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PUTTING THE FRONTLINE FIRST: ACTION PLAN

This plan delivers better public services for lower cost. It outlines how the Government will improve public service outcomes while achieving the fiscal consolidation that is vital to helping the economy grow. The plan has three central actions: to drive up standards by strengthening the role of citizens and civic society; to free up public services by recasting the relationship between the centre and the frontline; and to streamline the centre of government, saving money through sharper delivery.

ACTION 1: STRENGTHEN THE ROLE OF CITIZENS AND CIVIC SOCIETY

Key actions

  • Giving people guarantees to high-quality public services that are at the centre of their lives, such as a right to be treated in hospital within 18 weeks, or one-to-one tuition for pupils falling behind national standards in English and maths at primary schools with clear rights of redress where these guarantees are not met.
  • Accelerate the move to digitalised public services that are personalised, flexible, cost-efficient and save people time. 'Tell Us Once' will be rolled out nationally in 2010, so citizens need only notify government once for any birth or death. During 2010, we will set out, service by service, how transactions with government will move online as rapidly as possible, starting with student loans, child benefit and Jobseeker’s Allowance. And we will invest £30 million with UK Online to support the development of the National Plan for Digital Participation to get more than one million people online in the next three years.
  • Radically open up data and public information to promote transparent and effective government and social innovation. We will release over a thousand public datasets - including Ordnance Survey mapping data, data underpinning NHS Choices and the Public Weather Service, real-time railway timetables, and more detailed departmental spending data - and make them free for reuse.
  • Encourage greater personal responsibility and control over services through new use of technology and service interaction. Text message alerts will become more common for patients and parents, and public services will proactively identify those at risk of ill health, crime or pupil absence so they can intervene early and effectively. We will set up a taskforce to reduce fraud in the public sector.
  • Build a stronger civic society and give communities more say in shaping public services. We will map civic health in every community through a new Civil Health Index, transfer more public assets to the third sector, and develop new ways of providing capital to civic society organisations - such as through a new social investment wholesale bank and piloting Social Impact Bonds.

Giving people the tools they need to help shape services and to hold government to account strengthens civic life. Technology has a key role to play in building this new relationship - both in opening two-way channels of communication between citizens and professionals and in providing increased transparency on the effectiveness of government.

To achieve this, the Government will lock in standards with new entitlements to services. It will increase transparency by publishing unprecedented amounts of information and data about the institutions, expenditure and people that serve the public. It will take a more ambitious approach to the digital delivery of public services, ensuring that they are more flexible and personalised. And it will systematically strengthen the way in which civic society can shape and partner the delivery of publicly funded services.

ACTION 2: RECAST THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CENTRE AND THE FRONTLINE

Key actions

  • Let local areas set priorities and guide resources by streamlining the national performance framework. This will include reducing the number of national indicators for local areas by April 2010, and making further reductions from 2011.
  • We will reduce the number of revenue streams to local government. By Budget 2010, we will set out specific proposals to reduce the level of ring-fencing1 for local authorities and publish guidance on aligning and pooling local-level budgets to frontline services. We will align the timing and coordination of grant payments from departments to local authorities for 20011/12.
  • We will support local authorities that wish to use their trading powers to create further commercial opportunities, set out guidance on effective use of joint ventures by local authorities and their partners in February 2010 and consider single area-based capital funding by Budget 2010.
  • Reduce centrally imposed burdens on the frontline from reporting, inspection and assessment. We will coordinate timings of all assessments, inspections and reporting arrangements by 2010/11 where they focus on similar outcomes, and consider a new cross government data gateway. We will also review the work and number of inspectorates, reporting at Budget 2010, and ask Total Place pilots to quantify total burdens across local agencies and priorities for streamlining burdens.
  • Harness the power of comparative data to improve performance. We will publish public services performance data online by 2011, starting with more detailed data on crime patterns and costs of hospital procedures, as well as parts of the National Pupil Database in 2010. We will use these data to drive better value - reserving top inspectorate marks for those public services that deliver good value for money, introducing NHS tariffs based on best practice in 2010, and benchmarking the whole of the prison and probation system by 2011.

Sustained investment and guarantees to core public services have created a new relationship between central government and the frontline - empowering both to focus on what they do best, and in so doing deliver better value for money. In the next steps of reform, decisions on how services will meet citizens’ expectations will increasingly be a matter for local areas to decide, and for frontline services to be free to respond to.

To achieve this, the Government will step back from the day-to-day management of public services by building on work such as the Total Place pilots.2 This will enable local professionals to collaborate more easily and to devise innovative ways to serve their customers. The Government will continue to reduce the burden of excessive and overlapping performance indicators, data demands and inspection requirements on local services. But the Government will also ensure that standards and value for money remain top of the agenda through the increased availability of comparative performance data, and information about the cost of services.

ACTION 3: STREAMLINE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT FOR SHARPER DELIVERY

Key actions

  • Equip the Civil Service to meet future challenges, by reshaping the organisation of the Senior Civil Service, reducing its annual cost by £100 million within three years, and put in place radical reforms to senior pay across the wider public sector.
  • Rationalise and reform arm’s-length bodies (ALBs). We will merge or abolish over 120 ALBs and publish stronger governance proposals in the New Year on ALBs, as well as the results of a review by Budget 2010. This will deliver at least £500 million in savings.
  • Improve back office and procurement processes to the standard of the best, to deliver the £9 billion of savings identified in the Operational Efficiency Programme. We are publishing, alongside this document, data on every department’s back office performance with a new set of comparators. We will look to expand the most successful shared services centres, exploring the best governance and ownership structures for every department. And we will release further resources for frontline services by reducing spend on consultancy by 50%.
  • Manage assets more effectively. We are publishing now a portfolio of assets to discuss ownership options with the private sector, including full or partial sale or mutualisation. We will consider new ownership structures that release value from the government estate by creating one or more public property companies. And by March 2010, Ian Smith will advise the Government on the scope for further relocations out of expensive parts of the South East and London.

As citizens and communities are empowered and burdens are reduced on the frontline, central government can sharpen its focus on its core role - setting policy priorities, guaranteeing national standards, and building up capacity within public services. The centre of government must be no bigger than it has to be. Through a sharper focus it can both release value and transfer power to the citizen and frontline services.

To achieve this, the Government will continue its reforms to streamline the Civil Service and rationalise all back office functions. It will cut costs at the centre, bringing every part of Whitehall up to the standards of the best, and reduce the number of non-departmental ALBs. It will review where the Civil Service is located and take a more radical approach to selling state assets that are no longer needed, including exploring different models of ownership.

Notes

  1. England only
  2. England only
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