Governments across the world are facing ever increasing demands. Changing lifestyles, shifting demographics, globalisation and technological change are placing demands on public service organisations to be more responsive and adaptable to their users’ needs.
This requires nothing less than a transformation in the capabilities and capacity of public sector organisations themselves.
Some of the key questions for our ‘Building public sector capabilities’ research programme include:
What are the new capabilities required for effective service delivery e.g. partnership working, alliance building and delivery chain management?
What will the leading public service organisation of the 21st century look like?
Transformation is about systemic and fundamental change. But what does this mean in practice? At the heart of the transformation agenda for many countries is the need to deliver customer-focused services more efficiently. Public services need to be designed around the needs of the user – not the provider – and be provided through modern, co-ordinated delivery channels. Fundamentally, such transformation requires collaboration. To address this issue, we have recently completed an international survey (jointly with UK think tank, Demos) on the barriers and enablers to the co-design of public services.The survey focuses on the practical issues associated with the use of co-design as an approach to achieve more customer-centric services.
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is experiencing unprecedented levels of activity in projects aimed at modernising public and social infrastructure, as the region works to meet its estimated €500bn total infrastructure investment need. This paper provides a brief background on current developments in the infrastructure sector in the CEE region, highlights several major upcoming opportunities, outlines the key practical challenges in bidding for these projects successfully and shares lessons learnt from our experience on how to deliver them. In addition to providing a backdrop on infrastructure activity in the CEE region overall, the paper focuses on five major territories where PPP opportunities are the most plentiful - Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and the Czech Republic.
Public sector leaders around the world face a common set of challenges if their services are to meet the increased expectations of their customers – both citizens and businesses. This study identifies these challenges and shares lessons learnt, from examples around the world, to offer a structured approach in support of public sector leaders in their work to improve public services and deliver on the customer promise.
How should we define UK public services and what aims should we have for them? We have been supporting this ippr project which revisits the case for the reform of public services in the UK and charts a way ahead. It argues that public service reform should now focus on getting the relationships right between central and local government, services and their workforce, citizens and public service users. This requires not just a change of approach on the part of central government, but a new a new set of bargains and responsibilities on all sides, with information and accountability at the heart of a new system of public service improvement. The report is being published as a contribution to the debate in the run-up to the Comprehensive Spending Review.
Organisations, whether private or public, are increasingly recognising the importance of information security awareness. This report assesses the impact and success of security awareness initiatives in different organisations in Europe, analyses how organisations are approaching information security awareness and the measurement of effectiveness. It focuses on cultural change, the ways in which sets of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) can pay off, and how assessing methods can contribute to the development of a wider culture of security.
PwC’s second annual international development conference was held on 22 November 2006. The conference was attended by over 180 delegates from public, private and voluntary sectors who work in international development agencies to reform the public sectors in developing and transitioning countries.
The objective of the conference was to discuss ways to bridge the gap between the strategic intent and design of development programmes and to seek innovative approaches to implementation and delivery on the ground.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has interviewed a number of CIOs worldwide to obtain their views on IT Governance, their experience in implementing IT Governance, and what it takes to make IT Governance work.
Pay in the UK public sector should be better aligned with the needs of public services in order to increase efficiency and provide a motivated workforce. The design of pay progression and performance pay should be based on the jobs people are doing and those jobs should be based on the service delivery models within which they are working. We believe the over-centralised decision making prevents this from happening. It also means that inadequate account is taken of market rates of pay, including the different levels of pay which should be applied in different parts of the UK.
Paying taxes — the global picture, jointly published by PricewaterhouseCoopers and The World Bank Group, looks at the relative ease of paying taxes in 175 countries worldwide.
Results from the world's largest information security study are in. Responses to The State of Information Security 2006, a worldwide study by CIO Magazine and PricewaterhouseCoopers, reveal that while companies are doing a better job of safeguarding information security and privacy, there is still plenty of room for growth and improvement. Conducted online from April 5, 2006 through May 22, 2006, the survey included responses from 7,791 readers of CIO and CSO Magazines in 50 countries.
Without strong leaders, there are no strong nations. Although this has been true since time immemorial, never in recent history has the need for outstanding government leaders been more acute than it is today. In the midst of global political uncertainty and threats to national security, the US government urgently needs leaders who think creatively, develop effective strategy and respond with speed and competence to high-pressure situations.
Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs) and Executive Agencies in the UK are vital to the development, regulation and delivery of UK public services. This survey contains the views of nearly 100 Chief Executives of NDPBs and agencies on the challenges they face and what is being done to meet them.
In the course of the year long research for Cities of the future – global competition, local leadership, senior figures from over 40 cities around the world were interviewed by PricewaterhouseCoopers. From these interviews emerged key trends which cut across the experience of all cities: globalisation, individualism, merging, acceleration, hi-tech, hi-touch, demographics, urbanisation and migration
The pressure to achieve value for money is coming at UK local government from all sides. Central government is determined that public services have to become both more effective and efficient. Tax payers are reluctant to see their taxes increase. Competing demands for priority services such as education and social services mean that local authorities have to manage their resources to meet citizen expectations.
