By Amanda Edwards Reproduced by permission of the Centre for Management and Policy Studies. Modernizing government requires a change in policy making. The Centre for Management and Policy Studies surveyed the way departments are making policy and the author has selected examples of best practice. She also outlines the difficulties facing policy makers and calls for an exchange of ideas and sharing of experiences together with evidence of what works.

The NHS is to be given legal power to hang on to the value of its modernising ideas.The Government has given the NHS legal power to help it reap the rewards of its own innovations and share in profits to be made from products developed by NHS staff.
Coinciding with these new powers the Department of Health has releasedguidance showing how NHS and primary care trusts should manage intellectual property generated by employees. 

The Prime Minister can boast that he as brought soaring street crime in London ‘under control’ as he promised five months ago.New Home Office figures show that there has been an overall fall in the number of offences in the country’s worst affected areas.
Those areas - covering ten police force areas - have been targeted with a special series of initiatives since April and robberies and snatch thefts have fallen 14%.