Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to be here this morning to talk about the Government’s plans for delivering efficient, high quality public services. As the Minister in the Cabinet Office responsible for ensuring that we deliver the Modernising Government vision, I am very pleased to see so many of you today.

At this conference there are representatives from right across the whole public sector. All of you are responsible for delivering important services to the public, or for creating policies which determine the shape of those services. The Cabinet Office wants to work with you to achieve a step change in service delivery.

At this point I should say that my background is in the public sector. I am totally supportive of the public sector. I worked in the public sector in local government and my first involvement in active politics was working in public sector unions. I am used to partnership between the public sector and other parts of our society.

During that time I saw and experienced both positive and negative aspects of the public sector. But, through it all I saw the potential and the reality of changing lives, engaging the community to improve services through regeneration and public/private partnerships. In short, raising standards to the best.

So I understand some of the problems you face, and I want to help you overcome them. We are talking about reform, not dismantling the real achievements already secured. But we now need to modernise and change.

What I want to focus on today is taking forward the modernising agenda and the practical aspects of its implementation. We must all raise our standards until they match the best within and outside the public sector. And once we are as good at the best, we must still improve.

We are committed to excellence. To delivering efficient, responsive, high quality and integrated public services. That is why we are here today.

Modernising Government Agenda

The Modernising Government White Paper sets the agenda for us all. We aim to:

• Deliver efficient high-quality public services.

• Achieve continuous improvement in central government policy making and service delivery.

• Raise the quality of all public services to the standards of the best and make the best better.

I want to talk to you today about these themes from the Modernising Government White Paper. In particular, I want to talk to you about eight key issues:

1. Quality Schemes – new drive on public sector excellence

2. The work of the Quality Schemes Task Force

3. The TNT Modernising Government Partnership Awards

4. Sharing knowledge and learning from Best Practice

5. A new initiative on Benchmarking

6. Beacon scheme

7. Best Practice Website

8. The importance of Senior Management Support

1. Quality Schemes

Quality is at the heart of any successful organisation. Public Services must deliver the policies and services of government efficiently and effectively. My Department is helping to promote and facilitate change by challenging, and by spreading good practice. But it is you that must deliver.

Quality schemes can help us to achieve these aims. The Modernising Government White Paper encourages all public sector organisations to use one of the main quality schemes. Whether this is the Excellence Model, Charter Mark, Investors in People or ISO 9000, we know, from what you tell us, that they deliver real improvements.

Quality is vital to the Modernising Government agenda and the Excellence Model is central to this.

I am pleased to announce a new drive on public sector excellence. The Cabinet Office, in partnership with the British Quality Foundation is pursuing a new joint marketing plan to increase the number of users of the Excellence Model. Not only are we promoting use of the Excellence Model to raise awareness and interest. We want to see that interest turned into action.

I hope that all of you here today go away at the end of this conference and act on what you learn. If you are not using the Excellence Model, don’t just think about it, think about it and then use it.

2. Quality Schemes Task Force

I know many of you are keen to understand how the different quality schemes fit together and how the schemes fit other initiatives. Sometimes it must appear as if it’s one initiative or scheme after another. How many of you are familiar with a tale which runs – we did Charter Mark two years ago, then Investors in People and now we’re doing the Excellence Model. Often staff will be confused and it appears that different schemes are being put on trial, one after another. Just like catching a bus, if you miss one scheme and wait a while, three more will come along.

I have some sympathy with this position. This is why the Government asked the Modernising Government Quality Schemes Task Force to report on how the different quality schemes fit together. So we can enhance their overall impact.

We asked them to find the best ways of identifying and promoting best practice. And whether we could improve guidance to services. In this way we hope to contribute to improving the quality of services.

For example:

• How do quality schemes fit in with Best Value?
  
• Will the schemes help us to deliver its requirements?
  
• And how do the schemes fit to other initiatives?

We have aimed to help you make sense of the many worthwhile initiatives available.

The Quality Schemes Task Force has now reported. I have agreed a ten-point action plan to take forward their recommendations. These include:

• the production of guidance linking quality schemes with Best Value

• the production of general guidance on quality schemes and other initiatives which is intended for the spring

• We will also promote co-ordinated marketing of the main quality schemes.

Leave your name at the Modernising Public Services Group’s exhibition stand if you would like a copy of the report from the Cabinet Office.

Back in September I launched the TNT Modernising Government Partnership Awards. The awards are based on the partnership elements of the Excellence Model. We designed the Partnership Awards around the Model so as not to present you with yet another initiative.

Working in partnership is an excellent way of improving services for users. The Cabinet Office is itself working in partnership with TNT to deliver this award. I am delighted to tell you that we have received over 60 applications for these awards.

All citizens want efficient, high quality services. We must encourage a commitment to quality and continuous improvement, and ensure that public bodies know how to turn this commitment into results. It is no longer acceptable to stick with the traditional. We need to keep pace with the rate at which the world is changing. In many cases your customers cannot go elsewhere. So it is even more important that all public sector organisations innovate and continually strive to do things better. The best public sector organisations have shown an ability to innovate and improve. All of us must follow their example and improve the quality of public services everywhere.

The best organisations have a major role to play in sharing their knowledge. But this does not apply only to the best. There are very many good ideas across the whole public sector. We all have something to learn but all of us also have something to teach. Listen to your staff. They know the best way to do their jobs. Listen to your friends and colleagues from different organisations. Listen to each other here today. But be prepared to talk as well and pass on your knowledge to others. By sharing and learning from each other we will improve.

5. New initiative on benchmarking

It is so important that all our public services learn from each other and improve that we are planning a new initiative on benchmarking.

I am pleased to announce that we plan to establish a new UK Public Sector Benchmarking Office to promote benchmarking more widely across government. This will encourage organisations to share knowledge and learn from the best.

This new office will be a partnership between Cabinet Office and Customs and Excise, building on Customs and Excise’s experience of using benchmarking techniques to achieve savings.

For example, the VAT Central Unit at Customs and Excise saved the taxpayer £12m in interest alone by improving the percentage of cheques it banks the same day from 31% to 97%.

The new Benchmarking Office will provide a central focus for exchange of good practice and will consolidate existing work on benchmarking and best practice.

Other central government organisations will be involved with this initiative at an early stage. We will also take a leading role in working with other European partners to ensure the use of benchmarking is increased.

As part of our commitment to sharing best practice, the Modernising Government White Paper stated our intention to launch a new beacon scheme. You will all have heard of beacon councils, beacon schools and beacons in the health sector.

The new scheme is for central government departments, agencies and Non Departmental Public Bodies. It will encourage Charter Mark holders and high-scoring users of the Excellence Model to stage open days for peer organisations so that we can learn from each other’s good practice.

Its aim is to identify the good practices that quality systems engender and to encourage the widespread adoption of these practices within the public sector.

Charter Mark holders often reap the benefits from systematic consultation or integrated working with other organisations. Excellence Model users may belong to any one of a number of networking groups and so share good ideas. But there is much more to be done. We must make these ideas available to all.

The new scheme will run along the lines of the DTI’s "Inside UK Enterprise" scheme. It will identify organisations using good practice and help them to champion their ideas throughout the public sector through open days, through the Cabinet Office’s best practice website, via seminars and in other ways.

The first round of the scheme will be launched this spring. In April we will be inviting applications and will start the search for the first group of 20 to 25 beacons to host open days. We are looking at the idea of inviting the organisations holding the three best open days to 10 Downing Street to outline what they are doing direct to the Prime Minister.

So if you have a good story to tell on the use of the Charter Mark or the Excellence Model in your own organisation, you should start thinking now about an application. But if not, you can certainly visit others on an open day.

Leave your name at our exhibition stand if you want more details.

We have set up a best practice site on the Cabinet Office web site to encourage the sharing of good ideas across the public sector.

It has three main elements:

• a library of links to sources of good practice information on the web, both in the UK and overseas;
• a virtual library containing electronic copies of Cabinet Office good practice guides; and
• a database containing hundreds of examples from across the public sector of the many ideas being tried out to improve service delivery.

This database adds value to existing initiatives by providing easy access to other people’s good ideas. For example:

• Longdale High School has developed a series of agreements on the quantity and quality of service to be achieved by the school, its pupils, parents and other partners in such areas as progression at 16, destination of leavers, and attendance.

• North Manchester Healthcare Trust, Audiology Department has introduced Saturday appointments to help parents and carers. Attendance is 100% against 50% at normal clinics, with a consequential reduction in waiting times.

• The Council Tax and Business Rate Department of Welwyn and Hatfield Council has made the mailing of year-end bills self-financing by issuing enveloped bills to the Post Office in the required order. The discount achieved is greater than the cost of the mailing contract.

If you have internet access and you haven’t already visited the site, I commend it to you. And if you’ve ideas to contribute to the database, we would be delighted to hear from you. You can send your ideas in electronically via the best practice site or in the post. The site can be found at www.servicefirst.gov.uk.

Alternatively, the site is being demonstrated on the Modernising Public Services Group’s stand in the exhibition area during breaks, so why not have a look then?

8. Senior Management Support

Before I close, I should like to say something about the importance of senior management support for implementing change. The Excellence Model takes as its starting point that leaders should be role models and be personally involved in improvement activity. Experience from users over the last few years tells us that the successful introduction of quality schemes into an organisation is made very much easier with the support of senior management. Without that support, it is not impossible, but it is extremely difficult.

Senior managers have a key role to play in delivering the modernising agenda. We need to make the changes that improve people’s lives. Generating those changes will involve commitment over a sustained period. We are looking to you to make that commitment.

Ladies and gentlemen I am committed to public services. You are committed to public services. A great deal is happening, much has been achieved already although there is much still to do.

However, working together we can revolutionise the delivery of public services so that they are not only the best but also the envy of the world.

Over the next two days you will hear from a range of speakers and practitioners. You will learn from them and learn from each other. I very much hope that all of you will leave this conference full of ideas, positive about change and ready to deliver efficient, effective and high quality public services.

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