Commissioning public services

Colin Cram, contributing editor, Guardian Public Leaders Network

Since 1990 the UK has led the world in outsourcing public services and creating ways to introduce private finance into initiatives in order to deliver benefits such as new hospitals, prisons and student accommodation. It has also experimented with payment by results, which places much greater risk onto suppliers, for example tasking them to reduce reoffending rates and paying them accordingly.

This has proved beneficial to the UK public, with new and upgraded facilities and infrastructure delivered many years earlier than would otherwise have been possible (if it had happened at all). Local government is now looking at new ways to partner with the private sector in order to leverage its expertise and invest in new systems in order to maintain public services with much less money. Outsourcing has also proved beneficial to the UK economy, with the outsourcing industry responding to the new service demands being placed upon it. UK outsourcing companies have become global players.

However, for industry, dealing with the UK public sector can be a nightmare. The capability of public sector procurement has not kept pace with the increasing demands placed upon it. In the simpler world of 30 years ago, it was already inadequate and it could be argued that, despite huge investment, it has continued to fall further behind. There are fundamental flaws in its design, which successive governments have failed to address. These flaws are evident to the general public only when contract failures are publicised...

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Ethosis aimed at public sector leaders, politicians, academics and policy specialists debating the future of public services today.