Williams' Commission on Wales Public Sector - report out!

[Ruth Dineen]

Radical and comprehensive, and here's the jolly conclusion:

7.16

The basic purpose and nature of public service needs to be redefined. The key features of that redefinition are:

A clearer shared vision and sense of common purpose between government at all levels, citizens, and communities;

A much greater focus on co-production with citizens and communities to identify and implement means of pursuing those outcomes; and

Consequently, a much stronger emphasis on enablement, empowerment and prevention in the design and delivery of public services.

7.17

This is the only way of sustaining viable and high-quality public services. No public sector system can

continue to meet growing levels of demand for high-cost responsive services from declining real resources; the emphasis has to shift to reducing demand for such services through prevention and co-production. Even if those pressures did not exist, there would be a strong case in principle for making this kind of change and reconnecting government and public service more intimately with those that they serve, particularly in a small country. Ageing populations and shrinking budgets make that case absolutely unarguable.

So now we just need to do it!

[David Hain]

Hopefully, with the help of this forum, future discussions will focus on the behavioural change needed - rather than what I fear, that there will be endless wrangling about boundary management. A clear case for leadership such as the Co-Production Network can provide!