JOINED UP
PUBLIC SERVICES
Why Join Up?
Quite simply the Government want to achieve high quality, modern,
accessible and responsive services. We know from letters we receive that
many people feel that different Government services could work better
together. At many important times in their lives, people have to use
several Government services. There is a strong sense that links between
the different agencies do not always work as smoothly as they should.
We wanted to find out what people’s experiences of public services
were so we asked groups of public sector volunteers, called
Integrated-Service Teams, to put themselves in the position of a member of
the public experiencing one of seven these life events. Team members
contacted the relevant departments and agencies direct, and their research
gave us a useful insight into the problems resulting from the way services
are organised at the moment, and what might be done to improve things.
The life episodes we asked them to research were:
 | Leaving school |
| Becoming unemployed |
| Changing address |
| Having a baby |
| Retiring |
| Needing long-term care at home |
| Bereavement |
Many of the issues raised in the reports were common across all life
episodes. Click
here for a summary of the reports main findings.
We also commissioned research using the People's
Panel to examine the experiences of the "average citizen"
when using public services. The aim was to evaluate the service provided
within or across organisations and identify any opportunities for, or
obstacles to, improvement.
Having identified the problems, we wanted to start tackling them. We
set up Service Action Teams (SATs), with members drawn from across
Government, as well as the private and voluntary sectors, to look into the
change of address, long-term care, retirement and bereavement life
episodes (the ones that caused the most problems for people, and where
there are no other major initiatives taking place). A further SAT looked
at the general issue of improving access to information about services,
which was identified by all the teams as a problem area. Click here for a
summary of the Action
Plan.
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