Davis G, Weller P, Craswell E, Eggins SPublic Administration, (UK), 1999 Vol 77 No 1

Start page: 7. No of pages: 44.

Analyses how the structure of government has been changed in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom over the past thirty years, focusing on the changes made to departmental structures. Examines three major influences on the departments – the parties in government, prime ministers in office and the electoral cycle. Searches for the principles that underpin the organization of government departments, reviewing the rationales that have been set out for the change. Concludes that shape of government departments is a product of prime ministerial interests, pressing policy issues and administrative convenience – the decision based on the need to ‘satisfy’ rather than first principles. Sets out the conditions that explain the patterns of change within government.

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Police forces, like hospitals, achieve widely differing levels of performance. Until now there has been no way to group the various measures together to present a balanced scorecard. Neither has it been possible to set common efficiency targets for all forces, recognising those that perform best and are most efficient. A report by the Treasury’s Public Services Productivity Panel claims to have solved this problem. The author of the report, Clare Spottiswoode, Associate Partner at PA Consulting, demonstrates how the use of two efficiency-measuring techniques – Stochastic Frontier Analysis and Data Envelopment Analysis on a small number of Best Value outcome measures can produce an overall efficiency measure.The technique allows the relative efficiency of each police force to be assessed. It is then becomes possible to rank forces into bands of relative efficiency, with forces in the lower bands being asked to make up about half of the gap between themselves and the top performing forces. Top forces would be given comparatively smaller targets. This approach can be readily integrated into the Best Value regime with the new efficiency targets being incorporated into Performance Plans.

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The concern about the difference in performance between the best and the worst hospitals has been heightened by a new survey. 112,000 patients who had suffered coronary heart disease and were discharged from hospital in 1998 were asked to complete a 20 page questionnaire. The survey results are based on the 84,300 questionnaires returned by ex patients.The survey found that the better hospitals achieve performance results that are about twice as high as those that perform badly. In the better hospitals, 16% of patients waited for more than 3 months before admission, compared to 53% in others. On arrival at hospital 25% of patients had to wait more than 10 minutes for attention, but this rose to 57% in others. 12% of patients felt they had not been sufficiently involved in decisions about their treatment in the best performing hospitals, but this rose to 27% in those performing badly.

Read more on GULF BETWEEN BEST AND WORST HOSPITALS CONFIRMED…