Now that we in the UK have emerged from the election into a brave new world, the government has to address some new realities. The new coalition knows that it has to cut the biggest budget deficit of our times, whilst stimulating growth and maintaining the confidence of the sensitive markets. However, can we take the risk of doing the more of the same? I think not. We need to embrace the adversity to force us to be ingenious, but still deliver a high standard of public service. I believe that there are at least three approaches that will help government to lead us to a new dawn:
•    The application of service design principles
•    A radical overhaul of the capacity, capability and delivery systems of government
•    Bolder moves towards service commissioning

In this article I want to provoke further thought, argument and action that will benefit all citizens and businesses.

The application of service design principles
In order to change mindset, the government needs to see ICT as a supporting technology and not the cure to all ills. We all know about badly conceived and executed ICT-led programmes. However, that doesn’t mean that ICT is bad. The progressive answer, I believe, is to create solutions with the citizens and businesses as the most important stakeholder. Service design is a 20-year-old discipline that focuses on optimising the design of tangible and the oft-overlooked intangible elements of public service engagement. The Service Design network states that service design “aims to ensure that service interfaces are useful, usable and desirable from the client’s point of view, and effective, efficient and distinctive from the supplier’s point of view”. Sophia Parker, author of Unlocking Innovation: Why Citizens Hold the Key to Public Service Reform, defines service design as “a set of tools, techniques and approaches to enable people to drive public service reform”. Far from being an esoteric option, Serco believe that creativity and innovation should be central to the redressing the budget deficit.