Strategy Unit of the Cabinet Office (2009), The Power in People's Hands: Learning from the World's Best Public Services, London.

This study presents the best examples of innovative services, showing how to raise quality standards and provide greater value for money by empowering citizens. Examples range from user entitlements in the Netherlands and Swedish health care to the use of internet-based forms of participatory budgeting in Germany and e-suggestion schemes such as ‘Show Us a Better Way’ in the UK which provides new opportunities for public agencies to harness the expertise of the public.

Key themes include:

• Using entitlements to put power in the hands of users of services
• Transforming accountability of services through real time, highly local information
• Incentivising the creation of tailor made, integrated, personalised services which citizens can shape
• Answering people’s ambition for prevention rather than cure
• New professionalism in front-line staff and leaders, with new organisational structures which encourage this 
  

To download the report please click here.

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