Striving for Excellence in Public Service Delivery: Experiences from an Analysis of the Private Finance Initiative

Abstract

This article is built on the assumption that all Governments will strive for excellence in public service delivery and will put in place all manner of innovations to achieve this end state. These innovations assume that there is always scope for improvement, very largely because what constitutes this end state is contested and subject to changing views and disagreements by the multiple constituencies involved in public service delivery. The paper makes plain that this realisation does not mean that a discursively agreed consensus on improvement and excellence in particular cases is impossible but rather cautions against claiming that this is some absolute, objective and time-invariant state. These themes are illustrated through an ongoing six-year research project into analysing and evaluating the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) with particular emphasis on PFI in the National Health Service. PFI is an innovation in public service delivery instituted in 1992 as a way to improve public service delivery thorough involving the private sector in property-based service provision. The article traces PFI developments at the policy (Government), programme/project (Government Department) and operational (actual operating projects) levels to show how the nature of PFI, its application and its evaluation has changed over time as the multiple constituencies have debated and disagreed on these key characteristics. The paper draws wider lessons from this case that can be used for analysing and evaluating other innovations pursued to improve public service delivery on the pathway to excellence.