Delivering Public Services that Work

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. 


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 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.