ICTlogy

Abstract:

Whichever political party wins the next election, the next administration to take charge in the UK will have to operate in a highly constrained environment. There will be little spare money to spend, a long list of problems to fix, and many threats on the horizon. Political space will be at a premium.

We believe in the old adage about making the most of a crisis. We think the constraints facing the next government provide an unmissable opportunity to change how government works for the better.

Any mission-focused government should be well equipped to define, from day one, what outcomes it wants to bring about.

But radically changing what the government does is only part of the challenge. We also need to change how government does things. The usual methods, we argue in this paper, are too prone to failure and delay.

There’s a different approach to public service organisation, one based on multidisciplinary teams, starting with citizen needs, and scaling iteratively by testing assumptions. We’ve been arguing in favour of it for years now, and the more it gets used, the more we see success and timely delivery.

We think taking a new approach makes it possible to shift government from an organisation of programmes and projects, to one of missions and services. It offers even constrained administrations an opportunity to improve their chances of delivering outcomes, reducing risk, saving money, and rebuilding public trust.