OPEN PUBLIC SERVICES - How open and how public?

Open for personalisation?

In the past, it must be said that the delivery of public services has been somewhat inflexible and not always in the best interests of the user. Services were often standardised and homogeneous without taking account of the specific needs and desires of the individual. Residential care for the elderly was one such type of provision in defined service parcels. From the provider point of view, the provision of a standardised service is easier to measure in an input sense and easier to cost  -- when you are delivering standardised services it will be easier to argue in political and policy terms that each client is getting a similar level of service at a similar level of input cost. So when politicians and service users ask questions about service standards and costs then the provider can reply that the provision per individual is fairly uniform and few if any people are discriminated against in terms of public service delivery from the sense of input provision. They get a sort of equality of service provision -- it might be equally good or bad but certainly not geared to the individual.

The arguments are clear in the uniform and homogeneous sense,though the service outcomes for the user from the provision of a largely uniform service may not be too great. This is because this type of service delivery might provide a reasonable basic standard of service but it will not necessarily meet the client's service aspirations and this is where the problems start. What do people want from a public service and what can we deliver to them? Can we build in choice and involve the client more in service delivery and design? This is very challenging for public service professionals but ultimately it is desirable because if the public services will not offer such a flexible type of service then other entities will. The public service might not like these choices but in the final analysis it will have to take them into account because the old view that the public service provider knows best what the service user wants and needs is out of date.

We will need to constantly challenge ourselves to give our clients a fantastic service purchasing\consumimg experience. Often public services fail to do the latter and do not adequately recognise that service users' tastes and wishes do change over time. Often we are not bothered to find out why or how this happens and it is to our detriment.

The predicted role of greater personalisation in the forthcoming July 2011 White Paper on Open Public services is a key issue. An authority will work out how much a level of service could cost but the recipient may decide to spend that cash allocation on something else e.g. a teenager with stress and mental health problems might wish to join a gardening club or do an art course rather than attend formal therapy sessions. A terminally ill patient might spend the budget on a dedicated home nurse so he can pass his last days peacefully at home.  Al these decisions are personal,utilising a budget for a service but not spending it in the way some public services might expect or want a service recipient to spend it on. Will the authority be the sole provider of this different type of service offering or will it have greater competition from other service providers like charities and third sector organisations? This will depend on how sophisticated the local market for these personalised services becomes. Irrespective of this public sector organisations need to be ready for the personalisation challenge. They will need to think about how it will affect the structure of services in the future -- Will they be able to split up their existing budgets and make cash payments to recipients thus giving them the spending power to deliver personal budgets?

The real challenge will be to make personalisation work for the public sector and for the personal budget recipient as well. What if the budget recipient has special needs -- will future personal budget formulas take them into account -- perhaps to a limited degree -- But going too far down this road of catering for too many special needs cases would make personalisation overtly complex.