Today, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, the man responsible for ensuring public spending is brought under control without damaging public services, will set out the government's plans to reduce the budget deficit and improve public services.
His speech coincides with a timely publication on the future of public services published in today's Guardian, which explores the political and financial forces that are reshaping all public sector organisations.
The publication focus on three key areas:
• making tough decisions about budgets: how does government decide where to cut spending and where can extra revenue be raised?
• reshaping public services to meet changing needs: how to grasp the nettle and transform government delivery of public services
• innovative approaches, including co-design and delivery of public services
From volunteers running libraries, asthma sufferers telling doctors what treatment and support they want, to nurses running their own organisation to provide community services, our writers examine some of the ways in which public services are already changing and will continue to do so, including the role of social enterprises, charities and voluntary groups in delivering public services; new structures, such as employee-owned bodies; and how the public sector will need to adapt to new ways of commissioning and buying services.
The previous Labour government had already begun a process of trying to transform public services, to make it more focused not on the state as provider, but those using public services.
The black hole in public finances means the whole debate is now being framed in a very different way. For those working in the public sector, there are new delivery models to consider and new potential providers of services, from both the private and voluntary sectors.
Ways of working could change radically, as public bodies increasingly share services with other organisations, consolidate their assets, and look for new, more effective ways to purchase products and services.
Such changes are going to be unsettling, and it will be a challenge, particularly at a time of drastic cuts, for managers to ensure their staff fully support making their own organisations more flexible and responsive. Whatever the future holds for public services, if power is to move out from the centre of government to local people, this will call for a major rethink of the way the public sector is run.
This supplement looks at just some of the possibilities - and the challenges.
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
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