Measuring Public Sector Output and Productivity in the UK – Progress since The Atkinson Review

UK Centre for the Measurement of Government Activity

Mark PontDeputy Director, UKCeMGA

Overview

• Background• The Atkinson Review• Achievements• Consultation• Strategy• Future plans

Background

• Old approach: ‘inputs = outputs’• Government spending is one-fifth of GDP in the UK• European requirement from mid-1990s to measure

output directly• Atkinson Review “Measurement of Government

Output and Productivity for the National Accounts” published in Jan 2005

• UKCeMGA set up July 2005

Scope of the work

• Measurement of government output and productivity:– Health and adult social care– Education and children’s social services– Social security administration– Criminal Justice System– Civil and Family Courts– Fire– (Defence)

• Provision of data series to National Accounts• Publication of Productivity Articles• Development of new methods and international liaison

Achievements 1

• Establishment of Advisory Board• Publication of productivity articles• Improvements to expenditure data

– New financial reporting database– Classification of activity to COFOG– Clear analysis of adjustments made to data– Financial Director sign-off of input data– Procurement data– More timely data from local government

Achievements 2

• Education– More complete and accurate measure of output– Initial development of improved quality measures

• Health– More activities covered– Better measure of GP time

• Triangulation– Use of independent corroborative evidence

• Quality Measurement Framework Project

Quality Measurement Framework Project

• £2.5m (€3.7m) project funded by HM Treasury• Aims to create mechanisms for measuring the

quality of outputs • Develop methods to measure Care Homes’ output

– Weights for different social care outcomes– Link between performance measures and quality

• Investigate the potential in other areas:– Pre-school education– Low-level social care interventions– Information and advice services for adult social care

• Extend to other government services

Consultation

• Three consultations– Establishing the Principles– Education– Health

• Consultation paper• Seminars• Strategy, to be published soon

Strategy

• Quality measurement– Dimensions of quality– Contribution of output to outcome– Capacity for benefit

• Methodological issues– Relative importance of the dimensions of quality– Cost or value weights– Time lags

Future plans 1

• Satellite accounts– Bring together a wider picture of the output of the public

sector– Categorise economic activities by nature and purpose– Better understand links between inputs and outputs– Understand links and time lags between economic

activities and outcomes

• More improvements to input data– Quality assurance of input data– Improvements to delivery of local government data

Future plans 2

• More methodological work– Measuring quality of public service delivery– Attribution– Measure the quality of our own outputs– Ongoing reviews of methods used

• Documentation– Operate transparently– Helps us establish framework for improvement

UKCeMGA Contacts

• Head of division: – Aileen Simkins, aileen.simkins@ons.gov.uk

• Deputy head of division:– Mark Pont, mark.pont@ons.gov.uk

• Head of Education team:– Helen Patterson, helen.patterson@ons.gov.uk

• Head of Health team:– Phillip Lee, phillip.lee@ons.gov.uk

• Head of Methods team:– Emily Carless, emily.carless@ons.gov.uk

• Our website: www.statistics.gov.uk/ukcemga