Evaluating public service transformation

In times of austerity the ambition to achieve high outcomes for service users and communities might be seen as a luxury. Governance International doesn’t agree. We believe that, even in times of tight budget constraints, we can no longer afford low quality-of-life outcomes and poor quality public services which do not live up to the good governance principles which the public sector champions. Our evaluation framework focuses on establishing evidence as to whether or not these ambitions have been achieved.  

This approach turns traditional ‘service excellence’ models on their head - the Governance International evaluation approach starts with local people, their needs and assets. So instead of asking how to provide existing services at lower cost, we are asking service users and communities: 

• Are existing public services well designed to meet your needs? 
• What services would be more likely to help you to achieve your priority outcomes? 
• What activities (and behaviour changes) could you yourselves undertake in order to improve your quality of life and that of other people in the community? 
• How best can public services organisations help you to do this?
• Are public services being delivered in line good governance principles?

This is how evaluation can achieve improvements to the quality of people’s lives, while helping to eliminate less necessary and less effective public services. 

Our Public Governance Evaluation Cycle therefore has three key principles:

• Evaluate public services ‘from the front-line to the back-office’ – in other words, start with the outcomes that you and your service users really want, develop a theory of change, and work out whether the service system is achieving these outcomes.
• Evaluate public service organisations ‘from the outside in’ – in other words, see all your processes through the eyes of your service users and local communities along the lines of the ‘customer journey’.
• Evaluate ‘from the bottom up’ – in other words, make sure that your evaluation captures the practical understanding (and imagination) of your staff, starting from the frontline, not just the perspectives of top and senior managers.

Define it!
What outcomes need to be improved? The priority outcomes need to be co-designed with service users and local communities. The idea is simple: service users, their families and friends are best placed to define the challenges they face and the support they need to find their own solutions. The Governance International team also brings cutting-edge innovations from the UK and internationally to help you open up to the best ideas from elsewhere. This will allow your organisation to make strategic choices and define clearly what aspect of quality-of-life outcomes and good governance principles you are aiming to improve. 

Measure it!
Once your organisation has a shared language and understanding of what are your priority quality-of-life outcomes and good governance principles, it is important to integrate them into the ‘hardware’ of your organisation. Governance International helps you to agree a strategic roadmap and to measure those dimensions which can be measured. Of course, not all dimensions of outcomes and good governance are quantifiable – this is where qualitative evidence is needed. Governance International will provide you with creative ways of finding and recording such evidence.   

Manage it!
Improved outcomes and good governance cannot be simply the responsibility of appointed evaluators - they need to be managed as a cross-cutting issue through the organisation. This requires the identification of alternative ‘pathways to outcomes’ which could be used to manage the change process. Governance International has developed and published a range of ‘pathways to outcomes’ models for different service sectors, which helps key stakeholders to understand and identify the range of actions and key stakeholders needed to achieve priority outcomes and necessary efficiency gains, while conforming to principles of good governance. 

Improve it!
The Public Governance Evaluation Cycle puts your organisation in prime position to improve your outcomes, efficiency and achievment of good governance principles. It involves collaboration inside and outside your organisation with people who understand the outcomes concerned and care about them. These are stakeholders with whom you need to discuss new solutions which will improve your pathways to outcomes. Governance International will work with your staff and service users to identify the assets, skills and resources they are able to bring into the redesign of services and processes, in line with the results of the evaluation and raise the expectations of both staff and service users to bring about the needed culture change. 

Learn from it – and increase the impact!
Finally, the Public Governance Evaluation Cycle involves learning the lessons from what  has really improved – and what hasn’t. Governance International has extensive experience in helping public service organisations to learn the lessons from their evaluations, so that they can widen and deepen the impact they achieve, both in their own organisation and in their partnerships.

The Surrey County Council approach to commissioning Services for Young People (SYP) achieved a national profile with its ambitious scope approach to decommissioning and recommissioning relevant services and its concentration on improved outcomes for young people.

Governance International and INLOGOV were commissioned by Surrey CC to undertake an evaluation of the decommissioning and recommissioning process, the experience of the new services and the implications for the next round of commissioning. The evaluation was based on a meta-analysis of secondary data supplied by the Surrey project team, supplemented by primary data collection through interviews with key stakeholders and collection of further documentation from them. 

The evaluation demonstrated that the recommissioning of Services for Young People produced outstanding results - the major improvements in outcomes included: 

• a reduction of 60% in the number of young people who are NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) in Surrey (so that it became the lowest in England); 
• a 90% reduction in first time entrants of young people to the criminal justice system (the lowest rate of first time entrants in England);
• a 4% increase in young people aged 16–18 starting apprenticeships since 2011 (in contrast to a decrease of 14% in England during the same period). 

Moreover, these outcome improvements were focused on the priority groups of young people identified by the council, including  groups with higher needs or at higher risk. Some of these outcome improvements could be given a monetary value – e.g. the reduction in NEET young people was estimated to result in a £7m saving to the public purse. Most impressively, these radical improvements were achieved whilst reducing service expenditure by 25%. 

Download the full evaluation report

Do you want to discuss an evaluation with us? You can start our conversation by contacting tony.bovaird@govint.org or by filling out a short contact form.