The public debate lags far behind the electoral timetable, however. Recent polling for the BBC found that 62% of respondents in Yorkshire still didn’t know the vote was coming up. And a poll for BBC West Midlands found 59% of Birmingham citizens are unaware of the referendum. Fortunately, awareness is likely to improve. Earlier...

The Guardian reported that “The breathtaking list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, patrolling neighbourhoods, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions, such as managing forensics, providing legal...

The call is certainly justified. Without high quality data on what departments are delivering and for how much it will be impossible to know whether Government’s ICT strategy is making any difference and few in the commentariat will be reassured that government has put behind it the calamities of the past. Fortunately, there are...

Today, the National Audit Office (NAO) published a report assessing the value for money of the Government’s new Work Programme. The programme, which pays private and voluntary sector providers for getting the long-term unemployed back into work, was rolled out across the country in June 2011, just a year after the Coalition Government took...

The phrase may not have got a mention in July’s Open Public Services white paper but the public administration select committee (Pasc) today released its second report on the subject, suggesting that those in Parliament at least still take the idea seriously. To recap, there are three big ideas underpinning the concept, according to...

Two weeks ago, David Cameron set out his vision for public service reform in the Open Public Services White Paper. Let’s see how the language of the paper compares to previous white papers from Tony Blair (2006) and Gordon Brown (2008). Such things can be over-interpreted – but they are certainly interesting. Here are...

If we’ve learnt one thing from the Government’s faltering attempts to radically reform the NHS, it’s that nobody likes surprises. The Coalition failed to fully test its reforms with policymakers and professionals, resulting in public and practitioner resistance that led to the plans being first delayed, then substantially revised. So it must surely be...