The public services, as ever, are under pressure to ‘raise their game’: public expectations are on an upward curve, additional funding may be contingent upon improving performance. The call is to be radical, to think the unthinkable, to go where no one has ever gone before. Such evangelical exhortations are some distance from the language of governance and stewardship. Yet both perspectives need to be accommodated in the brave new public services world.

Across the public services there are initiatives designed to introduce radical thinking into management practice. The Public Sector Excellence Programme run by the Cabinet Office covering local government, central government and health, Better Quality Services which has replaced market testing in central government, and Best Value in local government are examples of initiatives aimed at challenging directly existing practices. Other approaches addressing partnership working and new forms of organisation are more tangential but still more challenging.

This brand new CIPFA guide can be put to immediate and positive effect by practitioners involved in fundamental reviews of existing services and practices by helping them to take a radical approach and to introduce greater creativity into the process.

Prepared by Barrie Woodcock of RBW associates, a member of CIPFA’s expert Financial Management Panel, and with the active input and support of the Panel, the guide will prove invaluable to practitioners of all disciplines throughout the public services.

Contents include: