The Collaborative State : How working together can transform public services / Demos, 29 March 2007
PDF - http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Collaborative%20State%20-%20web.pdf
Niamh Gallagher, Simon Parker
"Competition and choice have become the watchwords of public service reform over the past decade. But while these principles have delivered some important gains, they are not enough in isolation. Tight accountability and choice have often come at the expense of fragmenting the way that schools, hospitals and councils provide their services. Service improvement has come at the expense of the capacity to solve local people’s problems.
If we want to sustain improvements into the next decade, then we need a new generation of reform that builds on experiments with collaboration between both different parts of the public sector, and between institutions and the people they serve. Joined-up government, place-based policy making and co-production with citizens offer exciting new possibilities for creating flexible, dynamic and democratic public service organisations."