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The United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, the public administration’s new focus fits in with the
reforms undertaken upon Margaret Thatcher’s arrival to power, in particular,
Operation Next Step that consisted of transforming the units responsible for sup-
plying services to citizens into executive agencies, the ministries being responsible
for the elaboration of policies, as well as with earlier initiatives that put emphasis
especially on the service to citizens (Metcalfe, 1993; Campbell and Wilson, 1995;
Pollitt and Boukaert, 2000).
The White Paper on the modernisation of government (1999) and the Wilson
Report (1999) set out the issues for the future in the United Kingdom. In the
White Paper, the Blair Government announced a new series of reforms that basi-
cally emphasize the improvement of services to citizens. These reforms concern
accessibility to services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, when such a request
is expressed, the ability of the citizen to deal with the government on-line, the
elimination of useless regulations, the setting up of testing laboratories permit-
ting the experimentation of new ways to offer public services, the creation of new
incentives for State employees, including financial incentives, and a better delivery
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… Competencies of Senior Managers: A Look at Some OECD Countries
of public services by integrating more persons from the outside into the public
service, and by encouraging the quicker advancement of younger employees.
Through these reforms, the government wants to ensure that public policies
include concrete, strategic commitments, that the services are centred on the needs
of the citizens, that the citizens quickly use the new technologies, that these ser-
vices are of high quality, and that they are produced at a competitive price. The
government also wants to promote, rather than degrade, the public service.
Sir Richard Wilson (1999), the person responsible for the public service, iden-
tified five major issues in his report: 1) the strengthening of the leadership that
must be visionary and embody the values of the modern public service; 2) better
planning at all levels of the public service; 3) better performance management; 4)
a big improvement in diversity in the public service; and 5) a public service that
is more open to people and their ideas.
The implementation of the reform raises a certain number of difficulties or
challenges. First, the emphasis put on the delivery of services means that, from now
on, it will concern just as much the senior public service that has precise targets
to reach. This brings into question the division that was established between the
development of policies and their implementation. Is the senior public service,
motivated by substantial bonuses, going to neglect the policy development while
appropriating the responsibility for the completion of projects and exercising
greater control over the agencies? A second challenge concerns the mobility be-
tween ministries and agencies that is encouraged and the arrival of people from the
private sector into the public service. If this contributes to a questioning of how
certain things are done, this mobility leads to problems at the operational level.
Finally, it is noted that, even if the hiring of managers to manage the agencies on
a contractual basis has proven to be successful, this system creates the problem
of keeping these people in the public service.
The issues relating to the modernization of the British Government have led
to defining the necessary competencies as well as the behaviour to be encouraged
or discouraged. The list of the competencies to be developed, according to the
Cabinet Office, is as follows:
1. to propose a goal and a direction (by creating and communicating a vision for
the future);
2. to have a personal impact (by preaching through example);
3. to think strategically (by taking advantage of ideas and opportunities to ac-
complish objectives);
4. to get the best out of people (by motivating them and by ensuring their de-
velopment in order to achieve high performance);
5. to learn and improve (by capitalizing on experience and new ideas to improve
results);
6. to put the emphasis on the delivery of services (by producing results and by
using public funds in order to create value).
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