[President Obama] “took office without the basic qualification that most Americans have, and one that was essential to the task at hand.  He had almost no experience working in a business.  Jobs to him are about government.” Mitt Romney in his acceptance speech. I was struck by this largely ignored passage in Mitt Romney’s acceptance […]

The Government’s decision to use an administrative sledgehammer to crack the nut of relatively minor possible abuses of Universities student visa’s is a disgrace.

We were told, when the new Coalition Government came to be, that it would put an end to “New Labour targetry”. The use of targets for public sector performance had become a bête noir of both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in Opposition and they apparently couldn’t wait to scrap the whole lot once they were in […]

Today’s highly dubious announcement of supposed ‘efficiency savings’ by the Government reinforces the need for independent Standards for reporting performance and efficiency in the public sector. Today I’ve published a ‘White Paper’ calling for changes to achieve that.

The government has claimed today to have made £5.5bn worth efficiency savings and that these have been “independently audited”. First, definitions. “Efficiency”, in this context, is usually defined as the relationship (ratio) between the cost of inputs and the amount and quality of outputs. So if, and only if, we have reliable data about both […]

  The disproportionate representation of UK private schools (confusingly called ‘public schools’) amongst Britain’s Olympians has been causing some controversy. For some on the right this highlights the superiority of private sector schooling over state provision – especially as a lot of money has supposedly gone into promoting sports in the public sector.

Philipp Krause has raised some very interesting issues about the development of public finance institutions in emerging economies (which are equally applicable to wider public administration capacity development in emerging countries).

Interesting new report on the Manchester/Salford riots:

guest post by John Alford and Janine O’Flynn  The G4S fiasco surrounding security for the London Olympics has sparked debate about the problems of contracting out. In a new book, John Alford and Janine O’Flynn argue for a broader approach to utilizing external providers as the key to avoiding or at least minimizing the pitfalls

In an interview for The Daily Telegraph Prime Minister David Cameron seems to say that the idea of another Spending Review is now a dead-duck, which is fascinating as they have just deferred decisions on social care “until the next Spending Review’.