Too often people feel like they have to fight the state to access services they need. Systems designed for efficiency and centralised accountability are less effective because they aren’t designed or delivered for people with different needs. Public servants are stuck servicing systems they often don’t support, leaving them disillusioned with their unfulfilled mission to help people.
The resulting malaise is not confined to spiralling waiting lists and bureaucracy, but erodes citizen trust in democracy itself.
Demos’s public service reform work makes the case for person-centred and preventative public services that empower people rather than shut them out. We are designing ways to achieve more relational public services, backed up by more effective digital enablement, and a governing project that rewrites the rules of public service reform and devolves delivery to the frontline and local communities.
To get there, the centre of government needs to change. We are exploring how culture, accountability, funding, narrative and digital enablement interact to support or hinder relational reform. Our work makes the case for a fundamental reset in how Whitehall and public services operate, in order to liberate the frontline and citizens to innovate.
Contact Joe Martin, Associate Director of Policy, for more information.
Public Service Reform
Making the case for person-centred and preventative services that deliver for people and restore faith in government.
Featured work
Powering Public Service Reform is a new Demos programme launched to understand and dismantle the cultural and systemic barriers that hinder meaningful reform in public services.