Duncan O'Leary
Duncan works on projects looking at public services, skills and work.
at 11:32am
on Wednesday, 10th May 2006
As with so many of the innovative projects that we've visited this week it seems to work on (at least) two important principles.
1.Find out what the community really wants from it public services and start from there, rather than the organisational structure that tend to dominate public services
2.Get people in the door at all costs, and then carry on the conversation with them
This takes time, and can be a difficult and frustrating process.
But it seems to provide the foundation for a much more meaningful set of relationships between relationships between communities and the state, where services are built around people's lives rather than neat organisational structures.
If this is symbolic of the next stage for New Zealand's public sector then it poses some questions about New Zealand's approach and our own. Most important among these is whether the public sector is built to convert units of service (which governments have become better at delivering) into the ability to solve people's problems and work alongside them towards what they really value.
As with so many of the innovative projects that we've visited this week it seems to work on (at least) two important principles.
1.Find out what the community really wants from it public services and start from there, rather than the organisational structure that tend to dominate public services
2.Get people in the door at all costs, and then carry on the conversation with them
This takes time, and can be a difficult and frustrating process.
But it seems to provide the foundation for a much more meaningful set of relationships between relationships between communities and the state, where services are built around people's lives rather than neat organisational structures.
If this is symbolic of the next stage for New Zealand's public sector then it poses some questions about New Zealand's approach and our own. Most important among these is whether the public sector is built to convert units of service (which governments have become better at delivering) into the ability to solve people's problems and work alongside them towards what they really value.
LOGIN to add comments
Comments