21 January 2005
Public service reforms and their emphasis on targets, performance management and choice are to be scrutinised in a major research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
Forty studies, focusing on three themes – quality, performance and delivery – will be conducted in the next five years under the aegis of the £5m Public Services Programme.
Quality will cover transparency, targets and responsiveness to users; performance will look at incentives, blame and liability; and delivery will encompass performance measurement and management regimes.
Christopher Hood, the programme's director and Gladstone professor of government at Oxford University, said the research was intended to separate the myths from the realities of modern public services.
The project will weigh up the 'dramatic claims and counter-claims' made about the effects of reforms, and assess the wider use of markets and private provision in public services.
Hood said: 'We aim to use good, scientific analytical research to get a clear feel for the realities rather than popular preconceptions about complex systems, the unintended effects of policy decisions, and the relationship between belief and perception when it comes to performance measures.
'There is now a wealth of experience of performance indicators, targets and pay systems, and of public-private partnerships for us to examine.'
Fourteen studies have been approved and will get under way in April. These include NHS targets and an examination of accounting practices in public services.
A further round of research projects will be commissioned later this year and launched in 2006.
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