CBI PUBLISHES FIVE-POINT PLAN FOR RADICAL TRANSFORMATION OF PUBLIC SERVICES / CBI, 8 May 2007
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"The CBI has published a five-point plan to transform the delivery of public services in the UK to meet the rapidly emerging challenges of the 21st century:

• Delivering flexible, higher-quality services and better value requires a new model of government. Instead of trying to deliver everything, government should take a strategic view of those services it can provide directly while increasingly commissioning other bodies to deliver the rest
• Introducing competition for the provision of public services, based on a level playing field between public, private and voluntary providers, should produce ongoing innovation and improvement.
• The most effective public services are very responsive to community needs. Citizens should be involved in public service design and delivery through consumer boards, user representation or citizen juries
• There is no reason for back office functions to be replicated by many civil servants sitting in expensive office blocks, or sitting in the UK at all
• The process of public sector salary determination has produced a structural imbalance in pay and pension which is holding back improvements in delivery as staff resist changes in order to protect their privileges. This needs to be overhauled while the government's failure to address public sector pension provision, with its unfunded liability of £700bn, is a matter which needs urgent reform"