Comprehensive Spending Review 2010

The content of the Government’s Spending Review on 20^th October 2010 has been the subject of speculation for some time. What is clear is that the substantial cuts in expenditure across the public sector will force revolutionary changes in the ways that services are delivered, and will challenge the need to provide certain services at all. The priority will be for organisational and service changes that are not capital intensive.

One option is strategic outsourcing, but there are also “internal” options…

A few examples of the types of projects that are not capital intensive include:

• Understanding customers’ needs and reconfiguring services to meet that need (not the organisation’s perception of the need).
• Using IT systems properly, and adjusting working procedures to “fit-in” with these systems, including standardisation of common activities.
• Flattening organisational structures and automating or simplifying reporting activity.
• Combining similar organisations and rationalising management structures.
• Discontinuing non-statutory services, and applying risk based approaches for certain statutory services.

In our experience of working in the public sector over the last decade, the potential value of saving from such projects is anything up to 40% of internally spent budgets.

If your organisation needs help with the Spending Review “challenge”, then please contact us. We can:

• Highlight “low hanging fruit”
• Undertake feasibility studies
• Develop cost/benefit cases
• Plan change programmes and oversee their implementation.