a triarchy press publication
Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: Case Studies
'Delivering Public Services that Work (Volume 1)'
Edited by Peter Middleton
Foreword by John Seddon
Publication Date: 9th March 2010
No. of Pages: 132
Book type: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-9562631-6-2
List Price: £15.00
Offer price: £13.50
For customers in North America, books are printed in, and shipped from, the USA.
Epub version: available here
Kindle versions: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
'Someone rang me just to thank me this morning. They didn't want anything. They just wanted to thank me. I've worked here for 8 years and that's never happened before. I was so surprised I didn't know what to say.'
Team member, Stroud District Council, quoted in Delivering Public Services that Work
About the book
Delivering Public Services that Work is a ground-breaking book of Case Studies showing how Systems Thinking has been applied to a particular public service in six local authorities. Each case study written by the manager or project leader responsible describes what was done, how it was done and the results achieved. The book makes extraordinary reading.
This is essential reading for anyone who is interested in delivering better local services at lower cost.
Stephen Greenhalgh, Leader, Hammersmith & Fulham Council
The Background
It began with John Seddon's 2008 book, Systems Thinking in the Public Sector. That book said, in effect: 'It's OK, you're not mad. Yes, if you live in the UK, what the Labour Government says is true. It has massively increased spending on the public sector. And your own experience is also correct. The quality of public services has deteriorated.'
Seddon went on to explain how this is possible, showing that the system was at fault (not the people delivering the services or the levels of funding). He explained the obvious point that spending more money on the wrong thing won't help. If your car won't start, upgrading the tyres and getting a new exhaust fitted won't help.
Seddon's Prescription
Seddon's prescription then and now (for the UK and for any other country using the quasi free market model for public services) is this:
- scrap the myth of 'choice' (because the public don't want a choice of hospitals, they want a good hospital)
- scrap targets (because they don't work and people spend their time trying to massage the statistics)
- scrap specifications (because they're wrong and they don't work)
- scrap inspections (because they're expensive to do and to prepare for and they only serve to ensure that people are doing the wrong thing correctly meeting bad specifications)
- scrap 'deliverology' (because it's nonsense)
- scrap the obsession with sharing administrative and back-office services in huge call centres and 'data warehouses' (because they don't work half as well as front offices where people talk to the public)
- scrap the Audit Commission (because it's a white elephant)
- scrap the centralised regime that oversees the disastrous public sector (because it is the problem)
Then use systems thinking to understand and fix problems and deliver joined-up public services that ...
- work better
- work faster
- save money
- delight the public and
- delight the people who deliver those services.
Over 10,000 central and local government officials, policy makers and public service leaders (in health, education, policing and housing, for example) have so far bought Seddon's 2008 book and many more have read it. It's caused quite a stir, including a campaign to make Seddon the Public Services Tzar and a desperate attempt by the Audit Commission to discredit Seddon by saying that a) he's a consultant and b) he has no evidence that his 'nostrum' [a medicine of secret composition recommended by its preparer but without scientific proof of its effectiveness] works.
The New Bookthe proof of the pudding ...
Now Delivering Public Services That Work sets out the evidence: six easily-understood and clearly explained examples of Systems Thinking at work in the public sector. This collection of case studies demonstrates how managers from different public sector organisations in the UK and New Zealand have reduced waste, cut inefficiencies, massively improved service quality and end-to-end times and transformed morale by redesigning their systems to face the customer.
This book provides any leader charged with service performance improvement and simultaneous cost reduction all the information necessary to deliver real-world improvement to customers. This method is well proven in my own organisation.
Dr Carlton Brand, Corporate Director, Resources - Wiltshire Council
The stories from local authority housing, benefits, roads and planning departments chart the entire progress of improvement: from agreeing on the core purpose of the service, to identifying and eliminating preventable waste. Each case study describes the measures taken and the results achieved.
This book offers practical examples of how 'systems thinking' can both save money and transform services. Applying it will change the way you think. In Suffolk's Trading Standards service it reduced the time taken to deliver complete solutions to citizens from 60 days to just 6, whilst saving 80,000; creating 15% extra capacity and reducing staff by 10%. If you're in a position of influence in the public sector you can't afford not to know about this thinking.
Andrea Hill, Chief Executive, Suffolk County Council
The inspirational case studies in Delivering Public Services That Work show:
- The process that each service provider went through
- How they overcame initial resistance and hostility from staff
The results that can be achieved:
When someone on Housing Benefit reports a change in circumstances, a lot of follow-up actions are triggered. In 2007, East Devon District Council were taking 20 days to process these notifications. Using a Systems Thinking approach, they cut that to 3.8 days in 2009.- Before Stroud District Council started Systems Thinking, they often took 40-45 days to process a Housing Benefit claim; now most claims are completed within a week.
- Stockport Borough Council's HR Department has cut service times by over 50%.
- Central Otago District Council cut the end-to-end time taken to approve or reject requests for resources from the Roads department from an average of 50 days in 2008 to 14 days by the end of 2009.
- How they rolled-in (rather than rolled-out) the programme across other departments/services
- What unexpected benefits accrue (a 44% drop in staff illness in one case)
There is currently a lot of talk of 'designing services around customers', of 'better community engagement', and of 'innovation in the front line'; all laudable ideas but with little more than hope that they will produce improvements in services. This book showcases exactly how to go about realising those hopes; it lays out clearly the method to be adopted and demonstrates the results that can be achieved. It should be the first thing anyone aspiring to improve our public services should read.
Andy Nutter, Director of Governance and Transformation, Islington Council
Read more about the 2008 book, Systems Thinking in the Public Sector.
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