EFFIZIENTER STAAT 2000

Berlin

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today.

I have been asked to talk to you about the public sector reforms my Government is putting in place in the United Kingdom.

It will not be the most exciting speech I’ve ever given – but it is one of the most important.

The role of the state and the services it provides are crucial – central to people’s lives. And central, as a result, to how they view politics.

Services can quite literally be a matter of life and death. Of families being started. Of children’s care and health and education. Of getting a job – or losing it. Of relatives needing care. Of retirement and bereavement.

All of these are important episodes in our lives. At some point or another most of them will involve the state.

As we enter the 21^st century, society is changing. Changing in new and fundamental ways, for example:

• the globalisation of our markets
• changing structures of the family
• changing patterns of work – including female labour.

All these will have an impact on how politics works – how government, politicians and the civil service adapt to meet public needs and expectations.

If we don’t adapt people will look for alternative ways of getting their needs met.

In the good old evolutionary way, we must adapt to survive.

The changes I mention are being hurried along by technological change. IT, e-commerce and the Internet are quickly becoming part of people’s lives – but not all.

This change needs to be managed - not only to provide efficiently and effectively the services people expect but, equally importantly, to consider the needs of the people working in the public services.

In the UK, that means 500,000 civil servants – but if you include local government, teachers, doctors, the police and others, there are 10 times that many – 5 million public servants.

My role

Before I talk in more detail about what we are doing, let me tell you what I do in the Cabinet Office.

I work closely with the Prime Minister on two kinds of issues:

• those which are, or have the potential to become, politically difficult

• those which need cross-departmental working – joined-up government as we call it – simply put, co-ordination.

Often the two types of issues can be the same:

For example, on drugs we have a 10 year strategy which is tough on dealers and pushers. It has 3 priorities – prevention, treatment, and stopping drugs entering the country.

It is focussed on the young, with targets to reduce consumption of all drugs, and in particular the most dangerous drugs like heroin and cocaine.

On GM foods we have had to address public concern and continue to have a relationship with the biotechnology industries, agreed for the next 3 years. There has to be a scientific basis for advancement and we’ve got to retain a neutral and balanced judgement.

On regulation there is a balance to be stuck again, between the health and safety of public and not overburdening industry big and small. Combined with that we are getting mechanisms to deliver deregulations.

On rural affairs we are looking at delivering good services and a better infrastructure for everyone who lives in the countryside – support for small schools, village shops and post offices, new local public transport services.

Modernising Government is an ambitious overall strategy for delivering better, more flexible and more focussed services to the public. This encompasses many things, one of the most important being equality and diversity, where we have set placed a duty on all public bodies to promote equality and diversity, and set targets to double the numbers of women and members of the ethnic minorities in senior positions in the civil service.

Simple Lessons Learnt

If the process is not inclusive of all interested departments and doesn’t take on board local government issues it is less likely to work.

If the process is not carried out in partnership with those people in the community receiving the service, it will be less likely to succeed.

People need to be treated fairly – and so our policies on health and education apply across the country:

• standards
• class sizes
• literacy and numeracy hours.

But targets and standards mean we have to do more in deprived neighbourhoods to meet the targets set for the above on the levels of reading and numeracy by a certain age; class sizes no bigger than 30 for under 7’s; and mentoring.

Final Lessons Learnt

There is no one way to reach a solution, and many different options. That means that flexibility is crucial and must take into account the size of the local community, whether it’s urban or rural; ethnicity.

All of this demands an inclusive approach, involves listening to people and working in partnership.

We have to accept that for people in the government – both politicians and civil service – change can be difficult. Equally, the public do not necessarily like change until it is seen to bring benefits.

So we have to:

• hold and build trust and confidence

• build momentum to achieve change, and get results which we can show to the public. But not so quickly that they fall by the wayside.

• be clear where we are going and think of change in terms of ‘bite-sized’ chunks.

So what are we actually doing?

To change the culture in any organisation is a big task. When you are trying to change a whole sector the words ‘big task’ do not adequately describe what needs to be done.

People are impatient for change – both inside and outside the public services. But I think that they see that we have to get this right and there’s no point taking short cuts.

Our commitment to modernise our public services is based on five separate but linked commitments.

1

The first is policy-making. Our record on policy-making, from inception to implementation, is being looked at. It is clear historically that there are some areas, particularly on social policy, where government’s record of finding effective solutions across departments has not been good.

We have concentrated on the priorities of health, education and crime.

On health we have provided £21bn over three years, together with £2bn extra in the last budget.

We are linking this to restructuring the NHS, having ended the internal market and replaced them with the first wave of primary care trusts.

We have started the biggest new hospital building programme ever and provided the money to train 5000 new nurses. By the end of this year we will have modernised 170 Accident and Emergency units and opened 6 new NHS walk-in centres.

And we have developed the 24 hr advice service NHS Direct, which we are extending over the whole country.

In addition to the education policies we have put in place to reduce class sizes and raise standards, we are investing £19bn over three years in teachers, school buildings and teaching materials.

With our social exclusion agenda, we are tackling some of the difficult areas of social policy to deliver real and lasting change for the most vulnerable people in our society.

Teenage pregnancies, the worst housing estates, people sleeping rough and so on: areas where no one organisation is been responsible but where everyone knows that we have a problem.

These can be the issues which fall between the gaps between departments.

The Social Exclusion Unit’s task is to assemble teams drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds – not just the civil service or the wider public sector – whose task is to analyse and come up with better policy prescriptions across government in order to deal with these problems.

Another example of our approach to policy making is in regulatory control. For we must not forget business when we talk about government’s customers. So, we are taking a comprehensive forward look at each Department’s policy proposals for the next two to three years so that we have a strategic overview of regulatory activity, can plan our activities accordingly, and take away some of the uncertainties for business. I know that here in Germany you are working in similar areas.

We have got to look at the potential downsides of too much regulation for business or public servants – such as teachers or doctors.

Of course, as usual there are two sides to this debate, and what is important is to present alternatives, which is what our Better Regulation Taskforce does to ministers.

This raises the issue of risk for governments – how we take risks and make judgements, and how we communicate them to the public.

If we take two prime examples from Britain, which had parallels in Europe too, in different ways – BSE and Y2K (or the Millennium Bug) – we can see how preparedness for problems and the ability to react once problems are identified can be difficult calls to make.

2

The second is more responsive public services, so that they meet the needs of citizens, not the convenience of the service providers.

That’s all very well to say, but it is vital to consult people about their concerns and the problems they have with public services.

One such mechanism for consultation is the People’s Panel. This is a cross-section made up of 5,000 people from whom we can seek answers about public service developments. This is a world first.

We also have programmes for listening to specific groups in our society. For example around 30,000 women took part in a recent exercise – Listening to Women. This tells us about the effect of the direction of current policies on this group and the way they would like to see policies progress in the future.

We also have the Better Government for Older People programme, and the Better Government for Ethnic Minorities initiative, which listen to those specific sections of the community.

But listening is not enough. We know that we must deliver services that fit the convenience of the citizen. They do not care greatly who supplies the services, so long as they are responsive, accessible and of high quality.

We have set up teams of volunteer public servants who tested a range of public services from the customer’s point of view. This entailed them actually using services themselves. They looked at life episodes such as job seeking, requiring long term care, and bereavement. Some services worked very well. But there were others that did not.

Some of the issues we are tackling through this initiative are easier access to information about public services, simpler forms and 24 hours a day, seven days a week government services that meet people’s needs, where there is a demand.

But it is very important to keep personal contact there for people, and in this context I must mention One Stop Shops. They can take the form of places people visit to get advice and information about different services. Or they can be 'virtual' one-stop shops, available via the telephone or the Internet. They reduce the number of separate visits people have to make to get services.

They also lead to a more efficient use of resources by service providers. Thus lone parents living in one part of London, Camden, can now claim for a range of different types of state benefit using a telephone-claim to a call centre. They do not have to provide much the same information separately to three organisations as was previously the case. There are many others like this now on line and in the pipeline.

Some initiatives have been helped through securing funds through our Invest to Save Budget, which is spending £230m over 3 years to fund projects involving two or more public bodies getting together to deliver services that are more innovative, more joined up, more locally responsive and more efficient. About half the projects funded so far are piloting new ways of joint working that have the potential to be used more widely within the public sector.

3

The third of our commitments is to quality public services.

We are developing the new outcome targets for central government in the Public Service Agreements that include a focus on real improvements in the quality and effectiveness of public services.

These are drawn up by organisations, underwritten by departmental Ministers and monitored with rigour by a committee of Cabinet Ministers, including me.

They are also published, including on the Internet, so that citizens can see what organisations are promising to do and whether or not they deliver.

Raising the standards. Making organisations think hard about what they can achieve for the public and the money Parliament grants them on the public’s behalf. Openness in action!

We have a number of ways of spreading best practice on achieving higher quality services within the public sector. We have Beacon local government Councils, Beacon hospitals within the National Health Service and Beacon Schools.

We also make widespread use of the various networks for quality schemes like Charter Mark, IIP and the EFQM Excellence Model

4

The fourth commitment concerns information age government.

We’ve promised that information and communications technology will be used to support better services to the public. And we have promised that we won’t trail behind technological developments.

Examples of some of the things citizens will be able to do include on-line tax filing to the Inland Revenue – the UK’s tax authority. Not everyone’s idea of an innovation I dare say, but important nonetheless.

All job vacancies notified to our Employment Service are posted on the Internet – imagine what a difference that will make to those with difficult access to our towns and cities. 89% of our public libraries now have an Internet connection, and we are developing new, socially-inclusive access to a range of web-based services previously only available to those with personal computers.

And the people that work in central government can speak to each other electronically using the Government Secure Intranet. Joining-up in a virtual way what cannot do physically.

Within the next three years, our aim is that people will be able electronically to:

• Look for work and be matched to jobs;
• Get information and advice about benefits;
• Apply for training loans and student support;
• Submit tax returns and VAT returns;
• Book driving and theory tests
• Apply for regional business support grants
• Be paid by government for goods and services
• And notify different parts of government of details, such as change of address through one transaction.

And we have set ourselves the firm target of having 100% of government services available electronically by 2005.

Just as important is the e-government strategy, which we’ve just launched. This means government working on the kinds of IT which people will very soon take for granted from the private sector, and which we must keep up with - websites, call centres and digital TV.

5

The fifth commitment is about the public service itself. We must value public service and public servants. If we do not then all that I have said up until now simply falls away.

A highly motivated, well trained and resourced public service is important. And it will deliver what is needed.

We have also published plans to modernise the civil service, and revise performance management arrangements. We’re tackling the under-representation of women, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities – in part by aiming to double their number in senior position within 4 years.

Diversity isn’t an afterthought. It’s fundamental.

The Civil Service must also change with the times. No organisation can succeed if it stands still.

We know that we cannot achieve change simply by imposing from the top and ownership and commitment are crucial to the success of change programme.

From the outset our reforms have involved trade unions and they have given their broad support to the process. This partnership approach will be vital to its success.

Civil Service reform will not follow a centrally driven, prescriptive approach. Departments have flexibility to be creative in how they deliver the key actions.

But the agenda is not just organisational change but also cultural change. And all staff must have the chance to participate and have their voice heard.

In the future, the Civil Service will be more accessible and open and about what it does.

It will be more responsive to public need, be more creative and welcoming of innovative ideas; and it will be strongly led, with a clear sense of purpose.

It will be more willing to take risks and learn from mistakes when they are made and will reward good performance and tackle poor performers more rigorously.

And it will be a more open organisation, welcoming diversity at all levels and benefiting from their knowledge and experience of different work cultures.

This commitment to diversity, and our strategic approach to innovation and information age government, are our enablers. Without meeting our targets for both of these we stand little chance of meeting our other commitments.

I hope that this brief tour of what we’re doing was useful and informative. I’ve just scratched the surface on what we have done.

I hope you can see the direction in which we are heading. It is early days and we have a long way to go, and we have still to get full buy-in across the board.

We must produce quick, small results to keep up the momentum.

It won’t be easy but a crucial step to make progress.

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