WRITTEN ON October 21st, 2004 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Across the Board

If we’re to get the benefit from the extra spend, public services need to simplify their delivery chains says the Public Accounts Committee. See extended text for story as reported on KableNet.

That would seem to chime neatly with what we want (see numerous postings below: less Kafka, fewer cooks, more humanity etc).

UK | National Government Publication date: 20 October 2004

PAC calls for simplified services

Government departments need to make their service delivery chains less complex, according to a parliamentary committee

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) expressed the view in a report published on 19 October 2004. It was based on how the Department for Education and Skills, the Department of Health and the Department for Transport are using their shares of the extra £61bn provided by the chancellor for public spending in 2002.
The PAC said there are a number of key issues that departments need to manage if they are to improve public services with the money. It stated that if departments minimise the complexities of their service delivery chains then fewer resources would be wasted on unnecessary bureaucracy.

They need to simplify their delivery chains and financing mechanisms, said the PAC.

Better planning and investment would provide sufficient numbers of skilled front line staff to make improvements sustainable in the longer term. Reliable information on benchmarking and productivity measures would help departments identify and tackle poor quality services quickly.

The committee also advocated devolving more responsibility for service delivery to the local level, but said departments need to retain sufficient leverage, including contingency plans, so that they can take prompt action to deal with unacceptable variations in service quality.

Edward Leigh MP, chair of the PAC, said: “It is vital that government departments charged with spending billions of pounds of extra taxpayer’s money, particularly in health, education and transport, make this count, resulting in real improvements in our public services.

“There are a number of key risks that must be properly managed to avoid this investment being swallowed up in extra bureaucracy, red tape and inefficiency.”