A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less?: Evaluating Three Decades of Reform and Change in UK Central Government
The
UK is said to have been one of the most prolific reformers of its
public administration. Successive reforms have been accompanied by
claims that the changes would make the world a better place by
transforming the way government worked. Despite much discussion and
debate over government makeovers and reforms, however, there has been
remarkably little systematic evaluation of what happened to cost and
performance in UK government during the last thirty years.
A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less? aims to address that gap, offering a unique evaluation of UK government modernization programmes from 1980 to the present day. The book provides a distinctive framework for evaluating long-term performance in government, bringing together the 'working better' and 'costing less' dimensions, and presents detailed primary evidence within that framework.
This book explores the implications of their findings for widely held ideas about public management, the questions they present, and their policy implications for a period in which pressures to make government 'work better and cost less' are unlikely to go away.
A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less? aims to address that gap, offering a unique evaluation of UK government modernization programmes from 1980 to the present day. The book provides a distinctive framework for evaluating long-term performance in government, bringing together the 'working better' and 'costing less' dimensions, and presents detailed primary evidence within that framework.
This book explores the implications of their findings for widely held ideas about public management, the questions they present, and their policy implications for a period in which pressures to make government 'work better and cost less' are unlikely to go away.
