Lessons Learnt from the Study Tour on Public Administration Reform and Public Service Delivery

LESSONS LEARNT FROM THE STUDY TOUR ON PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REFORM AND PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY TO THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND

(Report by the Study Tour Delegation of the Ministry of Home Affairs to the UK, on public administration reform and public service delivery: January 27th - February 11th, 2004)

1.  UK Public Administration and Government

Modernisation Programme

Since 1998, Prime Minister, Tony Blair’s Labour Government has continued the process begun in the early 1980’s beenof implementing a series of reforms aimed at narrowing down State functions, reducing public expenditure, creating better value for money in the spending of taxpayers’ money, adapting experiences and practices from the private sector to the public sector, and accelerating privatisation in the delivery of selected public services. The Government modernisation programme is an important strategy for reform and innovation aimed at the following goals and objectives:

-  Ensuring strategic, unified policy-making with a multi-disciplinary approach.

-  Ensuring that public services meet the needs of citizens not the needs or benefits of service providers.

-  Providing effective, high-quality and efficient services for citizens.

In order to achieve these key objectives, the Government focuses on:

-  Building a transparent, professional, innovative and dynamic civil service through: Incentives to award civil servants who take initiatives to reduce administrative costs or improve the quality of services provided; research and use of state-of-the-art technology; and E-government.

-  Key administrative reform efforts focus on the 4 areas of public service delivery: health, education, criminal justice, and public transportation with a view to improving the quality of services provided.

-  Signing public service agreements between the Ministry of Finance and other Ministries (most notably, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; the Ministry of Transport; and Local Governments). These agreements are negotiated and signed with the Ministry of Finance for a period of 3 years and state clearly the goals and tasks of Ministries; indicators and objectives to be achieved (such as reducing operation errors, improving and enhancing the quality of services, and E-government initiatives); and resources to be allocated to Ministries.

Public service agreements aim to create a stable framework for Ministry operations. No increase in expenditure is permitted unless Ministries are able to justify their expected outputs and outcomes. This encourages Ministries to focus on their main tasks identified by the Government, and enables them to allocate budgetary resources and supervise and monitor the operation of their affiliated organisations.

Ministries began to bring talented people from the private sector into the public sector to take part in policy formulation and planning in agencies especially in the Cabinet Office. At present, the Cabinet Office is employing many experts from the private sector (i.e. from private enterprises, NGO’s, etc.) to devise strategic policies, plans and programmes of the Government. This is also expected to promote competition between the public sector and the private sector and among public sector agencies.

To promote further administrative reforms, the Labour Government created a number of reform coordinating organisations. However, an excessive number of these organisations and a lack of coordination between them and Ministries, led to many being abolished in March 2003. Responsibilities and tasks were handed back to Ministries and the Cabinet Office. Only a few such organisations still exist such as the Strategic Reform Group, the Implementation Group, the Research Group for Improvement of Public Services, and the Group for Strengthening Civil Servants’ Capacity.

2. Four principles of reforming public service delivery

One of the top priorities of the Government is to improve central and local government delivery of public services. Public services are primarily those provided in the health and education sectors. Improving and enhancing the quality of public service delivery has become an even more pressing issue since a great deal of criticism has recently targeted the areas of health, education, criminal justice, public transportation and refugees.

The four principles for reforming public service delivery presented by Prime Minister, Tony Blair therefore include the following:

-  To develop national common standards which meet the needs of citizens and satisfy the requirements of the European Union (EU); to define clear service delivery responsibilities to ensure that citizens regardless of who they are and where they are from, are entitled to access high quality services.

-  To implement the principle of decentralisation and devolution, to promote pro-activity, creativity and self-governance for those units that have direct contact with citizens, and for local authorities in their delivery of services to local people. Local authorities must be responsible for a major part of the costs incurred in delivering public services such as education, social welfare, care for the disabled and public transportation.

-  To enable agencies that provide services such as health and education to pay higher incomes for public employees, and to implement the principle of promoting pro-activity and self-governance within units. Since 1998, nearly half of the total number of school teachers have received a 25% salary increase since their payments are based on performance; salaries for newly-upgraded nurses have increased by a third; and national public hospitals are piloting performance-based salary payments. It is predicted that public hospitals will pay an extra £6,000 per year to each employee on the condition that she/he will have fulfilled her/his given tasks.

-  Implementing the principle of providing more choices for customers, ensuring that citizens exercise their rights and demand better quality of services from both the public and private sectors, (e.g. selecting schools for their children, hospitals for treatment, or improved and more affordable water supplies).

As of July 2002, patients who are waiting for heart operations for more than 6 months, can be referred to other hospitals.

3. Experiences in management and delivery of public services

3.1 Education sector

The education sector throughout the UK is primarily public education with a modest participation by the private sector. Budget expenditure for education in 2003 was £44.6 billion accounting for approximately 6% of GDP.

The education system of the UK is divided into 5 levels as follows:

-  Kindergarten schooling: For children aged 3-5 years. At present there are 3,394 kindergartens.

-  Primary schooling: For children aged 5-11 years. There are about 22,000 primary schools, which are daytime boarding schools.

-  Secondary schooling: For children aged 12-16 years.

All the above-mentioned levels of schooling are compulsory and funded by the Government.

-  College: For students aged 16-18 years, funded by the Government, though not every child chooses to take up educational opportunities after the age of 16 but not for everybody.

-  University education: for students aged 18 years and over. There are 89 universities throughout the UK and 60 education and research institutes.

The Government provides funding to cover partmost of the costs for training and education institutions. The remainder of costs being provided by local councils.

The education strategy of the UK Government is to increase budget allocations and upgrade education according to the motto, “Every child is important,” to increase the number of teachers and to ensure education quality. Concrete objectives for each level of education are as follows:

-  For the primary level: To develop and increase the capacity to read and do arithmetic.

-  For ages 11-18: To strengthen specialised education and training.

-  For the tertiary level: At present, the Government is focusing on reforming graduate and post-graduate education, increasing the higher school enrollment from 75% to 90% and university enrollment from 30% to 50%. Depending on the scoreslevel of attainment gained in university entrance examinationsadvanced level studies, students willcan apply to be admitted to different universities. Each year, the Government provides £9,000 in subsidies for each university student. (University students have to pay up to £1,000 each. This charge is waived for poor students). At present the Government plans to increase tuition fees for the university level from £1,000 to £3,000 and is consequently facing protests from citizens.

-  Private schools: At present there are about 2,000-2,500 private schools for all age groups (accounting for approximately 7% of the entire education system). The Government neither subsidises these schools, nor controls the tuition fees. Tuition fees are paid for by parents of school children/students. Parents continue to send their children to private schools for a number of reasons including: Boarding services are often provided; parents do not have to transport their children to and from the school; high quality education; school reputation and tradition.

-  Education management system: At the central level, the Ministry of Education and Skills is responsible for the management of education policies. This Ministry has one MinisterSecretary of State (equivalent to Minister) and seven Deputy Ministers (equivalent to Deputy Minister). The Ministry Inspectorate is responsible for inspecting the quality of education and the teaching personnel. At the local level there are 150 units responsible for education in districts while counties are responsible for implementing education strategies and policies of the central government. Local authorities are not responsible for the management of universities and higher education establishments, most of which are largely self governing.

A Government agency responsible for vocational training has been established since 2001.

As a further decentralisation measure, local authorities present general education plans to the Ministry of Education and Skills for comment but do not have to submit their detailed educations plans for the Ministry’s approval. However, if the local authorities fail in the education sectorto provide the level of education required their education management role can be taken away and handedcontracted over to specialised private sector a particular capable companyies.

Schools enjoy their autonomy and self-governance in using budgets and selecting and recruiting teachers. The school council (composed of representatives of the school management, teachers, parents and enterprises) has the right to determine specific curricula and syllabi (excluding those subjects that are governed by common national rules and regulationsstandards), to recruit teachers (based on merits, competitive examinations or tests administered by the school under the supervision of local government representatives), to manage allocated financial resources, and to be accountable for allocated budgets to local governments. Local government authorities s can reject decisions reached by the school council and can provide assistance for problem-solving if the school faces financial difficulties. If the school council fails to fulfil their tasks, local government authorities s can dismiss the current school council, establish a provisionary one, and elect the principal of the school without nomination or appointment by the education management authorities.

Private schools have to obtainsatisfy certain standards to be approvalestablished and permission for their creationtheir standard is regularly monitored . There isby a separate education inspection system for private schools.

3.2 The health sector

Medical checks and treatments areservices of all kinds are free free in the UK. All people have equal access to medical and health care services, and do not have to pay health insurance premiums since these costs are accounted for in taxpayers’ money. The UK provides health services to the entire population, which are free at the point of delivery. The Government budget for primary health care (primarily provided by group doctor practices under contract to the health service) accounts for 75% of the total health budget. After carrying out medical examinations, and depending on the severity of the disease, primary health care institutions decide upon a course of treatment whether or not toich may include referral of patients to specialised hospitals for treatment.

The responsibility for strategic management and provision of health care for the population rests entirely with the central government. Operationally, it works through a Health Service that is a form of Government agency and is not decentralised to the local government level. The role of local governments is limited to the provision of such services as social welfare/benefits, and care for the disabled and elderly.

-  The health management system is headed by the Secretary of State (equivalent to Minister) ofor Health. It is operated through , with 28a number of health service management agencies. and 3,500 staff. Each agency is in charge of a population of about 1.5 million. The Government budget expenditure on health for 2003 was £55.7 billion (accounting for approximately 7% of the GDP). Based on such a budget, the Department (equivalent to Ministry) ofor Health allocateds resources to health agencies andthrough signed service delivery contracts with health service providers. The total staffing of the health service exceeds 1,000,000 people.

-  The MinistryDepartment ofor Health’s main objective is to improve the health of the population. In recent years emphasis was placed on improving outputs (not necessarily to provide treatment to a large number of people, but to be able to cure diseases such as heart and liver disease etc.), and in particular to make sure that good quality services are in place to meet required standards set by the MinistryDepartment ofor Health.

-  The MinistryDepartment for of Health sets a framework of national standards for medical treatment, conducts research studies and identifies areas within the health sector that require investment, provides patients with choices in terms of health institutions, and reduces the waiting time of patients at health institutions referred by primary health care institutions. Health management agencies are responsible for closely monitoring and supervising health clinics to make sure that they provide medical examinations and treatments to citizens and maintain their self-governance at the same time.

3.3 The environmental sanitation sector

Environmental services include the collection and processing of waste, monitoring air pollution, noise abatement, monitoring bio-diversity, quality of food and foodstuffs, hygiene and sanitation etc.

Faced with growing volumes of waste in a limited land space: A 3% yearly increase with 29 million tons of domestic waste; the majority of waste being treated with landfill (78%), a low recycle percentage (only 12.4%), and treatment by means of biological methods (9%), the Government of the UK has formulated a “Strategy for Waste Treatment” with the following priorities:

-  Reducing the volume of waste discharged