JOINED UP PUBLIC SERVICES

Joined up working helps the Government deliver high quality, modern, accessible and responsive services; remove overlaps and duplication in delivery; and help drive out waste and inefficiency.

Welcome to the new Joined-Up Public Services website.

This site helps explain why public services are joining-up and illustrates what joined-up working really means. It doesn’t matter whether you are from Central or Local Government, the Voluntary or Community sector, this website will provide you with a wide range of information, including case studies and links on successful joined up working.

We would like your views on this site. Tell us how we can make the site better. Tell us what additional material you would like to see on the site. You may have examples of good practice in joined up worked that you would like share with others. Send your comments to ken.duncan@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk

Contents

Introduction

One of the main aims of the Government’s White Paper on Modernising Government, published on the 30 March 1999, is to encourage and facilitate more joined-up working between Government departments and agencies, and also with the rest of the public sector, like local government. The purpose being high quality, modern, accessible and responsive services.

Joining-up means making sure that citizens and businesses come first. It means a genuine partnership between those providing services and those using them. We know from our research that people have grown impatient of barriers to effective and convenient services that stem simply from the way government is organised. People should not have to worry about what part of government they are dealing with. The public sector must deliver services and programmes that are not only efficient and effective but also joined up and responsive. People have grown used to services being available when they want them and the Government is committed to making public services available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, where there is a demand.

We recognise that there are many barriers to providing services in the way people want them. The separation of government into different units ­ though necessary for administrative purposes ­ often means that people do not receive services in a co-ordinated way or that they receive multiple visits from different agencies. Individual agencies' performance targets and budgets can get in the way of them working together. Audit and inspection processes may hinder cross-cutting. Different government offices are often situated a long way apart from one another, and attempts to bring them together can be hampered by rules and regulations. And the multiplicity of administrative boundaries across the country can lead to inefficiency, complication and confusion.