With government budgets under growing pressure, the way that Britain's public services are measured and monitored needs to be rethought, according to a policy briefing published by the Economic and Social Research Council's Public Services Programme.
Costly measurement schemes will come under greater pressure to justify themselves. For example, questions need to be asked about whether the annual cost of running Ofsted (£207 million) is worth almost 5,000 teachers; or whether the annual cost of running the Care Quality Commission (£167 million) is worth almost 4,000 nurses.
The report, written by professor Christopher Hood, Dr Ruth Dixon and Dr Deborah Wilson, says that lower cost performance indicators should not necessarily be coupled with targets or rankings. Rather they should aim to provide high quality 'intelligence' for improvement, information in which both public service providers and the public can have faith.
The authors argue that as public sector budgets are squeezed, there is likely to be more focus on input reduction and productivity targets – providing more for less – and subsequently perhaps less focus on user satisfaction measures.
Huge investment has been put into 'managing by numbers' – league tables, targets and other performance indicators. But do they work?
The policy briefing reviews the use of performance indicators in Britain over the past 10 years and shows that:
• there is no guarantee that the benefit from performance management regimes – either in terms of improved public services or political payoff – is worth the cost
• public service quality is not always improved as a result. The outcomes of target and ranking schemes are hard to predict and may distort the behaviour of public service providers
• the numbers themselves may be unreliable, and the league tables that result may not distinguish between providers – schools, hospitals – sufficiently for people to be able to make a meaningful choice
• it has not been a successful political strategy: public support for Labour's policies on health fell alongside falling waiting times for hospital treatment. And Britain is ranked lowest of all European countries on the trust its citizens have in government statistics.
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
