By the Radical Efficiency team
Radical efficiency means different, better and cheaper public services. This is achieved by reconsidering the challenges faced by public services as well as rethinking the resources that are best suited to tackle them. By redefining desired outcomes rather than simply adjusting or trimming old models, they are able to make savings on a significant scale.
Radical efficiency is not just a nice idea in theory. Our international research has identified more than 100 case-studies in different services, locations and on different scales. The model of radical efficiency summarised in section 1 attempts to distil the core components shared by all these examples, to offer a starting point for developing different, better and cheaper services in any field or location.
As a response to the financial crisis facing public services, radical efficiency goes far beyond the current political solutions of selective spending cuts, operational efficiency and pay squeezes. In fact, radical efficiency goes beyond offering a short-term solution to the current crisis – it offers a sustainable, systemic shift in public services that responds to new economic drivers and social trends, like distributed production.
Embedding radical efficiency at the heart of a new approach to public services would require a fundamental reshaping of accountability frameworks, funding sources and allocations; understanding of risk, and of our shared values. This would be a significant challenge for any government – but one that would bear remarkable returns over decades as well as over the next few years
Over the next four months we will blog and tweet about propositions and publish our findings on the Radical Efficiency wiki. We are constantly looking for interesting casestudies to include in our project, and welcome any nomination or idea that could we might find interesting. Read more about nomination cases here.
