I take a keen interest in all things ‘open’, be it “open source”, “open data” or “open government”. I’ve been directly involved in the opening up of public data in the past and I am particularly keen on the potential of open data to create new services, or help drive the redesign of existing ones. […]
Universal Credit – at least they stopped digging
There has been much speculation in recent months about the health of Universal Credit – one of the largest government change programmes currently on the go. Well, the speculation came to an end last week with the publication of an NAO report, Universal Credit – early progress. Universal Credit was always going to be difficult […]
Supplier Relationship Management in the Public Sector
The public sector is faced with a growing and diverse range of independent providers of public services. Traditional procurement frequently assumes an arm’s length approach, whereby services are purchased and managed through a tightly specified service contract. But many public services are there to address messy problems – services that are intimately involved in people’s lives, such as mental health, […]
Shared Services in the Public Sector
The use of Shared Services in the public sector has been a hot topic in 2012. Promoted heavily since Gershon’s Public Sector Efficiency Review in 2004, as a means to reducing costs, the NAO published a very critical report in March 2012 on the sharing of services in central government. There has also been the very […]
Harnessing the power of User Innovation
Dropped into a GeoVation event earlier in the week, in London, on “Collaboration and user innovation in Transport”. ‘User Innovation’ is product or service innovation that is driven by “affected individuals”. These are people who encounter a problem in their day-to-day lives, say their journey to work; have an idea to make their life easier; and then […]