Delivering Public Services That Work Volume 1 - More information


Over 10,000 central and local government officials, policy makers and public service leaders (in health, education, policing and housing, for example) have so far bought Seddon's 2008 book and many more have read it. It's caused quite a stir, including a campaign to make Seddon the Public Services Tzar and a desperate attempt by the Audit Commission to discredit Seddon by saying that a) he's a consultant and b) he has no evidence that his 'nostrum' works. 

The New Book: the proof of the pudding ...
Now Delivering Public Services That Work sets out the evidence: six easily-understood and clearly explained examples of Systems Thinking at work in the public sector. This collection of case studies demonstrates how managers from different public sector organisations in the UK and New Zealand have reduced waste, cut inefficiencies, massively improved service quality and end-to-end times and transformed morale by redesigning their systems to face the customer.

This book provides any leader charged with service performance improvement and simultaneous cost reduction all the information necessary to deliver real-world improvement to customers. This method is well proven in my own organisation.
Dr Carlton Brand, Corporate Director, Resources - Wiltshire Council

The stories from local authority housing, benefits, roads and planning departments chart the entire progress of improvement: from agreeing on the core purpose of the service, to identifying and eliminating preventable waste. Each case study describes the measures taken and the results achieved.

This book offers practical examples of how 'systems thinking' can both save money and transform services. Applying it will change the way you think. In Suffolk's Trading Standards service it reduced the time taken to deliver complete solutions to citizens from 60 days to just 6, whilst saving 80,000; creating 15% extra capacity and reducing staff by 10%. If you're in a position of influence in the public sector you can't afford not to know about this thinking.
Andrea Hill, Chief Executive, Suffolk County Council

The inspirational case studies in Delivering Public Services That Work show:

  • The process that each service provider went through
  • How they overcame initial resistance and hostility from staff
  • The results that can be achieved:
    • When someone on Housing Benefit reports a change in circumstances, a lot of follow-up actions are triggered. In 2007, East Devon District Council were taking 20 days to process these notifications. Using a Systems Thinking approach, they cut that to 3.8 days in 2009.
    • Before Stroud District Council started Systems Thinking, they often took 40-45 days to process a Housing Benefit claim; now most claims are completed within a week.
    • Stockport Borough Council's HR Department has cut service times by over 50%.
    • Central Otago District Council cut the end-to-end time taken to approve or reject requests for resources from the Roads department from an average of 50 days in 2008 to 14 days by the end of 2009.
  • How they rolled-in (rather than rolled-out) the programme across other departments/services
  • What unexpected benefits accrue (a 44% drop in staff illness in one case)

There is currently a lot of talk of 'designing services around customers', of 'better community engagement', and of 'innovation in the front line'; all laudable ideas but with little more than hope that they will produce improvements in services. This book showcases exactly how to go about realising those hopes; it lays out clearly the method to be adopted and demonstrates the results that can be achieved. It should be the first thing anyone aspiring to improve our public services should read.
Andy Nutter, Director of Governance and Transformation, Islington Council