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Ethos Issue 4, Apr 2008
Creating and Measuring Public Service Value
Ng Wee Wei
Creating value in the public sector is very different. Public value stems from a balance between the outcomes delivered by the service agencies and the public money spent to achieve them. Learning how to maximise that ratio—outcomes produced for tax money spent—lies at the heart of high-performance government. The tensions between consumers, citizens and taxpayers that we have discussed compound the issue. Furthermore, because the desired outcomes of different public service organisations can be so different, comparative learning between organisations can be difficult and sometimes inappropriate. Yet, these are the challenges that have to be tackled if we are to learn about how to create public value: how different stakeholders define value and how, through public management and service delivery, we can improve outcomes for them all costeffectively.
The challenges ahead remain enormous, but the clear focus on social outcomes and a mission of public value creation provide a new direction for public service agencies, for those that manage them and for the political leaders that authorise and support them. The potential payoff is high performance in government through dramatic improvements in public service delivery. Ultimately, what we gain is a better society for us all.
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ACHIEVING OUTCOMES RATHER THAN OUTPUTS
Rather than hiring more police officers, the leaders of some local police forces in
England and Wales focused on the outcome that demanded more staff in the first place: reducing fear of crime.
They proposed a new initiative: the establishment of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). PCSOs are not fully empowered police officers, which means that they can be recruited and trained faster, put to work in much less time and, of course, represent a lower burden on police budgets. Yet they complement regular police in vital ways. Not only do they provide visible reassurance to the public, they are especially useful in gathering intelligence, because they are seen by local people as approachable and closely attuned to community attitudes. PCSOs also allow police commanders to make more effective use of their regular police officers and deliver a more effective and efficient range of services as a result.
Since its launch, the PCSO initiative has contributed to significant reductions in crime in London. The use of PCSOs in the capital and in the other pilot sites has proved so successful that the innovation has now been expanded across all the local forces England and Wales, with the aim of having 16,000 PCSOs serving the public by 2008. – Ng Wee Wei |
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Ng Wee Wei is a senior executive in Accenture’s Public Service Operating Group. She has 12
years of experience in supporting and partnering with government clients in Asia as they transform their services to serve their constituents more effectively. Her expertise includes managing the organisational change journeys for large-scale transformation programmes, human capital management, learning and knowledge management. Currently based in Singapore, she also leads the Accenture Institute for Public Service Value programmes for Asia Pacific.
| NOTES |
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Moore, Mark C., Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
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