The Government is attempting to give added clout to achieving climate change. It has asked the Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment to work with it to advise on options for a “Climate Change Office”.It will shortly publish its draft programme for all sectors of the UK to cut greenhouse gas emissions and The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister have been setting out the business advantages of being a world leader in the field.
Construction procurement by local councils has come into the frame for modernisation. Because modern approaches to this form of procurement are a key to achieving Best Value a ‘Rethink Construction’ initiative was launched last year.Councils have put forward 70 projects to show how the new thinking works in practice. Because of the many and varied constraints and the major changes to culture needed before new systems can be adopted, progress is very slow. Making the demonstration projects available for inspection is unlikely to change many minds because adoption of the new approach requires a radical change in the corporate organisation .
Health Minister John Denham has criticised Health Authorities for failing to support Primary Care Groups. The 400 Groups were launched in April 1999 and given the task of integrating existing arrangements and developing new ways of providing primary care for their communities.While many of the Groups have been empowered by their Health Authority to deliver more accessible and convenient local health services, others have been restrained and starved of cash. A briefing paper published recently by the Audit Commission described how many Groups have been held back by limited resources and poor access to data. The scale of the disparity of treatment can be judged from the management budgets allocated to Groups which range from 1 pound 51p. per head to 7 pounds 10p. per head.
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Tong C H, Straussman J D, Broadnax W DPublic Administration and Development, (UK), Vol 19 No 2
Start page: 193. No of pages: 14
Discusses attempts by the People’s Republic of China to reform its civil service along the lines of the Western civil service model contained in the Provisional Regulations on State Civil Servants signed in 1993. Describes the old cadre system and its defects; outlines the objectives of reform – the establishment of a professional administrative corps, a merit-based performance evaluation system, open and fair competition in recruitment and promotion and a system based on the ‘rule of law’ rather than the ‘rule of man’. Considers the challenges facing implementation of the reform, for example, the necessity to balance the Communist Party’s prerogatives with administrative autonomy, the measurement and evaluation of performance, the transformation of administrative culture which requires a change in people’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviour, and balancing the requirement for uniformity with a wide diversity of regional circumstances. Sets out the implications of reform and offers case study examples of reform in practice.
Only half of local authorities in England and Wales have so far signed up to the Enforcement Concordat which was launched last year. It sets out a code of practice for fair regulation of business and requires a new approach to enforcement with the emphasis on prevention before prosecution and dialogue between businesses and enforcers. It was drawn up by central and local Government in consultation with consumer and business groups. The In the last six months about 100 authorities have signed up, but this is well below the expected take up rate.The difficulty for councils is that they have to redesign procedures and persuade their staff to think differently about the job they are doing. Because the change involves costs with limited benefits, signing up to the Concordat is low down on the change agenda. Cabinet Office Ministers wish to avoid compelling local authorities to sign up by introducing legislation and the response in the next few months will be critical in deciding whether to continue with the voluntary approach.
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Over 150 Youth Offending Teams will start work on 1 April 2000 as part of a package of measures to implement the Youth Justice strategy. The multi- agency teams will include social workers, police and probation officers, and education and health staff. They will co-ordinate and deliver the Youth Justice reforms locally and their work will be monitored by the Youth Justice Board.Pilot Youth Offending Teams have been operating in 10 areas since September 1998 to find out how best to implement intervention programmes to make youngsters face up to their crimes and change their attitudes. The pilots have helped to identify good practice and the measures they have developed are being evaluated by a team from Sheffield, Hull and Swansea Universities.
Local councils are responding to the difficulty of managing the complexities of Housing Benefit by putting the work out to contractors. The annual ITNET index shows that outsourcing of business processes by councils increased by 40% in 1999 and is now worth 143m pounds. Business processing has overtaken IT outsourcing which has increased marginally to 132m pounds.The National Housing Federation estimates that councils owe an estimated ?60 million in housing benefit to housing associations and it is calling on the government to take immediate action to remedy the problem. At the end of 1998 the DSS announced a programme to simplify and improve the delivery of housing benefit. This initiative was put on hold with the announcement of the Housing Green Paper, despite evidence that the administration of housing benefit was – in many areas – in chaos. In October 1999 Federation research showed that the average time taken to process a housing benefit claim was over three times longer than Government guidelines set out.The Department of Social Security is critical of the way in which councils manage Housing Benefit. It is estimated that some 900m pounds is lost annually through fraud and the Benefit Fraud inspection teams produce a steady stream of inspection reports highlighting weaknesses in council processes. The Institute of Economic Affairs has claimed that Housing Benefit is out of control.
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The campaign to change traditional working patterns and introduce flexibility and family friendly practices is starting to bite. Margaret Jay, Minister for Women, has been named as the campaign driver and the NHS has published a Flexible Working Toolkit that can be used by employers in the public and private sectors.Margaret Jay’s role will be to ensure that all employers are aware of the benefits of flexible, part time and home working. She has a particular responsibility to ensure that the 5 million public service workers have greater access to the various types of imaginative working practices that are already in operation across the sector.
Kouzmin A, Loffler E, Klages H, Korac-Kakabadse NThe International Journal of Public Sector Management, (UK), 1999 Vol 12 No 2. Start page: 119. No of pages: 24
Explores the difficulties associated with performance measurement in the public sector, and looks at benchmarking as a means of measuring levels of performance through the introduction of competition into a state system traditionally characterized by co-operation rather than competition. Describes the requirements of quality standard DIN ISO 9000-9004, internationally recognized as a benchmark for quality management, assessing its applicability to the public sector, and the virtue of citizens’ charters as official frameworks for assessing and awarding quality in the public sector. Looks at quality award competitions which raise a tension between competition and co-operation and tend to consider only good organizations, and therefore do not substitute for market competition. Questions whether benchmarking stimulates competition or fulfils the performance measurement needs of public organizations. Examines the progress from benchmarking to learning strategies within Europe, drawing a number of conclusions about expanding German and other European benchmarking experiences, which point towards benchmarking as an exceptional activity in many public sectors.
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