Appendix
The Government welcomes the report of the Public
Administration Select Committee on User Involvement in Public
Services.
In its recent report, "Excellence and Fairness:
Achieving world class public services" the Government outlined
the next phase of public service reform as a drive for excellence
and fairness. In developing those plans, the Government's priority
will be to put citizens in control.
The challenges of the next decade mean services need
to better reflect peoples aspirations and lifestyles and enable
complex and interrelated needs to be tackled. World class public
services require us to put more power in the hands of citizens,
thereby driving services to become more responsive, more personalized
and providing strong incentives for them to innovate and improve.
To achieve world class education, health and public
safety outcomes, citizens need to work in partnership with public
services to improve outcomes for themselves, their families and
their communities. Good public service professionals can help
to unlock citizens' resources to contribute to these better outcomes.
There are various ways of putting more power in the
hands of the user. What works will depend on the nature of the
service and the users concerned. Ways that the Government is looking
to empower people include: extending choice, strengthening accountability,
and offering more opportunities for direct control, including
for instance through the use of individual budgets.
The Government is also committed to transforming
public services so they are delivered in the ways and at the times
that suit the service user rather than the service provider. Government
can only do this by engaging users of public services to learn
what really matters to them and by acting on what is learnt.
The Government aims to establish across the public
sector a culture built upon an understanding of the needs and
behaviours of citizens and businesses to create services that
are:
better for citizens, with simpler, more accessible
and convenient services;
- better for staff, as professionals get greater
satisfaction from being empowered to deliver services that are
responsive to the needs of their users; and
- better for the taxpayer, by reducing costly unnecessary
and duplicative contact and simplifying cumbersome and complicated
processes.
Transforming services in this way is vital to the
Government delivering the improved outcomes for citizens in education,
health and elsewhere. Services that appear confusing and inaccessible
may deter people from seeking them with the end result that citizens
are denied the help that government, in its policies, seeks to
offer. The key challenge for the Government is to develop and
rollout these improved customer driven services at sufficient
pace to make a real difference to people. This will require significant
culture change.
Without greater user involvement, this transformation
cannot be achieved and outcomes for citizens will not be improved.
The PASC report is therefore a welcome contribution to this important
issue.
Recommendation 1. We are pleased to see the Government's
initiatives for improving the effectiveness of consultations and
for extending their reach. We support the underlying principle
that government bodies need to make systematic efforts to collate
and learn from the views of citizens and people using public services.
Furthermore, government bodies must do this in good faith: consultations
should make plain what they are trying to do, and this understanding
should be clearly communicated to the people being consulted.
(Paragraph 14)
The Government welcomes and endorses the Committee's
recognition of government initiatives to improve the effectiveness
of consultations and to extend their reach. It also agrees that
consultations should make plain what they are trying to do. The
Code of Practice on Consultation aims to standardise consultation
practice across government and to set a benchmark for best practice,
so that all respondents would know what to expect from a national,
public government consultation.
The Code is centred around key consultation criteria.
This includes:
- being clear about what the proposals are, who
may be affected, what questions are being asked and the timescale
for responses; and
- ensuring that the consultation is clear concise
and widely accessible.
Over and above this, the Prime Minister has set out
the Government's determination to engage and involve people on
issues that are meaningful to them in their daily lives.
Recommendation 2. We welcome the Government's
support for public services that focus on service users. We believe
that achieving high-quality, responsive public services require
empowering and engaging with service users as much as addressing
their needs. We urge the Government to foster a public service
culture of working with the people that use services in order
to ensure that moves toward greater personalisation result in
excellent public services. (Paragraph 22)
The Government welcomes the Committee's recognition
of its support for public services that focus on users. The Government
has made a commitment to transform public services so they are
better tailored to the needs of people and business. Government
can only do this by engaging the users of public services to learn
what really matters to them.
The Government also agrees that a public service
culture of working with people that use services should be fostered.
Designing an intervention or policy based on a clear understanding
of what this means to the citizen should be the norm and information
about the needs and behaviour of citizens should be highly valued.
The best service providers in the public, private and third sectors
start by making sure they have a real evidence based understanding
of the behaviours of the people they are trying to reach, including
by directly engaging with their end users. The Government's vision
is that it establishes across the public sector a culture and
systems which make this routine.
In response to a recommendation in Sir David Varney's
Review "Service transformation: A better service for citizens
and businesses a better deal for the taxpayer" (December
2006) most departments are developing customer insight functions.
These functions will be structured differently according to the
needs of each organisation, but the role is the same: to bring
the true voice of citizens and businesses into the way in which
services are designed, delivered and enhanced over time. These
functions enable a department to gather (and commission where
necessary) the information it needs to build a picture of what
really matters to the people it is trying to reach; and to use
this information to drive service transformation.
The Government also agrees that achieving high quality,
responsive public services requires empowering and engaging with
service users as much as addressing their needs. Only when citizens
are empowered and respected as equal partners do they bring their
knowledge, time and energy to solving problems. For instance,
services and citizens can share responsibility for addressing
problems such as ill-health. The Government's overall vision
is that the state should empower citizens to shape their own lives
and the services they receive. Citizens want to have greater ability
to take important decisions that directly affect their own lives.
There are numerous ways of empowering people. How
government does this will depend on the nature of the service
and the users concerned but can include:
- giving people real choices, between and within
services, such as through greater use of personal budgets;
- strengthening accountability of services both
to the individual and to communities;
- improving the information available about services;
and
- strengthening partnerships between users and
public services professionals.
The Government will shortly be publishing a White
Paper on empowerment that will set out its ambition to give communities
a stronger voice in local decision making and delivery of local
services.
Recommendation 3. There are many advantages claimed
for user-driven public services, including strengthening citizenship
and improving public services. An evaluative evidence base is
starting to emerge, indicating that user-oriented services have
resulted in higher satisfaction with services and better outcomes.
There is little evidence as yet on their cost-effectiveness, however.
We recommend that government departments overseeing public service
provision put in place rigorous and coherent programmes to monitor
user-driven initiatives (such as individual budgets in health
and social care). These should identify both the costs and the
outcomes of user-driven initiatives, in the short and the longer
term. (Paragraph 38)
The Government welcomes and endorses the Committee's
recognition of the advantages of user-driven services including
strengthening citizenship and improving public services. Evidence
is needed not just to demonstrate improved outcomes but to further
improve delivery. The report gives some examples, and there are
many others which form part of the emerging evidence base. Departments
need to systematically evaluate the benefits of user driven services.
The Government has published a toolkit to help departments improve
customer experience and measure customer satisfaction:
- Promoting Customer Satisfaction explains the
role of customer satisfaction in Service Transformation; and
- How to Measure Customer Satisfaction explains
how to effectively measure customer satisfaction.
The Government believes that all services should
be subject to rigorous monitoring and evaluation, regardless of
the part which the user plays in design and delivery.
Recommendation 4. Public service provider bodies
need to consider issues of cost, fairness and risk in deciding
whether user-driven services are appropriate in particular instances.
Where increased user involvement is being pursued, provider organisations
will need to determine how they assess and handle these issues.
Departments overseeing public service provision should develop
guidance on cost, fairness and risk issues arising out of increased
user involvement, so that public service provider bodies can make
informed decisions about how best to encourage user participation.
(Paragraph 49)
The Government believes that all public service provider
bodies need to consider issue of cost, fairness and risk in developing
and delivering all aspects of their services. This includes increasing
user involvement in those services. A range of guidance on handling
these issues is already available.
On the issue of risk, the report notes that user-directed
services suggest that service users would take on some of the
responsibility for assessing and bearing the risk of things going
wrong. The Government agrees that in designing new forms of user
participation public service providers will need to consider what
the implications are for
risk management.
The Government has produced a set of principles that
departments and other public sector organisations should follow
when managing risks to the public:
- Be open and transparent about
the nature of risks to the public and about how they are to be
handled.
- Seek early and wide involvement
of those potentially affected by risks in the decision process.
- Act proportionately in dealing
with risks to the public, and take a precautionary approach where
necessary.
- Base decisions on all relevant
evidence.
- Allocate responsibility for
managing risks to those best placed to control them.
The Government will continue to improve the guidance
on risk and to ensure that it enables providers to meet all the
challenges of the next phase of public service reform.
On the issue of fairness, the Government believes
it is possible to involve users to create services more tailored
to the users without giving rise to equity concerns, providing
proper safeguards are introduced. The goal for greater user involvement
is to create universal high-performing accessible public services
which are tailored to the needs of citizens. This has been articulated
as "fair to all, personal to each." The recent report
"Excellence and Fairness: Achieving world class public services"
sets out the Government's commitment to set the overall strategic
direction within which choice operates, to ensure the objective
of improving fairness is not undermined.
On the issue of cost, all major changes to public
services, including making them more user driven, should be subject
to a full cost benefit analysis. That analysis should consider
cost, fairness and risks. The Treasury Green Book provides guidance
on how this should be done.
Recommendation 5. As part of their adherence to
an overall ethos of public service, we believe public service
workers should give due importance to involving and engaging with
service users. This is what good public servants do. The Government
should actively promote principles of public service that recognise
the value of involving users. It should ensure that an understanding
of service user involvement is reflected in programmes designed
to develop public service skills, such as Professional Skills
for Government. Professional bodies also need to identify how
they can promote responsiveness to public service users among
their professional members, and make the necessary changes to,
for example, professional training and standards. (Paragraph 57)
The Government agrees that as part of their adherence
to an overall ethos of public service, public service workers
should give due importance to involving and engaging with service
users. The Government is actively promoting principles that highlight
the value of involving citizens but it recognises that it needs
to do this more effectively across the wider public sector.
In "Excellence and Fairness: Achieving world
class public services" the Government recognised that the
next stage of public service reform would require it to foster
a new professionalism across the whole of the public service workforce.
This will include increased responsiveness to users and greater
investment in workforce skills.
The Government welcomes the Committee's recognition
of the importance of the Professional Skills for Government (PSG)
programme and agrees that it should reflect an understanding of
user involvement in services. The PSG competency framework was
introduced in 2005. This framework identified for the first time
the set of core and leadership skills which civil servants need
to develop to be effective in any role- a common language on skills
which is now used across departments and nations. Using communications
to put citizens at the heart of policy and operations is a core
PSG skill. This requires civil servants to have an understanding
and be able to use cross-departmental customer segmentation and
use customer needs to influence policy and service development.
In April 2008 Government Skills, the Sector Skills
Council for central government, launched the Skills Strategy.
The Strategy sets out how central government employers, including
those in non-departmental bodies, will step up to meet the skills
challenge of the next three years. This is a strategy for all
staff across the sector. It addresses the skills needs of staff
in front-line posts and those managing the delivery of public
services across the UK. It seeks to give them better access to
learning opportunities where there is a real benefit for them
and for the business. A key part of the strategy is the extension
of the PSG framework, with its focus on putting citizens at the
heart of policy and operations, to cover staff below middle management.
In summary the strategy proposes:
- setting professional skills standards for all
including operational delivery and linking them to careers; and
- strengthening professions to drive the skills
standards agenda including the focus on citizens.
The Government has also produced a range of practical
guidance to help public service workers develop skills to engage
users more effectively. In addition, to the guidance on customer
satisfaction, described under the Government's response to recommendation
3, guidance has been produced on customer journey mapping. This
is the process of tracking and describing all the experiences
that customers have as they encounter a service or set of services,
taking into account not only what happens to them but also their
responses to their experiences. The technique is widely used in
the commercial world and there are some excellent examples in
public services. It enables a service provider to look at each
step a customer takes towards completion of a task but from the
point of view of a customer. Taking this viewpoint is critical
for government because it exposes those steps which lie outside
the immediate horizon but which hold part of the solution to streamlining
the whole journey.
Recommendation 6. We conclude that successful
user involvement is more likely where people can see the relevance
of getting involved to the quality of their lives. In some cases
people will not actually want, or be able, to take a larger role
in influencing or directing the public services they receive.
If this is the case, people should not be penalised (e.g. by access
to lower quality services) for not wanting to engage. Where people
do want to take on a greater role in service design and delivery,
they should receive the necessary support, advice and guidance
from service provider organisations to do so. This means that
public service providers and their overseeing departments should
ensure that:
- professional staff working in those services
are able to provide the support that service users will need;
- there is regular monitoring of each user's
ability to manage their own service provision, in case their ability
or desire to do so deteriorates;
- where necessary, personal advisers are available
to support individual users, along the lines of Jobcentre Plus
personal advisers and parent support advisers in education;
- the development of peer networks of service
users is encouraged;
- there is clear communication to service users
about what is expected of them, and, equally, of what they can
expect from service provider organisations. (Paragraph 65)
The Government recognises that in terms of involvement
in public services,
people's interest and motivation will vary and they
will want to participate in different ways. The primary driver
for many users will be the provision of good quality services
rather than involvement for its own sake. The Government believes
that user involvement or involvement by their representative in
some form is vital to service transformation and the delivery
of good quality services. Opportunities to influence and be involved
in services should be available to all but some groups may need
more support.
The Government agrees that people wanting to take
on a greater role in service design and delivery should receive
help and guidance from service provider organisations to do so.
In some areas, as the report demonstrates, such support is already
available:
- The expert patients programme both enables patients
with long-term chronic conditions to gain the skills needed to
manage their conditions better on a day to day basis and expert
patients are also able to provide peer support.
- Community care navigators are health service
staff trained to engage with patients in community settings and
offer help and advice.
The report outlines a range of ways in which such
support to citizens can be provided. The Government will consider
these and other forms of support as part of work to consider how
best to provide assistance to users in different circumstances.
Support is particularly crucial for those groups that are most
disadvantaged. It needs to ensure that their voice, both that
of individuals and their representative groups, are strengthened.
Careful design of voice mechanisms can ensure that:
- people who lack the confidence and skills to
articulate their views can be supported by, for instance, building
support networks at local level. Community development workers
often play a large part in setting up groups, supporting forums
and networks and open doors between community groups and public
services.
- disadvantaged users are provided with good information
through such mechanisms as choice advisers. For instance, the
Government is piloting information provision with the Charters
for Independent Living, which were proposed in Independence and
Opportunity: Our Strategy for Supporting people published in
June 2007.
- new technologies offer new ways of engaging with
wider range of people. As set out in a recent Strategy Unit paper
"internet blogs, on-line forums, networks and more accessible
sources of information are now approaching the critical mass required
to have a profound impact on political and civic debate."
Citizens debate public services in a variety of different ways
on a variety of different sites. In line with the principles set
out in the Power of Information Report, the Government should
join in these debates. The Government has recently published guidance
for Civil Servants enabling this to happen.
The Government also agrees that users need to be
clear about what they can reasonably expect from services and
what they are required to do in return.
Recommendation 7. The Government needs to ensure
that it is setting the right framework for service provider bodies
to adapt to user-driven services. In particular, it needs to be
careful that other policies or targets (such as requirements for
efficiency savings) do not work against service providers and
their staff having the freedom and flexibility to develop responsive,
user-driven services. (Paragraph 71)
The Government agrees that the right framework needs
to be in place to enable service providers to adapt to user driven
services. The Government also accepts that it must ensure that
there are no barriers preventing public services from developing
user driven services.
In "Excellence and Fairness: Achieving world
class public services" the Government recognised that the
next stage of public service reform would involve unlocking the
creativity and ambition of public sector workers. The report acknowledged
that "services are unlikely to be highly responsive and innovative
without the commitment and enterprise of the workforce who deliver
them. They are unlikely to truly empower citizens unless front-line
staff feel pride, enthusiasm and commitment in doing so."
The new professionalism, which the Government will foster across
the whole of the public service workforce, will combine consistent
quality in day to day practices with higher levels of autonomy
from central government where those at the front line show ambition
and capacity to excel. Higher performers both excellent organisations
and frontline staff will have the freedom and flexibilities to
respond to the needs of those who use the service, thereby driving
innovation and higher standards. In some areas this is already
happening, modern matrons are already showing how strengthened
professionalism can improve standards in hospital wards.
The Government has been working with frontline professionals,
the public and external experts to review the performance management
framework for the coming years. The Comprehensive Spending Review
2007 announced the culmination of that work and saw the launch
of a new performance management framework for central and local
government. By defining success in terms of outcomes for the citizen,
departments should be building their activities and services around
those requirements. In general, there has also been a move to
having fewer national targets and performance measures and more
flexibility for local authorities and frontline services whilst
strengthening the accountability of local services so that people
can influence their priorities. Helping organisations to move
away from top-down accountability to more direct accountability
to users is a priority.
The thirty new Public Service Agreements (PSAs),
at the heart of the performance framework, set the priority outcomes
the Government want to achieve over the next three years. The
Government wide commitment to build services around the needs
of citizens and businesses will be critical to the achievement
of the PSA outcomes.
Recommendation 8. Government bodies need to ensure
that proper evaluation mechanisms are in place to monitor and
assess the performance of user-driven public services. For departments
that oversee public services, the relevant Departmental Capability
Reviews should contain questions to test whether departments are
creating the right environment for user-driven services to flourish.
Inspection bodies should institute evaluation frameworks for user-driven
services that ensure standards of public service provision are
safeguarded, and which allow for direct input from service users
into evaluation.
The Government agrees that a proper evaluation mechanism
should be in place to monitor and assess the performance of user
driven services. The Government welcomes the report's recognition
of the benefits to be derived from the new Comprehensive Area
Assessment (CAA). This will provide the first independent assessment
of the prospects for local areas and the quality of life for people
living there. It will be much more dependent on the views and
experience of citizens, people who use services and local taxpayers
in reaching judgements about how well they are served by local
public services, including a focus on those whose circumstances
make them vulnerable or marginalised.
The Government agrees that assessment and inspection
bodies should institute evaluation frameworks for user driven
services that ensure standards of public service provision are
safeguarded, and which allow for direct input from service users
into evaluation. For instance, the CAA is being developed and
delivered jointly by all inspectorates responsible for assessing
the relevant organisations and services. They are: the Audit Commission,
Commission for Social Care Inspection, Healthcare Commission,
HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, HM Inspectorate of Probation
and Ofsted. The inspectorates are involving panels of citizens
and service users in the development of the CAA in order to maximise
its relevance to them.
The Government welcomes the report's recognition
of the importance of Department Capability Reviews to civil service
reform. The Capability Review Programme is part of the wider Civil
Service reform agenda. It will lead to a Civil Service which is
better at delivering public services. The aims of the reviews
are to:
- improve the capability of the Civil Service to
meet today's delivery objectives and be ready for the challenges
of tomorrow;
- assure the public and ministers that the Civil
Service leadership is equipped to develop and deliver departmental
strategies; and
- help departments act on long term key development
areas and therefore provide assurance on future delivery.
The reviews provide an assessment of capability for
departments, identify key areas for improvement and set out key
actions. As the Government response to recommendation seven explained,
redesigning public services around the needs of citizens is a
key priority for the next three years and critical to the delivery
of PSAs. Assessing departments' capability to create the right
environment for user-driven services will form part, therefore,
of the ongoing Capability Review process.
Recommendation 9. Involving people in public services—at
least in the deeper sense which we have been considering in this
Report—is still in its early days. It is as yet unclear
whether user driven public services offer better value for money
or improved outcomes for all or most service users. What is clear
is that stronger variants of user participation and control would
have far-reaching effects on the shape of some of our public services.
In particular, there would be fundamental implications for the
role of public service professionals, their relationship with
service users, and the way that public services are organised
and assessed. (Paragraph 77)
The Government agrees that the process of involving
people in public services in a way that enables them to be redesigned
around the needs of the citizens is still in its early days. The
Government has set out an ambitious programme to improve outcomes
for people in a range of areas over the next few years. Delivery
of these outcomes will require services to be redesigned around
the citizen. The key challenge for the Government is to develop
and rollout these improved customer driven services at sufficient
pace to make a real difference to people quickly.
The Government's response to recommendation 3 demonstrated
that user driven services are likely to deliver both improved
services to customers and provide better value for money, although
rigorous evaluation of all changes will be required. However,
the Government agrees that wider customer participation will have
a far reaching impact on the shape, role and organization of public
services and the role of public sector employees and their relationships
with customers. In its recent report on the next phase of public
service reform, the Government recognised that the relationship
between professionals and citizens will need to be redefined.[1]
Professionals will no longer be simply accountable to their managers
or to government. Users of public services and citizens will have
the primary role, empowered to demand service improvements where
performance fall below expectations and bring more of their own
time and energy to solving problems collaboratively with professionals.
The Government's hope is that the greater involvement of customers,
combined with greater empowerment, will lead to services being
truly transformed.
Recommendation 10. In the absence of firm empirical
evidence about the effectiveness of user-driven public services,
we have not attempted to be prescriptive about the ideal level
and form of user involvement in public services. In any event,
this will depend on the circumstances of each individual case:
people should be involved in service design and delivery only
to the extent that they want to be. Where deeper user involvement
is both feasible and desirable, however, we believe that the Government
should provide the necessary support to enable people to participate
effectively in public services. This will help ensure the right
conditions for user-driven public services—and the people
using them—to flourish. (Paragraph 78)
The Government agrees that it does not make sense
to be prescriptive about the ideal level and form of user involvement
in public services. The Government agrees this will depend on
the service and citizens concerned. It also agrees that support
needs to be in place to enable people to participate effectively.
The Government's response to recommendation 6 set out some of
the mechanisms already being put in place to provide such support
particularly to the most disadvantaged groups. During the early
stages of developing a service's direct engagement with the citizen
government will seek to understand their needs through research
and service delivery information.
1 Excellence and Fairness: Achieving world class
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