Juni 2007

Global trends affecting the public sector
The public sector faces a decade of radical and ongoing change. It will be shaped by ten global trends that are affecting governments and companies around the world. These trends – macroeconomic, social and environmental, and business – will not only determine new policies, but also a transformation in the way that governments and agencies are led and managed. Artikel

What is public sector productivity
To believe that improving productivity is synonymous with cost cutting and layoffs is to misconstrue its real meaning. Greater productivity can certainly be achieved by reducing inputs, but it can also come from increasing the quality or quantity of the output. In fact, layoffs made purely to cut costs often lead to poorer service and thus to lower productivity. Artikel

Defusing the pension time bomb
State pension and social security policy is one of the big three issues of public expenditure.Most developed countries are spending at least 5 percent of GDP on publicly provided pensions, with some spending as much as 12 percent. With health and education added, the big three often account for two-thirds or more of all public spending. In the case of pensions, aging populations mean that without reform expenditure is going to grow dramatically, and in some cases unsustainably. Artikel

Three paradigms of public sector reform
Globalization – the movement that brought consumers a wealth of goods and services – is now forcing its effects on the public sector too. For consumers, read citizens. Today, they demand better public goods and services, and more of them, but don’t want the higher taxes. Core services such as education, health care, welfare, and pensions find themselves newly exposed to international comparisons, even to international competition. This is pressure enough on governments, but in addition the global economy requires exceptional infrastructure and human capital for national economies to survive and thrive. Artikel

Leadership in government: An interview with Robert E. Rubin
As the productivity imperative grows more acute, perhaps the most critically required resource of all is leadership. Government leaders, whether they are politicians or senior civil servants, are rarely showered with praise. Yet the challenges they face – managing thousands of employees, directing the wider system of agencies that deliver frontline services, and persuading an often skeptical public about the merits of an agenda – are as exacting as in any business, and probably more so. Indeed, according to 50 top government officials and representatives we have spoken to recently, taking on these challenges has required a step change in their capabilities far greater than they had previously encountered. Artikel

Six 'must dos' for transforming performance
The scale of the public sector productivity imperative is such that nothing short of a transformation of performance will do. As we define it, transformation is the transition to a sustainable way of working at a significantly higher level of performance, and it applies as much to the public sector as it does to the commercial world. Yet we observe that dramatic transformations are much harder to achieve in the public sector. Why? Artikel