Accountability, Efficiency, Improvement and Change in UK Local Public Services: The Role of Benchmarking and External Performance Assessment

知识交流将促进决策者和实践者网络的发展，他们将与社会科学研究人员合作，分析和应对公共服务方面业绩评估的挑战。在过去十年中，一系列关于公共服务绩效评估的研究已经确定了迄今为止尚未开发的国家间政策学习潜力（Nutley et al. 2011）。我们的知识交流活动旨在促进英国、加拿大和澳大利亚之间的政策学习。它将使用在以前的研究过程中发展起来的理论框架——特别是制度理论和作为评估框架基础的改进理论概念（Downe等人，2010）、合作与竞争的替代方法（Fenna, 2010）、以及英国“自愿”比较基准的经验（Grace 2010）——适用于当前的挑战，包括削减公共支出和如何评估创新以及持续变革和改进能力的问题。该计划将运用这些概念来帮助政策制定者和从业者分析和解决英国和国际上当前的挑战。它将提供五组相互关联的活动：国际活动——我们将召开三次国际会议，分别在英国、加拿大和澳大利亚举行。会议将汇聚英国、经合组织类型的联邦国家和欧盟的政策制定者和实践者，相互学习。这些活动将：-提高高层对知识交流的认识。-鼓励各国之间的政策转移和辩论。-为更广泛的国际学习和比较方案提供反馈。-帮助设计英国研讨会。-帮助确定和激励关键利益相关者参与未来的活动。-就最佳做法向政策简报提供信息。每项活动结束后，申请人须就新出现的主要问题和经验教训撰写摘要，并将其反馈给参加者个人和他们的机构，以鼓励知识交流。2. 研讨会-我们将利用我们从以前的研究中建立的优秀网络，与英国每个国家的一小群政策制定者/从业者合作，共同设计研讨会和参与者名单-英格兰三个，苏格兰，威尔士和北爱尔兰各一个。每次研讨会将有15至20名与会者，包括高级决策者、公共服务从业人员和学者。这些讨论会将提供机会，便于分析现有的考绩办法和决策者和从业人员目前面临的挑战。与会议一样，申请人将撰写研讨会摘要，分发给所有与会者。3. 网络-这些会议和研讨会将建立一个由决策者、实践者和研究人员组成的网络，邀请他们为新出现的绩效评估框架的设计提供信息并共同开展后续研究。4. 政策简报-这将提供国际绩效评估的审查，专门为政策和从业者撰写，并通过网络、专业协会和其他媒体广泛分发。它将利用现有的研究知识，并将从会议和研讨会中吸取教训，以突出世界各地的最佳做法。5. 传播交流讲习班——这些讲习班将借鉴政策简报的早期版本，由研究小组的一名成员在专业人士、地方政府和消费者团体先前举行的活动上发表演讲。我们将在四个国家举办10个讲习班（英格兰5个，苏格兰和威尔士各2个，北爱尔兰1个）。

The knowledge exchange will facilitate the development of a network of policy makers and practitioners who will work with social science researchers to analyse and respond to the challenges of performance assessment in public services. A series of studies of performance assessment in public services over the last decade have identified the hitherto largely untapped potential for policy learning between countries (Nutley et al. 2011). Our knowledge exchange activities will aim to facilitate policy learning between the UK, Canada and Australia. It will use theoretical frameworks developed in the course of previous research - in particular, regime theory and the concept of theories of improvement which underpin assessment frameworks (Downe et al. 2010), the alternative co-operative versus competitive approaches (Fenna 2010), and the UK experience of 'voluntary' comparative benchmarking (Grace 2010) - to apply to current challenges including reductions in public expenditure and the issue of how to assess innovation and the capacity for continuous change and improvement. The proposed programme will apply these concepts to assist policy makers and practitioners in analysing and addressing current challenges in the UK and internationally. It will offer five inter related sets of activities: 1. International events - we will convene three international conferences, one each in the UK, Canada and Australia. The conferences will bring together policy makers and practitioners from the UK as well as OECD-type federal countries and the EU to learn from each other. The events will: - Raise awareness of the knowledge exchange at senior levels. - Encourage policy transfer and debate between countries. - Generate feedback into the wider programme of international learning and comparison. - Help design the UK seminars. - Help to identify and motivate key stakeholders to be involved in future events. - Inform the policy briefing on best practice. After each event the applicants will write a summary of the main emerging issues and lessons learnt which will be fed back both to individual participants and to their organisations, to help encourage knowledge exchange. 2. Seminars - we will use our excellent networks built from previous research, to work with a small group of policy makers/practitioners in each country of the UK to co-produce the design of the seminars and the participant list - three in England and one each in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each seminar will involve 15 to 20 participants including senior policy makers, public services practitioners and academics. The seminars will provide opportunities for facilitated analyses of existing approaches to performance assessment and the challenges currently facing policy makers and practitioners. As with the conferences, the applicants will write up a summary of the seminars for distribution to all participants. 3. Network - the conferences and seminars will create a network of policy makers, practitioners and researchers who will be invited to inform the design and co-produce subsequent research on the effectiveness of emerging performance assessment frameworks. 4. Policy Briefing - this will provide a review of international performance assessment written specifically for a policy and practitioner audience and distributed widely via the web, professional associations and other media. It will draw on existing research knowledge and will draw together lessons from the conferences and seminars to highlight best practice from across the world. 5. Dissemination exchange workshops - these will draw upon early versions of the policy briefing involving one of the research team delivering presentations at pre-existing events of professional, local government, and consumer bodies. We will deliver ten workshops across the four countries (five in England, two each in Scotland and Wales and one in Northern Ireland).