We need to raise the importance of efficiency as a public service value
Author: Dominic Leigh |
Tight public finances and rising demand are putting increasing pressure on public services. Creating sustainable public services will rely in part on the public sector’s ability to make them more efficient and deliver more for less.
Making public services more efficient and productive at a time of financial constraint was a key part of the Conservatives’ Invitation to Join the Government of Britain in 2010, with this ambition being reiterated by then Prime Minister David Cameron as recently as September 2015. As part of the drive to improve the efficiency of the public sector, the Coalition Government set up the Efficiency and Reform Group within the Cabinet Office in May 2010. In 2014, the Public Sector Efficiency Group was established with a similar brief. The latter group found that organisation and workforce drivers were one of five drivers of public sector efficiency.
However, Localis’ survey of public sector workers – as part of our new research report A New Public Service Ethos – found that only 17 percent of public sector workers include efficiency as one of the top three most important characteristics of public sector work. In contrast, more than three times as many respondents said that accountability was a key part of work in the public sector.
While accountability is an important part of public service delivery, there is a danger that it can lead to a narrow focus on procedures rather than outcomes. Future public service reform must place greater emphasis on efficiency so that public service deliver value for money as well as better outcomes for service users. We are aware that ‘efficiency’ has become a term that is loaded with the certain connotations, in particular cost cutting. If it’s to become an important part of the future public service ethos, then we’ll need to be nuanced in how we talk about efficiency and position not only as a measure to save money, but also to find ways of creating more public value.
Younger workers in particular will have an important part to play in shaping new ideas about efficiency. Younger public servants attach more significance to efficiency than their peers.