The PM should renew his vow to avoid organisational change

Performance measurements will always be contested. Recently, Professor Nick Black of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published a paper in The Lancet arguing that productivity in the NHS has increased in recent years. This conflicts with health secretary Andrew Lansley’s claim that it has fallen by 15 per cent. For some, such arguments demonstrate only that you can prove anything with statistics – but the fact that people disagree over how to measure something isn’t a good argument against measurement. In fact, the only way that we can estimate productivity is by proper measurement.

Different targets and better joint working between health and social care agencies would improve the ambulance service, says this week’s Frontliner

Select committees are looking for a proper argument

When I joined the CSW team in June 2010, the Efficiency and Reform Group had just been created, the civil service had 43,000 more employees, and IT contract renegotiations were but a glint in Francis Maude’s eye. Since then the civil service has – while developing a brand new set of policies – experienced wholesale reforms in fields such as pensions, redundancy pay, training and HR, and the ERG has delivered £8.75bn of savings. Even if you don’t agree with everything that’s being done, the pace of change is impressive.

Ministers must champion the public potential of private cash

The civil service has to develop specialist policymaking skills, says Lord Darzi – and that requires topical professional qualifications

Officials must fulfil their duty to challenge poor policies

To really transform public services, leaders must be braver, argues Alasdair Ramage.

Conference season is upon us, and this year all three really matter. With the Liberal Democrats in government, Nick Clegg’s defence of the coalition was occupying the news media last Monday – until a report on public sector salaries suddenly rose up the bulletins and spread through the news websites. Launched ahead of a BBC Panorama programme on the topic, the report won lavish coverage across the right-leaning press.