This briefing, commissioned from Catalyst by the Transport and General Workers Union, sets out the key issues of concern in the debate over Foundation Hospitals, warning that they could inject a competitive ethos into the NHS and open a gap in service delivery between a small elite of favoured hospitals guarding their position against a lower tier of “second class” provision upon which the majority will depend. Foundation hospitals represent a full-blown assault on public services and a giant step towards privatisation.Link: http://www.catalystforum.org.uk/pubs/paper14.html

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By Jack Foster and Larry CorbyThe ability to come up with fresh ideas is critical to success in any venture. Ideas can help people; they can save and fix and create things; they can make things better and cheaper and more useful; they can enlighten and inspire; and they can solve problems. But what is an idea, really? When you get right down to it, an idea is simply a new combination of old information-information you already have.Why, then, in this age where so much information is readily available to us, does the thought of having to come up with ideas on command strike fear into the hearts of so many people? Jack Foster takes the mystery and anxiety out of the idea-generating process. He presents step-by-step guidelines that can help anyone and everyone become a veritable font of ideas. This book shows, in concrete terms, how to create ideas out of the enormous amount of information that is available to us.

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Government departments need to identify and share best practice to improve the way they commission, manage and use research to help improve their services, according to the National Audit Office. In a report to Parliament today, it makes a number of key recommendations on the way research is  used.Sir John Bourn, the head of the NAO, says with the support of the Office of Science and Technology, departments have been modernising the way they deal  with research to support service delivery and improve policies. The recommendations in the report, entitled, “Getting The Evidence: Using Research in Policy Making” are designed to continue that process. They arise from a study compiled on behalf of the NAO by RAND Europe, which has looked into how a number of governments commission, manage and use research.

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District councils are being asked for their views on the framework for reaching Comprehensive Performance Assessment scores. The Audit Commission is consulting the authorities following the announcement last month of details of the methods which will be used in district CPA inspections. At the same time the Local Government Association wants to know what they think as it raised doubts over the Commission’s proposals. The Commission has issued consultation documents and councils have until May 28th to respond. The LGA meanwhile wants to ensure that the proposed system does not act to “dampen down” councils’ scores.The Commission document, ‘Delivering CPA for Districts’, sets out how different pieces of evidence collected in the assessment inspections could be weighted to produce a final score. It is proposing the use of the same categories as in last year’s assessment of single tier and county councils – excellent, good, fair, weak and poor. Councils will be scored on ten themes: ambition, prioritisation, focus, capacity, performance management,   achievement on quality of service, achievement of improvement, investment,   learning and future plans.

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The first-ever independent scrutiny unit to cut red tape and free schools of bureaucracy has been launched by the government as part of its continuing effort to cut teacher workloads. It has also announced the implementation of plans to build on the experiences of a number of pathfinder schools which have been testing possible solutions to the problems.The Implementation Review Unit will involve front-line teachers and is seen as having an important role in implementing the national workforce agreement, tackling unnecessary paper work and helping teachers to focus on improving pupils’ learning.

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The government is accused today of failing to look at the root causes of inequality in housing. The Institute for Public Policy Research is arguing for bolder policies avoiding the mistakes of mass housing but tackling head-on those sections of the NIMBY lobby which put the loss of green field sites above social equality.It is launching a research project on housing and inequality today. It will be led by Chris Holmes, the former director of Shelter, who is now Visiting Research Fellow at the IPPR. The project aims to bring forward policy ideas that will shape a radical new approach to reducing inequity in housing.

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By Richard Berthoud The risk of unemployment for individuals without any disadvantage is about 4%. For the disadvantaged it varies between 50 and 90%. The author looks at the sources of disadvantage, outlines ways in which the risk of unemployment can be predicted and highlights the scope for policy initiatives.

Citizens in eleven cities in Belgium are trialing electronic identity cards, which on the outside resemble a credit card. If the six month trial is successful cards will be issued to the remainder of the ten million population of the country and everyone over the age of twelve will have a smart card with multiple applications.The card, which uses Sun Microsystem Java technology, provides the traditional functions of an identity card such as name, photo, date of birth. Future applications include payments and reservations for events. It is also expected that card holders will be able to put their own electronic signature to digital documents such as declarations or application forms, which will have the same value and legal status as the documents that are nowadays signed by hand.

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A project has been launched to find the key ingredients of successful turn round strategies adopted by the fifteen councils described as poor or weak in the Comprehensive Performance Assessment published in December 2002. The project will be led by The University of Birmingham’s Institute of Local Government Studies with support from the Open University, Cardiff Business School, MORI and KPMG. The project was commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Audit Commission, the Local Government Association and the Improvement & Development Agency.The aim is to learn about ways in which councils with performance problems can most effectively improve. Attention will focus on the strategies councils adopt to strengthen their corporate governance and management, and the way this impacts on the services for which they are responsible. The ways in which poorly performing councils change as they implement recovery plans will be closely monitored. Lessons will be drawn about the process of central government engagement, the effectiveness of recovery strategies adopted by councils and the longer-term improvements that they achieve.

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Learning from the Comprehensive Performance Assessment is helping to raise the standards of public services. All the larger councils were involved in the first phase of CPA and the remainder are now being brought into the regime. This summary of learning from the Audit Commission shows that councils will enhance their corporate effectiveness when they have political leadership that focuses on change and continuous improvement, develop strong community leadership and have clear frameworks for managing performance that support council priorities. Other characteristics for performing well include people management strategies that harness staff energies and skills to deliver council objectives, a robust approach to procurement and a good understanding of their local context and the diversity within local communities in order to identify and meet the needs of those communities.Published by the Audit Commission http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk

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