This programme is now available to view on egovtv.tv, the online television channel for public service modernisation. It reviews ways of implementing new flexible working practices that can help deliver local authority-wide efficiencies and savings, as endorsed by the Gershon Efficiency Review. By freeing staff from their desks, service professionals can get closer to the customer to increase service levels and efficiencies, executive staff can work together more effectively and substantial savings can be achieved from better use of office space.”New Ways of Working” includes discussion panels, interviews and case studies providing insight into the opportunities of flexible working and the technologies and organisational change management required for its successful implementation. Panel discussions range over building the business case for new ways of working, examining the business drivers and benefits for changing traditional office-based work, and some successful approaches undertaken by pioneering organisations.

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This paper sets out proposed arrangements to give GP practices commissioning budgets. from April 2005. The right to hold a budget is a first step towards the development of a sophisticated range of ways in which practices are involved in commissioning which support the principle of greater devolution. Practice based commissioning will assume greater importance in the NHS system overall. It will raise the profile of patient choice as a driver for quality and empowerment. Practises will be able to secure a wider range of services, more responsive to patient needs and from which patients can choose. From 2008 the impact of free choice for elective procedures will change the dynamic further. Practices could then use their commissioning abilities to identify alternative provision, including in primary care, to give patients greater choice.Patients will benefit from GP commissioning through a greater variety of services, a greater number of providers and treatment in settings that are closer to home and more convenient to patients. The NHS as a whole will benefit from more efficient use of services and greater involvement of front line doctors and nurses in commissioning decisions.

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This programme is now available to view on eGovTV, the online television channel for public service modernisation. The documentary provides a practical examination of the benefits of an IT-enabled learning environment stretching across the school and curriculum. It looks at computerised learning content, its delivery, and the opportunity for ICT to improve school management and administration. The challenges of managing this new and potentially complex technology are also addressed. Programme participants include senior advisors, specialists, teachers and school heads, as well as key suppliers. All lend the programme their experience of applying IT solutions to learning, giving insights on procuring and managing the ICT infrastructure that underpins this new education environment.eGovTV (www.eGovTV.tv) is a dedicated web-cast television channel for senior executives across all public sector organisations and is available free to an unlimited audience at anytime, at any location via the internet.

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By Kim Hoque, Simon Davis and Michael HumphreysThis article looks at the government’s aim of using the reward of ‘earned autonomy’ and Foundation Trust status as an incentive to improve performance in the NHS. It examines the issue by investigating the extent to which members of an NHS Trust’s senior management team perceive themselves as autonomous, the factors most likely to hinder their ability to operate autonomously, and the extent to which managers want greater autonomy. In the event, autonomy was largely restricted by extensive centrally dictated targets. Entrenched professional interests and a lack of managerial skills on the part of clinician managers suggested limitations on the extent to which autonomy can be realistically devolved. Additionally, there was little belief among managers that greater autonomy would enable healthcare services to be delivered more effectively.

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This report from the Audit Commission describes the payment by results programme as one of the most significant challenges facing the health service, requiring higher standards of financial management in primary care trusts, NHS trusts and foundation trusts. The system offers major opportunities and incentives that will benefit everyone. But it also carries major risks, which if not well managed will lead to financial instability and service difficulties.The timetable for implementing payment by results is that primary Care Trusts will start to introduce cost and volume service level agreements. From 2005/06, the national tariff will apply to most activity in acute and specialist hospitals and almost all activity will be commissioned using cost and volume contracts. By 2008/09 trusts will need to have adjusted their financial arrangements to accommodate the tariff and the new system will also apply to mental health trusts.

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All local strategic partnerships are expected to have effective performance management arrangements and those who receive Neighbourhood Renewal Funding must demonstrate that they exist. This paper produced by the Office for Public Management explores how partnerships are progressing. It found that the task is complex and challenging because partners frequently have multiple and competing objectives. It concluded that partnerships need to negotiate and influence performance management rather than enforce it. Given the complexity of performance managing in a partnership context, and the fact that partners themselves are at very different stages in the development of performance management approaches, it is likely that the arrangements will take some years to evolve.The report assesses progress as patchy, but it describes practises that are proving successful. They include a way to map the web of causal links between goals, objectives and actions using an ICT system for tracking and reporting progress and a ‘life stages’ approach to planning in order to encourage agencies to work together in new ways.

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This prospectus from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister sets out proposals to pilot Local Area Agreements as part of the Government’s ten year strategy to build a new relationship between central and local government. The Agreements are presented as a new radical way of working through Local Strategic Partnerships to build a more flexible and responsive relationship between central government and a locality on the priority outcomes that need to be achieved at local level. It is acknowledged that building new relationships will require a significant shift in the way central and local government relate to each other and to other local partners.The expectation is that Local Area Agreements will provide a mechanism to join up the delivery of local public services under one umbrella. They are designed to tackle the problems caused by a myriad of separate pots of funding from various Whitehall departments being channelled to different public bodies serving the same local populations. Councils will take the lead in setting up Agreements, and work in partnership with other public bodies in the area to join up spending and services in a flexible way that meets local needs, rather than Whitehall-led requirements.

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SmartCards have enormous scope for managing and streamlining transactions and interaction with the citizen. They have been endorsed as a Priority Service Outcome by the ODPM for Leisure and Libraries and are already being used to deliver multiple services as diverse as transport to school dinners. This 60-minute on-line TV programme provides management level advice on the business case for SmartCards and their successful implementation with discussion panels, interviews and case studies. The programme is available in a permanent online archive at www.eGovTV.tv.

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This report sets out the progress Local Strategic Partnerships have made in Neighbourhood Renewal Fund areas. The Partnerships have a strategic role to integrate the requirements and targets of national agencies and Government departments in taking forward renewal, regeneration, social exclusion, and productivity.Partnerships have made particular progress in developing as strategic agencies and they have established visions reflecting the critical elements of the National Strategy for neighbourhood renewal. They have also been successful in attracting a broad range of representation and in developing and delivering a wide variety of joint projects embracing the importance of learning and development.

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This report sets out the people and organisational issues that local authorities must get to grips with if they are to deliver e-government successfully. It also explores the roles of e-champion and heads of ICT in delivering e-government for a local authority, the skills they require, and how these roles relate to the authority’s senior management team. The crucial competencies for e-champions and ICT heads are seen as the softer skills of organisational awareness, relationship building, communicating, customer service, leadership and influencing rather than technical skills.Drawing on research and best practice in local authorities and other sectors, and information from specialist organisations like Gartner, the report provides local authorities with answers to fundamental questions such as: how can councils ensure that e-government delivers the promised transformation of services? Is the structure in place to manage e-government?

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