We are living in a time of great and accelerating changes. The revolution in information and communications technology is transforming the way services are delivered. At the same time, successful businesses have redoubled their efforts to place customer needs at the core of everything they do. As a result, expectations are rising, expectations that do not discriminate between public and private sector standards – posing considerable challenges to all those involved in public service delivery

The search for new ways of doing things is at the heart of the Modernising Government agenda. Simply increasing spending on our schools, hospitals and welfare system without demanding reform will not, of itself, generate the improvements in performance that we all want to see. If we are not creative, if we do not find new solutions, we will fail in our desire to deliver the best possible services to the public. Its that simple. And so, I am very pleased to have the chance to highlight the achievements of the organisations who took part in this the foundation year of the PwC award for Innovation and Risk Management.

As you can see from the displays around the room it is encouraging that new approaches are being attempted for such a diverse range of challenges. Some themes stand out such as strong customer focus, partnership with all stakeholders, and in many cases the exploitation of new technology. They provide evidence that innovation does not rely just on one or two visionaries. It is a discipline which any organisation can learn, if it is determined to succeed.

The projects taking part in this Award show that every public sector organisation has the potential to have an innovation culture. Through quality and project management disciplines we are laying the essential foundations for such a culture. Of course, you need more than that: you need senior managers who will champion good ideas and are prepared to delegate more; you need staff who are motivated to make suggestions, who are given ownership of those suggestions, and recognition for their contribution; and you need systems in place to manage the free flow of ideas in both directions. Above all, there needs to be a determination to produce something better than what went before; as an entrant said to one of the judges "They kept telling us we can’t do this, and we never really accepted that !" – Good for them !

The competition is also about how the public sector approaches risk – a highly topical issue as departments start to produce their own risk frameworks. This is an area in which we are already working with Steve Beet of PwC and the National Audit Office in the development of guidance for risk management in government. We see acceptance of risk as pivotal to making the sorts of improvements that the public expect. Culturally, I accept that this will be difficult to embed. Some restraints won’t go away – public accountability will always be an absolute, whilst many public services are sole providers too important "to bet the business". But we can try to change the traditionally risk averse culture of the civil service and to instill more effective mechanisms to evaluate risk and to manage it. To their great credit, all of the shortlisted entries took considerable risks which they effectively controlled. They all understood that not changing things can be a form of risk.

I am very pleased that the competition will be opened to a much wider section of the public sector next year. Its nice to hand out awards but the most important thing about the competition is the opportunity it provides to share experience. The more entrants, the more we can learn from each other. At the risk of sounding naïve, it would be good to have some ideas submitted that were particularly creative, where the risks were effectively managed, but didn’t in fact succeed. As Woody Allen once said "If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative". Whether its possible I don’t know, but we ought to try to develop a more mature attitude to this particular F word.

PwC, and before that Pricewaterhouse, have given a great deal of support over the last decade to the Next Steps programme through the Best Agency Reports and Accounts competition. I am very pleased that this link is to continue with the new competition. Before, handing over to Jan Gower, I would like to thank her and her team, the judging panel and, of course, all the applicants for putting so much time and effort into the competition.