[LINK] What's wrong with this picture? McKinsey report on 'Boosting Government Productivity'

[steve jenkin]

These two pieces from the McKinsey Quarterly left me cold.  Any other
opinions/comments?

<http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Public_Sector/Management/Boosting_government_productivity_1514>
<http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Public_Sector/Management/Organizing_for_effectiveness_in_the_public_sector_1509>

In the first (main) article, is a very nice piece on how the US Postal
Service decreased costs by 10% over 4 years by making a small team
responsible for ferreting out & communicating "What works" (my words).
[A sidebar, the link is right at the bottom]

But  McK make a leap - that Health care (Medicare) costs could be
reduced by 20% in much the same way.

They blithely talk about 'government productivity' and 'performance of
government' - but we don't get to hear how they measure these things -
especially at constant Quality or Service Levels.
>From their perspective, (if you don't die) a 3-hour or 15-hour wait in
Casualty is the same.

A sop to this view:
> The economist William Baumol famously noted in 19674 that services may
> lag behind manufacturing in productivity because their labor-intensive
> nature makes it hard to apply cost-saving technological innovations:
> it will always take the same amount of time for a teacher to read a
> story, for instance, or for a nurse to give a shot.

-- 
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin