Innovation in the public sector

How innovative are our local councils?

Text books tend to look to  the private sector for examples of innovation.  The public sector usually only gets mentioned when its large-scale technology-based projects misfire. Recent examples include the NHS patient records system and the national identity card scheme.

In reality, there is quite a lot of council innovation taking place.  The Beacon scheme, for example, is an award scheme that celebrates innovative practice by councils.  This particular scheme highlights key differences between public and private sector innovation.  Firstly, in the public sector, innovators are encouraged to share their knowledge with others.  Councils awarded beacon status are expected to devote time to diffuse their innovation throughout the sector. A second distinguishing feature of public sector practice is the complex mixture of process and product innovation present in service improvement.

To take one example.  Staffordshire Moorlands established a project to improvel access to its services in rural areas.  This innovation comprised of some new products (eg information kiosks, e-bus) and some new processes (eg a joint visiting service along with the Pensions Agency and the County Council Social Servces Department).

Most local authority innovation is what Christensen  calls 'sustaining technology'. These innovations "improve the performance of established products, along dimensions of performance the mainstream customers in major markets have historically valued." (Christensen, 1997, pp. XV).  In a future blog we shall consider an example of council innovation which might be considered to be a 'disruptive' technology.

Notes 

The image at the top of this blog represents Warhol's Light Bulbs - source http://www.flickr.com/photos/zetson/3036254720/