Memorandum by the Cabinet Office (CSE
11)
Introduction
- The UK Civil Service is an asset to the nation.
No other organisation deals with so many issues of such importance.
The values and skills of those who work within in it are envied
across the world and we have much of which to be proud. But we
are not complacent and we recognise the need to further improve
our performance in a rapidly changing environment.
- The Government has set a
challenging agenda for reform of the public services with the
aim of delivering high quality services, universally available
and tailored to the needs of the individual.
Delivery of this is the Civil Service's most
important task and greatest challenge. This paper places our programme
for developing the Service's skills and abilities in that context.
- The sections below look at the roles of the modern
Civil Service, and how it assists the government in its objectives
for public services. Given those objectives, the paper examines
the strengths that the Service currently has, the areas where
progress is needed, and how we are tackling these. The paper is
intended to inform the inquiry being undertaken by the Public
Administration Select Committee into the effectiveness of the
Civil Service.
Public sector reform
- An understanding of the enormous programme of
public service reform envisaged by the Government is key to understanding
the tasks facing the Civil Service. The Prime Minister set out
his agenda for delivering universally high standards in public
services through the provision of greater choice some time ago.
Underpinning this has been the setting of high, national standards
alongside the investment to deliver them. Flexibility in service
provision and devolution of responsibility are further, key principles.
- A great deal of progress has already been made.
Hospital waiting lists have fallen dramatically. In education,
literacy and numeracy have improved substantially. The percentage
of 11 year olds achieving Key Stage 2, Level 4 or above in Maths
and English has risen from 62 and 63 per cent, respectively, in
1997 to 74 and 78 per cent in 2004. Levels of crime have fallen
too. The latest results from the British Crime Survey show that
since 1997 domestic burglary has fallen 45%, vehicle crime has
fallen 42% and overall crime has fallen 32%.
- The Prime Minister has now set out his plans
to accelerate progress, in particular by focussing further on
choice and devolution. The principle of devolution has previously
been understood to mean power returning to service providers,
rather than citizens and customers. The key theme of this new
phase is therefore to put people at the heart of public services.
This means citizens and customers receiving services focussed
far more clearly around their needs, and in return taking on more
responsibility for the way they use them. The aim is to deliver
services tailored to the diverse needs and preferences of every
individual, through the public servants they come most directly
into contact with - GPs, teachers, case managers and so forth.
Those receiving services will get more relevant, reliable and
timely information so that they are better able to make decisions,
and service providers will receive incentives focussed on improving
the experience their customers have.
- The principles underpinning this phase of reform
are:
- Greater choice and personalisation. The exercise
of choice, supported with better information, is a great driver
of improved quality for all.
- A continuing focus on standards. Clear national
standards will continue to be central, but greater emphasis will
be placed on what matters to customers.
- Stronger personal and local accountability, with
a greater engagement by the public in local service issues.
- More flexibility, with greater freedom for local
professionals and managers to develop workforce roles appropriate
to the needs and requirements of service users
- A more diverse and vibrant capacity for public
service provision.
The function of the Civil Service
- The Service's overriding function is to assist
the Government in achieving its objective of delivering better
public services by:
· developing
strategic and creative policies;
· designing
and delivering services focused on the user directly or with partners
in the public sector;
· using
public money efficiently; and
· reflecting
fully the society it serves and remaining faithful to its core
values.
- In the continuing reform of public services,
the Civil Service is key. Civil servants are a vital link in the
chain that reaches from Ministers setting out the policies on
public services to the individuals that receive them. Many Departments
are the leaders of public services - for instance the Department
of Health and DfES. In other Departments, civil servants are themselves
providing public services, in Job Centre Plus, tax offices, or
agencies like the Land Registry. All civil servants therefore
face the challenge of enabling and supporting front line delivery.
The Civil Service also needs to lead the way in delivering services
more efficiently.
- The reform programme we are putting in place
is designed to ensure that it has the rights skills and structures
for these tasks. At the same time it meets the challenges of the
environment in which we work, responding to the opportunities
and challenges of new technologies, more, faster communication,
new threats to security and the growth in public expectations.
Civil Service reform
- The primary focus of this document is the reforms
we are putting in place. But it is important not to lose sight
of the qualities we already have, and must retain. We have a strong
set of enduring values:
- Integrity
- Impartiality
- Honesty
- Objectivity
- It is vital that these values are maintained
- it would be easier to lose them than to regain them once lost.
Other countries envy the Civil Service's adherence to these values.
Similarly, it is important that we continue to draw on the Service's
traditional strengths of strong intellect, the smooth and efficient
management of government business and provision of policy advice
to Ministers that takes account of many different, and often competing
perspectives. We need to build on these traditional strengths,
and the enduring values, to embed the skills, behaviours and experiences
needed in the current environment.
- We are not attempting to do this from a standing
start. The Civil Service already contains many examples of people
demonstrating those skills and behaviours that will become the
norm. It is also ensuring that people with the right skills and
experience are being brought in at the right levels. One in four
Board level posts are now filled by external candidates. This
is already producing results. We are further advanced in setting,
monitoring and delivering on targets than any other Government
in the world. No other country produces regular, web-based reports
on departmental performance against Public Service Agreements
(PSAs)[1]. These are now
the focus of departmental activity and form the cornerstone around
which Departmental business plans are set. We are now seeing real
progress across the Government's priority areas.
- Health is a good example. Across the National
Health Service, waiting lists are continuing to fall. The 2004
target of a maximum 9 months wait for surgery has been met. The
major challenge, which is that no one should wait more than 6
months by December 2005, is on track. Deaths from cancer and heart
disease are also falling. Respected independent organisations
confirm that progress is being made. The King's Fund, for instance,
states that 'waiting times are generally shorter than at any time
in the history of the NHS'[2].
Of course, these achievements are a testimony to the hard work
of public service workers as well as the Government's firm focus
on improving these services.
- We are already embracing the opportunities (and
challenges) of new technology to deliver reformed public services.
NHS Direct, for instance, provides a 24-hour telephone clinical
advice and health information service. In 2003 the service handled
6.5 million calls and enjoys a regular user satisfaction rating
of over 95%. NHS Direct also operates an on-line health information
service which routinely receives over 500,000 unique visitors
every month. A version of this service was launched through digital
television in December 2004. In May 2002, NHS Direct on-line was
awarded an e-Europe, e- Health award by the European Commission.
- A further example is the delivery by the Driving
Standards Agency of an online channel to book practical driving
tests. In the first year take-up has increased steadily so that
now nearly 30% of practical test bookings are made online (around
40,000 online bookings a month). This builds on earlier work by
DSA and their outsourcing partners to put theory test bookings
online the previous year - for which take-up has now reached nearly
40%.
- Finally, the Jobcentre Plus Implementation Programme
is an example of good PFI procurement. The programme used existing
PFI contracts with EDS and BT Syntegra to deliver the IT enabled
elements of change. This included the IT Partnership Agreement
with EDS which provided a strategic partnership and flexibility
to deliver the individual components of the programme. The project
has delivered the agreed number of sites on time and on budget
with the roll out of modernised facilities now having passed the
halfway stage.
- So we have already come a long way. But we need
to consolidate the skills we already have, and develop other areas
further. Our aims are:
· stronger
leadership at the top of the Service;
· improving
everyone's professional skills;
· improving
our ability to deliver programmes and projects;
· working
differently - focusing on what needs doing and doing it well.
Leadership
- We will only deliver reformed public services,
and a reformed Civil Service, with strong leadership. Last year,
the Civil Service Management Board developed a new leadership
vision for the Service. This vision emphasises the need to:
- move away from negative stereotypes of being
risk averse and having outdated processes;
- build on traditional strengths, such as integrity,
dedication and responsiveness to events;
- combine these with new approaches, such as a
focus on outcomes, rigorous prioritisation and risk management;
- to create inspirational, visible leaders taking
personal responsibility for delivering results effectively and
swiftly, working in teams which are more than the sum of their
parts.
- We have launched a programme of work - Improving
Leadership Capacity - to fulfil this vision. It focuses on three
key areas:
- more active performance management for the SCS,
with a simplified process using better evidence, and a more systematic
approach to improving the lowest performers;
- increased investment in leadership development
including a new high potential development scheme that identifies,
and provides tailored development activities and career management
support to, SCS staff with the potential to rise quickly to Board
level; and
- more active career management, including the
introduction of time-limited postings for the SCS. The new 4 year
norm for postings will ensure that people are staying long enough
in post to see through the delivery of longer-term objectives;
but that talent is refreshed.
Professional Skills for Government
- The second element of the reform
agenda is development of professional skills and expertise in
every area of the Civil Service. The Civil Service Management
Board (CSMB) agreed a new framework for professional and skills
development in the Service in June this year. This framework introduces
three broad categories that will provide greater focus for civil
servants' career development. The categories are:
- Policy expert: This
includes people who develop policy and ensure - in partnership
with others - that it is delivered on the ground, and those with
specific expertise (eg economics) who contribute to the policy-making
process.
- Operational Delivery: This
covers people who deliver service direct, for instance those with
expertise in customer service, design of services, and management
of large-scale operations.
- Corporate Services:
This covers the corporate services that mean an organisation functions
successful - finance, human resources, procurement, ICT, communications.
We have tended to rely on bringing in new talent to stay up to
date in best practice in delivering these services. We now need
a longer-term solution to grow our own talent alongside external
recruitment.
- This approach recognises that the success of
an organisation requires high quality input from all three areas.
Members of successful organisations need not just a high level
of competence in their primary area of expertise, but an understanding
of the work of others within the same organisation. CSMB is also
clear that there should be parity of esteem across all three categories,
so that people can reach the most senior positions through a variety
of routes, and that the best talent that we recruit can contribute
to all three strands.
- The Professional Skills for Government programme
recognises the skills of the professionals that we already have
- lawyers, economists and so forth, many of whom are already operating
at a very high level of expertise. We want to make sure that these
professionals continue to do this, whilst ensuring that they are
able to develop (as many already do), the skills to enable them
to move to more senior positions.
- The programme is also
intended to establish clearer career paths by being more explicit
about the development and experience we expect people to gain.
We will establish core requirements at key levels of the organisation
- entry to Grade 7, entry to the Senior Civil Service and at Board
level in the main departments, covering:
- leadership/management.
- subject-specific expertise and experience relevant
to a particular professional category.
- experience of or exposure to work in the other
professional areas.
- business skills (including programme and project
management).
- Although these standards will only initially
apply at relatively senior levels, the need for professional skills
applies throughout the Service. Highly professional customer management
skills are as important in a local tax office or Jobcentre as
excellent strategic and analytical skills are in policy expert
functions in Whitehall. We are working to set up a Sector Skills
Council for Central Government, which will be identifying current
and future skills gaps and priorities at all levels in the Civil
Service.
- It will be important that the framework described
above is sufficiently flexible to work within departments with
different priorities and business needs, whilst bringing greater
consistency and rigour across the Service as a whole. CSMB is
seeking views from Departments and their staff on how best to
make this happen.
Delivery
- As well as improving civil servants'
skills, we are changing the way we think about the policy process.
This means thinking about policy development and the delivery
front line services as points along a chain.
- Departments are therefore taking steps to shorten
the chain of delivery between Whitehall and front line service
providers. An important part of this process is the action being
taken to create smaller, more strategic departments. The Department
of Health, for instance, has reduced the size of the core department
by 38% with half of that reduction being achieved by moving people
into front line. At the same time, they have halved the number
of arms length bodies. Similarly, DfES have reduced the size of
the Department by 30%. Other Departments are taking similar steps,
following the efficiency review described further below.
- Departments are implementing other ways of better
enabling and supporting front line delivery. The DfES, for instance,
have been working up the notion of a 'single conversation' with
schools, to be delivered by experienced former head-teachers.
The Department has also been working with OFSTED on ways to scale
back on inspections. More generally, we recognise that inspection
and external review can play an important part in improving public
services. The Cabinet Office and HMT are working jointly with
Departments to ensure that the role and expectations of independent
inspection are clearly set out, and to achieve greater consistency
of approach, a more strategic focus, greater streamlining of activity
and a reduction in burden on the front line.
- We are also introducing a range
of tools and techniques to improve focus on delivery. For instance,
each Department now has designated Delivery Priority Leaders using
a series of performance management techniques developed by the
Prime Minister's Delivery Unit. Officials are encouraged to undertake
regular visits to the front line, and to work more closely with
delivery partners outside Government.
- Programme and Project management skills are absolutely
essential to delivery. This is why one of programme and project
management skills are an important part of the core requirements
for progression within the Service described in paragraph 24.
We have already established a Programme and Project Management
(PPM) specialism which has 1500 members forming a community of
professionals to network and share best practice through workshops,
conferences and dedicated websites. It has already made an impact
by identifying appropriate qualifications and defining career
principles, which programme and project management professionals
may wish to follow.
- Work is underway with Heads of Centres of Excellence
and the HR function in departments to support the implementation
of skills development strategies and workforce planning to help
improve PPM capability and capacity.
Efficiency and relocation
- In July 2004, the Government accepted
the recommendations of Sir Peter Gershon's review of public sector
efficiency. The Government had previously accepted the recommendations
of Sir Michael Lyons' review of public sector relocation. The
two reviews are being implemented together.
- The immediate objective is to release £21.5bn
of resources annually to front line public services by March 2008.
There will also be a gross reduction of around 84,000 civil service
posts, an increase of about 250,000 front line public service
jobs, and relocation of over 20,000 public sector posts outside
London and the South East by 2010. In addition, following a further,
and separate, exercise by Sir Michael Lyons', £30 billion
of public sector assets will be released by 2010. The long run
aim is for efficiency to become fully embedded into public sector
culture.
- Departments have prepared plans on how they will
implement their efficiency commitments, working with the wider
public sector (local authorities, the NHS and the police). Proposals
on how progress will be measured were published by departments
on their websites during autumn 2004.
- The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) is monitoring
implementation, reporting regularly to the Prime Minister and
Chancellor. OGC is also developing change agents (experts with
previous experience) to speed up efficiency related reform. For
example, the e Government Unit has taken on a role to promote
more efficient and effective transactional services, while OGC
itself is promoting smarter procurement, working with others (such
as local authority Regional Centres of Excellence).
- Efficiency gains are already being delivered.
The Department of Health, for instance, is making savings of £370m
per year on branded medicines, following an agreement with pharmaceutical
companies. The Department of Work and Pensions has reduced its
workforce by over 6,000 already, and around 4,000 public sector
relocations will have taken place by April 2005.
Diversity
- If we are to deliver customer focussed, more
personalised public services, the Civil Service itself needs to
be representative of the population it serves. In fact, the Civil
Service as a whole already broadly achieves this in terms of gender
and ethnicity: in April 2004, women made up 52.3% of the Service
and 8.1% of staff were from minority ethnic backgrounds[3].
Staff with a declared disability made up 4.3% of staff, and although
this is lower than in the economically active population, we know
that there is under-reporting in this area.
- However, there continues to be under-representation
of these groups at senior levels, though we have made significant
progress. In April 2004 24% of those in the very top management
posts were women, and 28% of the Senior Civil Service as a whole
(up from 13% and 18% respectively in 1998). 3% of SCS staff were
from a minority ethnic background and 2.3% were disabled (up from
1.6% and 1.5% respectively).
- These figures suggest that we are on course to
meet the 2005 targets for women in top management posts (25%)
and for minority ethnic staff at SCS level (3.2%). However, it
is unlikely that we will meet the targets for women in the SCS
(35%) and for disabled staff at SCS level (3%). To ensure that
we accelerate progress, we set new targets for 2008 as part of
the 2004 Spending Review. By then 30% of top post holders, and
37% of the SCS as a whole should be women, 4% of the SCS should
be from minority ethnic backgrounds and 3.2% should be disabled
people.
- We are taking a number of actions to deliver
these targets:
- We have launched a new network of diversity champions
across Whitehall, intended to strengthen accountability for diversity
action and ensure good practice is learnt across Departments.
- We are evaluating the effectiveness of the schemes
we have in place to develop minority ethnic and disabled staff
for the SCS with a view to re-launching them next year.
- Departments have been asked to set themselves
challenging new targets for 2008. Some have already set targets
significantly above the PSA described above - for instance the
Department of Health has set a target of 8% of its SCS to be from
a minority ethnic background by 2008.
- We are improving the statistics we hold on disabled
staff.
- To ensure that there is proper focus on the targets,
Sir Andrew Turnbull appointed a new diversity adviser earlier
this year (Waqar Azmi). His action plan is yet to be finalised,
but is likely to address:
- Diversity awareness at senior levels;
- Action to increase the diversity of external
candidates for senior level positions;
- Further action to bring on staff from under-represented
groups. This will include mentoring of staff from under-represented
groups by high potential SCS staff. We also need to find ways
to increase representation in the feeder grades to the SCS.
The relationship between the Civil Service and
the wider public sector
- The delivery of public service reform
clearly requires a close relationship between the Civil Service
and wider public sector. We are already putting in place structural
changes to help achieve this - for instance in the creation of
smaller, more strategic central departments with some people moved
out closer to the front line. This needs to be supported with
clear lines of responsibility between the centre and front line
services. This does not mean creating one large and unwieldy organisation
to design and deliver all public services. Such a step would be
costly, disruptive and reduce flexibility and responsiveness.
It would raise major questions about the operation of local democracy
- how, for instance, would locally elected politicians influence
service delivery in their areas?
- Nonetheless, public sector organisations must
share best practice to enable all to deliver high standards. Furthermore,
collaboration between different organisations within the same
sector (or even across sectors) can deliver major efficiency gains
- must notably in procurement. We are working hard to facilitate
these steps. For example:
- We are establishing a Public Service Leadership
Consortium (PSLC) to promote closer collaboration on leadership
development across public services, including the Civil Service,
local government, NHS, schools and police. We will be developing
a shared vision of the qualities modern 'user focused' public
service leaders need. We are already exploring ways of promoting
greater mobility of leaders across public services.
- We are implementing a new Cross Sector Leadership
Scheme that will offer leadership development and business skills
training to high potential managers from all public services and
uniquely to private sector managers so that we build a real caucus
of future leaders, experienced in all forms of partnership/joint-venture
working
- We have established a Public Service
Employers' Forum of senior departmental and public service employers
to share best practice on pay and workforce reform, including
on diversity, equal pay and total rewards.
- We are working closely with
the TUC and senior public service trade union leaders, through
the Public Services Forum, chaired by the Minister for the
Cabinet Office, to promote more effective engagement of the
workforce and their unions in public service reform and service
improvement.
- The Office of Public Service Reform
(OPSR) has considered the way in which the Sector Skills Councils
covering the public sector might work together to support reform
and improved delivery. The SSC for central government will work
with OPSR and other relevant SSCs to develop these ideas. The
initial proposals are aimed at supporting collaboration around
specific projects of common interest.
- There is greater movement into the
Civil Service of people from the wider public sector.
Structure
- A high level of skills and effective
and efficient ways of working within the Civil Service are vital
to the delivery of better public services. Too often in the past,
however, we have failed to effectively tackle important issues
because we have worked in silos corresponding to different Departments.
We need instead of trying to organise problems around existing
Government structures to organise ourselves in the best way to
tackle the whole issue. In some cases this may be through machinery
of government changes - for instance a large range of services
for children and families, previously managed across four different
departments, have been brought together in the Department for
Education and Skills.
- In other cases there may be alternative ways
of achieving a more integrated approach. The Office of Criminal
Justice Reform is a good example. This group reports jointly to
the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Constitutional
Affairs, the Attorney General and Baroness Scotland (the three
Ministers with a strong interest in the criminal justice system
(CJS). It supports the National Criminal Justice Board, which
brings together Ministers and key stakeholders from across the
CJS. Local Criminal Justice Boards take this integrated approach
to the front line, and are starting to see real results in making
the criminal justice system more effective.
- For more discrete areas of policy involving cross-cutting
issues we have increasingly set up projects, such as many of those
led by the Strategy Unit, which can look at an issue from outside
departmental lines and often involve those from outside the civil
service. Some of the most successful examples of delivery - like
the Rough Sleepers' Unit - have been achieved by teams working
in radically different ways, cutting across departments, led by
practitioners, galvanised by a sense of ambition, including the
belief that apparently intractable problems can be solved.
- Behind these new ways of working, the structure
of the Civil Service continues to be a unified, but broadly federal
one, with Departments setting their own pay and conditions for
staff below the senior Civil Service. The civil servants serving
the devolved administrations (other than the Northern Ireland
Civil Service) continue to be part of this structure, which allows
those administrations the flexibility to work with their own priorities
whilst accessing the training and development opportunities of
the UK Civil Service as a whole.
Driving the reform programme
- The activities of the centre of Government are
vital in shaping and delivering this challenging and wide-ranging
programme of reform. It is led by Sir Andrew Turnbull as Head
of the Home Civil Service. Sir Andrew's Delivery and Reform team
brings together those with a strong role in reform from across
the Centre of Government (the Cabinet Office, Treasury and Number
10) to better co-ordinate and drive the reform agenda. One of
the team's most important roles is in professionalising key corporate
functions within Departments. Sir Andrew has therefore established
at the Centre a number of centres of excellence to challenge and
support Departments in this. The Centres of Excellence are:
- Human Resources (Corporate Development Group
in the Cabinet Office)
- Communications and marketing (led by Permanent
Secretary for Communications, Cabinet Office)
- IT (e-Government Unit, Cabinet Office)
- Strategy (Strategy Unit, Cabinet Office)
- Financial management (Government Financial Management
Directorate, Treasury)
- Programme and project management (OGC)
- Procurement (OGC)
- To oversee the whole reform programme, Sir Andrew
has established a Civil Service Reform Programme Board made up
of Permanent Secretaries and three non-executive directors from
outside government. The Board's roles are to:
- Bring the various elements of the reform programme
together to ensure their strategic fit and to identify additional
issues or areas to be addressed
- Make sure that the key milestones on the road
to reform are met and that the full benefits of reform are realised
- Identify and monitor major risks to the success
of the programme, and
- Report progress to ministers.
Monitoring progress
- We have put in place a number of measures to
measure the progress of reform. These measures support the Cabinet
Office PSA of building the capacity of the Service to deliver
the Government's priorities. The measures include:
- increase turnover to 12% (which external benchmarking
suggests reflects the level of turnover in healthy organisations)
- Maintain the current proportion of vacancies
filled through open competition (around 50%) through to 2008
- 4-year norm for length of postings in the SCS
- An increase in the proportion of Senior Civil
Servants who have experience working outside the Service of more
than 12 months
- The current Service-wide SCS Survey on Leadership
& Skills will provide baseline data on perceptions of leadership
effectiveness in the SCS, against which we can track progress
on specific measures. We are also looking to develop some proxy
measures for improving professionalism and skills levels in the
Civil Service. But measures could include an increase in the proportion
of SCS with a professional qualification. The SCS Survey will
also provide information on levels of skills in the SCS that again
can be used as a benchmark. More detail these measures can be
found in the technical note to accompany the PSA target[4].
Politics and the Civil Service
- The strong values shared across the Civil Service
are the font of much of its strength as an organisation, and it
is vital that we maintain these. There is a great deal of consensus
to support this. Despite comment to the contrary in recent years,
the commitment to an impartial Civil Service, supplemented with
a small number of special advisers, is shared across the political
spectrum. We recognise the potential for a dilution of our values
if large numbers of external appointments are made (particularly
if they were made politically). We are therefore taking action
to safeguard our values as the Service develops. We consider,
for instance, that the numbers of external appointments to senior
Civil Service positions that we are envisaging will not constitute
a threat to the Service's values.
- The draft Civil Service Bill we issued
for consultation in November 2004 is also set firmly within the
context of Civil Service reform. It would put on a statutory basis
the basic principles and values governing the Civil Service -
its duty to assist the duly constituted administration, its political
impartiality, and selection on merit through fair and open competition.
Its purpose would be to entrench and protect the existing constitutional
arrangements rather than to make any substantive changes.
The Civil Service in the future
- The ultimate proof that this vision has been
delivered will be a higher level of delivery against Government
policies and programmes, and particularly in the delivery of high
quality public services for everyone.
- The Civil Service of the future will have much
in common with today's service, retaining the existing strong
values. But it will have consistently high quality leadership,
and all civil servants will have strong professional skills. The
Civil Service will be more diverse, with the whole Service, including
senior civil servants, being representative of society. A far
higher proportion of civil servants will have experience outside
the Civil Service, and will be able to use this to create more
effective partnerships with those from the wider public sector
as well as the private and voluntary sectors. For many people
- perhaps up to 25% of the Senior Civil Service - the majority
of their previous career will have been spent in one of these
other sectors. Departments too will look different, with smaller,
more strategic centres. They will work more effectively together
on shared areas of interest. And although we will still have a
civil service distinct from the wider public service, there will
be much closer relationships in place to ensure that there is
an unbroken delivery chain from Whitehall to the customer.
1 PASC's
report 'On Target? Government By Measurement' (July 2003) has
made a contribution to the development of the target and performance
measurement regime. In particular, as a result of the report (and
our own experience) departments have significantly increased
the level of consultation in the setting of targets - ensuring
greater buy-in/ownership along the delivery chain. Back
2 Briefing Paper,
March 2004 Back
3 data from the
spring 2004 Labour Force Survey shows that, on a comparable basis,
7.3% of the economically active population were from minority
ethnic backgrounds Back
4 See http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/reports/service-delivery/2005/target2.asp
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