Unlocking Public Value: A New Model For Achieving High Performance In Public Service Organizations

209 Pages·2006·1.14 MB·English

by  Martin Cole

Unlocking
Public Value

Unlocking
Public Value
A NEW MODEL FOR ACHIEVING
HIGH PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC
SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS
Martin Cole
and
Greg Parston
John Wiley & Sons,Inc.
Copyright © 2006 by Accenture LLP. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Cole, Martin, 1956–
Unlocking public value : a new model for achieving high performance in public service
organizations / Marty Cole and Greg Parston.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-471-95945-8
ISBN-10: 0-471-95945-6 (cloth)
1. Government productivity—Evaluation. 2. Public administration. I. Parston,
Gregory. II. Title.
JF1525.P67C65 2006
352.3—dc22
2006011222
Printed in the United States of America.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Vivienne Jupp, whose vision for this book and
active participation made it happen.

Contents
Introduction ix
Preface xiii
Chapter 1 The Public Sector Squeeze 1
Chapter 2 Zeroing In on Outcomes 19
Chapter 3 Why Is It So Hard to Measure Public Value? 43
Chapter 4 Defining Value 61
Chapter 5 Measuring and Analyzing Public Service Value 83
Chapter 6 Driving Results 111
Chapter 7 The Key to Unlocking Public Value 133
Appendix Public Service Value Methodology 143
Notes 169
Bibliography 175
About the Authors 179
Index 183
vii

Introduction
Among the many admirable aims of the environmental movement,
the one that strikes me as most useful to those in public services is
captured by the motto, “Think globally, act locally.” In a public
services career spanning more than 35 years, I have had a chance to
look at public service systems in the Americas, Europe and Africa.
I have been forcibly struck by the need to give substantial weight
to the local political and cultural context of a particular system. You
ignore a genuine understanding of these features at your peril:
You, the public services administrator or elected official, must be
seen to listen and pay attention to local priorities. In other words,
act locally. At the same time, my experience in South Africa and
Canada (which in key ways face vastly different challenges) and
elsewhere is that there are some major global economic, human
and social drivers that all politicians and public service adminis-
trators need to take account of in their engagement with their citi-
zens. Think globally.
In Unlocking Public Value, Marty Cole and Greg Parston offer
public services practitioners a unique tool to help them capture the
mix of goals or outcomes, some reflecting local, some global, con-
cerns, and measure performance in attaining these outcomes.
Providing a framework and step-by-step process for defining these
outcomes is one of the key achievements of the book. Since nearly
all meaningful outcomes come at a cost to taxpayers, the measur-
ing of outcomes occurs in the context of tracking not just costs, but
cost-effectiveness as well.
Following are some of the critical questions that I have found
over the years underlie successful approaches to delivering public
services around the world:
• How do you improve the quality of public services?
• How do you hold down the tax bill for public services, as
few societies willingly agree to pay more?
ix