09 May 2008
The public sector needs to quicken the pace at which it makes services more efficient and citizen-friendly, the government's adviser on transformational government has told Public Finance.
Speaking to PF ahead of a keynote speech to the Improvement and Development Agency's front-office shared services conference in London on May 7, Sir David Varney said the architecture was in place to deliver more citizen-centric services. But, he added: 'We need to increase the pace.'
While public sector bodies had made progress in establishing contact centres, the majority – 60% – were failing to benchmark their performance, he said.
Benchmarking data has revealed that, for every hour of employee time, the public sector delivers an average of 19 minutes of contact with the public – this compares with an average of 47 minutes in the best parts of the private sector.
'Clearly we've got quite a lot to do to drag the average up to the level of the best. And then there's the other 60% of contact centres that do not yet benchmark their performance – something that is disappointing,' Varney said.
'If you are not very efficient, not only do you not spend many minutes talking to the public, not many calls get through, so this is a public service that is not meeting the needs of the public.'
Varney's 2006 report on service transformation highlighted the time wasted by citizens in providing the same information to multiple organisations, and the organisations themselves by processing it separately.
A Service Transformation Agreement published alongside the Comprehensive Spending Review last October demands that the public sector reduces the number of unnecessary contacts people have with government.
Varney told PF he hoped the agreement would be regarded as a carrot rather than a stick and the sector would embrace the opportunities it presented.
'The blunt truth of my message in my [2006] report was that there is no way we can continue to provide the volume of services that we are planning if we don't improve the productivity and effectiveness of those services,' he said.
IDA research launched at the conference revealed that local authorities were embracing the service transformation challenge and attempting to understand the needs of their citizens.
Report author Siobhan Coughlan said: 'Local government is using a range of tools and techniques now to deliver services that are more customer-centric.'
Everything from complaints and compliments, to public consultations, to local demographic information was being used in a more systematic way to pinpoint citizens' needs, she said.
Varney said that given the variety in local government, best practice sharing rather than 'bureaucratic diktat' was the best way to encourage the joining up of services.
'I think what's encouraging about the [IDA] report is that there are lots of examples of good practice and in general in the public sector it's quite difficult to get good practice raised up,' he said.
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