Shaping up

Speech given by Lord Bichard in debate on the findings of the House of Lords Constitution Committee inquiry into the centre of government, 6 July 2010

The Bertelsmann index gives two measures of cross-national performance of government. Bertelsmann have derived a ‘management' and ‘status' index, with the former looking at the performance of government and the latter exploring the merits of institutional arrangements.

The Capability Reviews were launched in 2005 as a new Cabinet Office initiative to gauge the leadership, strategic, and delivery capacity of Whitehall departments.

The Chakrabarti review was conducted by Suma Chakrabarti, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice. The publication discusses the role of the Cabinet Office, and how the Cabinet Office can improve relationships and coordination with line departments.

The Economic and Social Research Council's website on improving public service delivery.

NAO Capability Review Programme assesses the Capability Review, the cost of the programme, the key findings, and the resulting actions departments have taken in response to their publication.

OECD portal on public governance development.

The OECD's statistics portal is an excellent central resource for economic and government spending data on OECD countries.

The Public Affairs Select Committee scrutinizes the quality and standards of public administration in the civil service.

The Treasury provides links to all of the PSAs for each government department.

The World Bank's site on governance and the good governance index provides for a cross-national comparison of government performance and institutional arrangements.