Public service targets: Select Committee report - 21 July 2003

The FDA today welcomed the conclusions of the Public Administration Select Committee's report on the use of public service targets.

The FDA has itself put a motion to the Trades Union Congress, meeting in September, condemning the use of narrow and simplistic targets to measure public service reform and senior management performance.

FDA general secretary Jonathan Baume said: "Targets can play a useful role providing politicians and management with information about service performance, but in recent years they have become an end in themselves with some perverse, counter-productive results.

"In the NHS, for example, we have seen an over-reliance on targets which has limited - not extended - the ability of managers to innovate. Targets have also led to a culture of bullying and intimidation at all levels of the NHS, and, on isolated occasions, have produced inappropriate behaviour such as the manipulation of information.

"We need to develop a more meaningful approach to performance measurement that is based on regional and local needs, and the FDA urges the government to take the findings of this report very seriously."

Ends

Notes for Editors
1. The FDA is the trade union and professional body representing the UK's 11,000 senior civil and public servants. Our members include policy advisors, senior managers, tax inspectors, economists, statisticians, accountants, special advisers, government lawyers, crown prosecutors and NHS managers.

2. The FDA's motion to the TUC is printed in full below:

TARGETS AND PUBLIC SERVICE REFORM
Congress welcomes the Government's belated recognition that it "can't deliver good health or safe streets in the way that commercial companies can deliver pizzas" and that "values are more important than targets".

Congress condemns the Government's previous determination to measure the success of public service reform and consequently the performance of managers in public service with narrow and simplistic targets.

Congress accepts that targets play a legitimate role in the collation of useful performance information but they should not be an end in themselves. Experience demonstrates that the current over-reliance upon nationally determined numerical targets, such as NHS waiting lists, has stifled managerial innovation, and engendered a culture of fear and bullying which has in extreme cases led to inappropriate activity including manipulation of information and the overriding of clinical priorities. League tables based upon such targets are often confusing and fail to offer meaningful information that would enable service users to take informed decisions. Congress believes that the emphasis should be on the development of performance information drawn up on the basis on regional or locally determined needs.

Congress therefore calls upon the Government to:
1. abandon its current presumption that the achievement of a national numerical target equates to real service improvement;
2. agree with the relevant trade unions and relevant representative and accountable bodies mechanisms of measurement that truly reflect success and reform; and
3. restate its commitment to the values of public service and the public service ethos.

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