas of reform.

The UK government has a formal policy of developing a 'mixed economy' composed of public, private and voluntary sector providers across a wide range of public services. Examples of markets under development include: managed health care for the chroni-cally-ill, elective surgery, secure mental health, offender management, the transition from welfare-to-work, foster care and residential care for children, parental support and local government.

The creation of a mixed economy involves much more than merely contracting out public services to private companies. The government has created new forms of public entities capable of operating in these markets, and significant work is underway in government in identifying and overcoming the barriers to voluntary sector



Page 25


participation.

One of the results has been the emergence in the UK of hybrid organisations consisting of joint ventures between public, private and/or voluntary providers. For example, Working Links (www. workinglinks.co.uk) is a joint venture involved in the UK job placement market, involving the government-owned Jobcentre Plus, two commercial organisations, and an Australian voluntary sector provider.


Page 26

6. Joined Up Government

Joined up Government Governments are searching for new ways of overcoming the fragmentation and duplication in the public sector.

Overlap, duplication, fragmentation, balkanisation, 'turf protection', 'stovepipes', the 'silo mentality' - a wide variety of terms have been used to describe the challenge of trying to ensure that government departments and agencies work together. The solutions have variously been described as coordination, collaboration, service integration, 'seamless government', 'joined up government', 'holistic government' and the management of crosscutting issues. Whatever the name, the challenge of making public services coherent for the customers and citizens who interact with them remains one of the most difficult areas of public administration.

Structural Change

One of the most common solutions to service integration lies in merging agencies and creating super-departments, although this can shift the coordination problems elsewhere. New Zealand developed a system with two different kinds of ministers - 'vote' ministers who negotiated outputs and secured budget allocations, and 'responsible' ministers who represented government agencies from a supply perspective. The distinction was sometimes made between the government's 'ownership' interest and its 'purchase' interest (the latter being concerned with the delivery of outputs).

Case Study 6: Australia's Centrelink

Centrelink (www.centrelink.gov.au) was established by the Australian federal government in 1997 as a one-stop shop for a variety of welfare services. It pro-vides services for two major policy departments that purchase front-desk services from Centrelink, so that welfare beneficiaries only have to tell their story to government once. Reorganising social welfare transactions in this way enabled Centrelink to present government's services according to 'life events' such as 'looking for work' or 'planning your retirement', rather than the categories that made sense to individual departments.

It was established as an arms-length agency with its own board, and with quasi-contractual relationships with its client departments. Centrelink was able to rationalise the number of service outlets, and create a single website and a central call centre. Over time, it has also been able to negotiate arrangements with other departments to serve as their 'front desk'.

Centrelink is widely regarded as having delivered its objectives, although it has not been without its challenges. Aligning file structures across departments and creating a centralised database raised privacy concerns. In some cases, government wished to give new policy initiatives a distinctive brand, and insisted that Centrelink should not function


Page 27


as the one-stop shop. And the separation of policy and delivery into separate agencies proved to be difficult to maintain.

Cross-cutting Reviews

In some policy areas, such as crime reduction and children at risk, where a number of different departments and agencies have a stake, the answers lie in cross-departmental reviews. Joint programmes can be established to target such issues on a collaborative basis, with integrated teams and 'joint budgets' financed out of a common fund. The UK has adopted this approach in recent years in dealing with priority issues such as drug abuse and mental health.

Place Management

Place management solutions are based on devolving authority and spending responsibility to neighbourhoods and communities. They focus on ends rather than means, addressing the outcomes desired for a particular locality. In the more radical proposals, budgets may be united under a local 'place manager'.

In the United States, place management was often known as 'comprehensive community initiatives'. In Australia, 'single area budgets' were developed as a way of integrating federal, state and local government programmes that impacted on a single community.

Case Management

Case management - coordinating the delivery of multiple services to target populations - is another long-established method of joining up services, particularly welfare-related services. Typically it is expensive, and so tends to be reserved for high priority services, or where the costs of a lack of coordination are high.

This same approach of relying on a 'service champion' can be adopted in giving stakeholders a voice in government. The UK government has recently announced that it will appoint 'Customer Group Directors' to represent sectors of the community within government, such as small businesses and the aged.

Shared Services

Another form of joined up government where there is currently a great deal of interest is in 'shared services', particularly in corporate support. In the UK, the NHS has formed NHS Shared Business Services (www.sbs.nhs.uk), a joint venture with a private company, to provide finance, accounting and payroll services to public healthcare organisations. The scheme is voluntary, but participating organisations are guaranteed a 20% initial cost reduction and ongoing savings of 2% a year, with timely and high quality reports.


The concept can equally extend to customer service centres and other front-desk facilities. Australia's Centrelink is a shared service centre for customer-facing transactions.

In 2006, the American states of Iowa, Maine and Vermont formed a drug-purchasing pool to negotiate collectively for discounts in drug costs under the Medicare and Medicaid. School districts in the United States are creating shared service arrangements to take advantage of scale economies whilst remaining grounded in the local community.

Police forces in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire (in England) have been collaborating with a view to increasing effectiveness and reducing costs. A Joint Governance Board was created, with the chair rotating between Chief Constables. The original services targeted for study were call-handling, firearms-licensing, major investigations and scientific services. This was later extended to include custody, property, fleet and procurement.

One-stop shops

One-stop shops were long discredited as a solution, since without major restructuring, they place another layer between the public and the officials who will eventually resolve their concerns. These arrangements can to be known as 'first-stop shops' and, in France, 'foyers'.

However, web-based technologies have created renewed interest in one-stop shops. The Singapore government broke new ground in 1999 in creating a single gateway to government informa-tion and service, known as the eCitizen Portal. It was quickly copied by other governments around the world: Singov (www.gov.sg) in Singapore, DirectGov (www.direct.gov.uk/en/index.htm) in the UK, and USA.gov (www.usa.gov) in the US are the descendants of these early initiatives.

Over the past decade, many American cities have developed 311 call systems a single phone number to provide quick access to non-emergency services - with callers directed to the appropriate part of government within seconds. Across America they have been tagged with the slogan, 'One call to city hall'.

No Wrong Door

Instead of joining up the front office or the back office, government can join up the intermediate systems so that different departments function as a front door to each other's services. This approach recognises that the public may call upon government's services in a variety of different ways, and seeks to ensure that regardless of the way in which the approach was first made, services are provided in a coherent and coordinated manner.

The idea appears to have been pioneered in the social welfare sector in



Page 29


Arizona in 1998, when it was recognised that the need for welfare assistance might manifest itself as an education problem, a health problem, a housing problem or a law and order problem, and that the need for coordinated services remained the same no matter what the point of entry. The concept was quickly adopted in other states, although it has proved difficult to implement.

In the United States, 'No Wrong Door' has been applied most often in social welfare services, but the London Devel-opment Agency has recently adopted a similar approach in serving small business. Success depends heavily on the development of common supporting informational, technological and policy architecture.

Alternative channels

In many situations, citizens engage with public and private sector organisations in the same transaction. In renewing a motor vehicle registration, a driver will also need to renew his insurance. In submitting a return and paying her taxes, a taxpayer will need to interact with banks and accountants as well as government.

Some citizens have asked why related public and private services cannot be joined up in a single, integrated service, and some private providers have challenged the assumption that government needs to remain the sole channel for delivering such services.

Australia continues to enforce a strict system of visas, but since 1996, visitors from many countries have been able to obtain electronic travel authorities (ETAs) through a network of around 300,000 travel agents worldwide. The government has maintained its visa system, but it is invisible to the individual tourist.

In the United States, a voluntary organisation, Earth911, has brought together information on the state of the environment from more than 10,000 communities across America, particularly through its Beach Water Quality service (www.earth911.org/ waterquality/index.asp?cluster=0). Earth911 has been able to convince federal, state, local and voluntary organisations to share information, where government organisations like the Environmental Protection Agency had believed it was impossible.


Page 30

Further Reading

Public engagement

'Power to the People', Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd, March 2006 (http:// www.jrrt.org.uk/PowertothePeople_001. pdf)

Gerry Stoker, Why Politics Matter, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Customer-centric government

Charles Leadbeater, 'Personalisation through participation', London: Demos, 2004.

OECD,'Responsive Government: Service Quality Initiatives', OECD Publishing, February 2006.

On choice, see The Centre for Market and Public Organisation at http://www.bris.ac. uk/Depts/CMPO/research/choice/ choiceindex.htm

From policy to delivery

'The UK Government's Approach to Public Service Reform', London: The Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, 2006, Chapter 5.

Managing for results

Dall Forsythe (ed.), Quicker, Better, Cheaper? Managing Performance in American Government, Albany, New York: Rockefeller Institute Press, 2001.

Teresa Curristine, 'Government Performance: Lessons and Challenges',

OECD Journal of Budgeting, (2005) 5:1, pp.127-151.

Market instruments

Stephen Goldsmith and William D. Eggers, Governing by Network: The New Shape of the Public Sector, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2004.

'The UK Government's Approach to Public Service Reform', London: The Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, 2006, Chapter 6,

Joined up government

'Modernising Government', Cm 4310, London: The Stationery Office Limited, 1999; Performance and Innovation Unit, 'Wiring It Up: Whitehall's Management of Cross-Cutting Policies and Services', London: Cabinet Office, 2000

Christopher Pollitt, 'Joined-Up Government: A Survey', Political Studies Review, 2003, Vol.1, pp.34-49.

Efficiency Unit13/F., West Wing, Central Government Offices 11 Ice House StreetCentralHong Kong

Email: [email protected]: 2165 7255Fax: 2881 8447website: www.eu.gov.hk

香港特別行政區政府THE GOVERNMENT OF THE HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

Public Sector Reform: An International Overview …...in the public sector embracing more than 600...

Documents

Transcript of Public Sector Reform: An International Overview …...in the public sector embracing more than 600...