Organisation: The Government Outcomes Lab
We were joined by our keynote speaker, Professor Mark Considine, of the University of Melbourne, and hundreds of people from across Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, and the Americas. Prof Considine shared insights from his research on public service delivery. This included discussion on if we are to improve multi-agent public services, why it is important to re-think regulatory relations, strengthen knowledge networks among commissioners and engage service users in problem-solving. Among the eleven herbs and spices were transparency, accountability and engaged oversight. He reminded the audience of the need for the government to get involved as providers of last resort and as innovators and left the audience with the following food for thought-
”(The) steering not rowing metaphor has gone too far; the time for government to just pull levers and expect that the rest of the machine will just work is not valid anymore” - Professor Mark Considine
The keynote was followed by a panel discussion with experts from both academia and practice. This discussions centered on approaching outcomes contracting from a systems perspective. Ben Jupp of NHS England spoke on the need to account for contractual values in service provision, highlighting that contracts cannot account for every element of service delivery no matter how detailed they are. Dr. Joe Abah of DAI Global spoke on how the civil service works to improve contracting despite numerous challenges and was optimistic about improvement in the future. Aman Johal of Big Society Capital challenged us to critically consider what other factors outside of contracts contribute to effective public service. We concluded the session with a reminder from Professor Ole Helby Petersen of Roskilde University to keep humans at the centre of approaches and interventions.