Public Services Lab Blog

Trust: A sixth principle for reform

Tim Pope - 19.07.2011

The Open Public Services White Paper aims to 'encourage innovation and give people more choice and control over the services they use by putting power directly in the hands of millions of families and thousands of communities'.

The five principles for reform cover choice, decentralisation, diversity, fairness and accountability. But do we need a sixth principle - one of trust?

Two quotes from people I've worked with recently came to mind when I read the white paper. First the community activist who said 'the public sector didn't ask for less money - we can either choose to beat them or offer an olive branch'. Second the senior policy officer whose mantra was to recognise 'no one of us is as smart as all of us'.

Both in different ways are saying they need to find ways of working together across sectors. One tool to do so has been quietly emerging in Scotland and offers a route to earlier and deeper engagement in the design and commissioning of public services. The final report on Public Social Partnerships was published last week, covering the lessons learnt in ten pilots that had:

• Brought together a civil society organisation and public sector purchasers to design a service
• Piloted the approach over a short term pilot to help refine service delivery parameters
• Developed the service further to maximise community benefit based on the outcome before competitively tendering for provision.  

While the report provides plenty of practical guidance on the process the main finding was that this approach relies on a level of trust and commitment between the civil society and public sector partners.

Amongst those rights to challenge and hold to account, it would be good to hear of more collaborative, open approaches to reforming public services through partnership and trust.