Publications
Better Outcomes
To cope with the fiscal challenges the UK faces and still deliver world class public services, government will need to re-think the ways it delivers services at the central and local levels. Government will need to encourage and reward innovation and create powerful incentives to focus providers on the results citizens want from public action. Better Outcomes describes a radically new approach to realising public outcomes. Outcome commissioning involves specifying outcomes to public, private and voluntary sector providers and paying them when results are achieved. Better Outcomes analyses the challenges to implementing this approach, such as extraneous variables and time lags, concluding that there are various ways to resolve these issues, including implementing yardstick competition or using surrogate measures. Outcome commissioning is applicable in many areas, from foster care to waste management to IT systems. We urge politicians, policy makers and service managers to engage with these ideas and issues to improve outcomes for the public.
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Articles
The coalition's NHS reforms - far enough or a 'quick fix'?
The NHS was recently ranked as one of the most efficient and effective health systems in the world, so is radical reform an unnecessary risk? Dr Greg Parston looks into the matter.
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A Budget for cuts but is it a Budget for reform?
Either public services need to be reformed or they don't. It makes no sense to exclude the most expensive service of all from this process, the NHS, writes Ben Lucas, director 2020 PST.
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Seize the day
Ben Lucas talks spending cuts and suggests that now is the time to sieze the opportunity for structural reform with a long-term approach for a new post-Beveridge framework for public services.
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Rebuilding Britain: putting 'localism' into practice
The new Government is rightly committed to dispersing power and localising decision-making.
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General Election 2010 - what about the issues?
The story of the election so far has been the rise of Clegg and the Liberal Democrats and the consequences this may have on the result. Change has become the central question – the choice being about who can manage this best and who personifies it the most. But change for what? It is striking that policy has received less attention in this than in any previous election.
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