The 2008 annual survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development shows how coaching within organisations has moved beyond being ‘the latest fad’ - to adding real benefits. Coaching is increasingly popular as a means of promoting learning and development. The findings show that almost three-quarters of UK employers currently use coaching in their organisations, compared to 63 per cent in 2007. Some 72 per cent of respondents find coaching to be an effective tool. 

This report from Communities and Local Government seeks to promote the practice of ‘benchmarking’ across local government. By comparing the costs of standard business processes such as handling a council tax payment or a planning application, across a number of councils, it is possible to identify potential areas for making efficiency savings. 

A survey of attitudes to child poverty by the Child Poverty Unit, published by the Department for Work and Pensions, suggests that a significant step-change is required if the majority of the public is to be aware of the Government’s goals.
Respondents were asked about the extent of child poverty and 41 per cent thought there was very little real child poverty in Britain today, 53 per cent thought there was quite a lot. 

This Prospectus from Communities and Local Government draws together the improvement support that is available from central government to help councils and their partners to meet the efficiency challenge. It supports the aim to move beyond competence to achieve transformation of public services.
Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnerships and Local Area Agreement are seen as crucial to the process. 

This report from Communities and Local Government investigates how councils are using e-government to respond to the needs of the socially excluded and in doing so contribute to the development of a more inclusive society. It highlights that councils have a major strategic enabling role in promoting e-government as an important vehicle for tackling social exclusion.
This strategic role involves taking the lead in collaborative working with other partners including local communities. 

The Audit Commission and the IDeA have published case studies of the winners of a competition to find examples of innovation. The aim of the competition was to stimulate councils to innovate in the face of huge challenges such as coping with the implications of demographic change and migration; addressing sustainability and the challenge of climate change; and tackling systemic inequalities in health, worklessness and levels of cohesion, both between and within localities. 

This survey by Touchpaper, an international provider of IT Business Management, looked into the challenge of delivering ‘great’ IT services which add strategic value to the organization, as opposed to just ‘good’ IT providing day-to-day maintenance and firefighting. The survey found that 46 per cent of IT directors in the public sector do not believe that their department is delivering ‘great’ IT services. 

This report from Communities and Local Government describes the result from a pilot project to find out how evidence and research data can be better used in neighbourhood renewal. The project provided technical assistance to local strategic partnerships and neighbourhood renewal partnerships to improve planning, evaluation and decision-making. 

This programme is now available to view on egovtv.tv, the online television channel for public service modernisation. It features an interview with the Chief Executive of Woking Borough Council who explains how councils can start to meet their environmental obligations and also make handsome savings in the process.
He describes the Borough’s pioneering Climate Change Strategy which is based on incremental developments and has produced no losers. 

The benefits of electronic document management are readily recognized,but the ongoing costs of scanning documents into electronic format are often overlooked. This white paper from Cave Tab Ltd compares the set-up and operating costs of an outsourced scanning service versus an in-house service ina local government benefit claims department, a planning and building control department and an organisation which has a large number of staff required to complete hand-written time sheets.