Public sector research: pain and opportunity

8 July 2010

The emerging picture of the emergency budget is one that will have a long-lasting effect on public services within the UK.  Whilst the finer details will become clearer in the autumn, three major issues have been brought into focus:

• Budget reductions will be of such a scale that efficiency savings will not be sufficient enough to meet them
• Budget conditions will not improve for some time; it could be the year 2020 before we see a return to previous levels of spending
• A lack of breathing space, with organisations faced with making cuts whilst simultaneously planning for the future.

For organisations to respond to the new budget conditions, wholesale reform of service delivery is required. Whether this is reducing/refusing provision, merging services or finding new methods to get work done, organisations need to be ready to take the next steps.

Supporting the transformation

This new reality will require input from policy makers and researchers to develop more cost-effective approaches. Public services differ from the private sector in that demand and ability to pay are not related. When the private sector faces budget cuts the demand for goods and services drops.  In the public sector however, there is no such reduction in demand; client demands may actually increase during this period.

When looking at how to overcome this lack of balance, three areas of focus become apparent.

More of an emphasis on outcomes: The target-driven culture of the previous administration is likely to be replaced by a more pragmatic and system-wide interest in the actual outcomes of pubic interventions.  The desire will be to focus resources on what has been shown to be effective.  This will require more qualitative research and a longer-term engagement with beneficiaries.

A renewed focus on the customer:  With fewer resources, and possibly more limited coverage, public sector organisations will need a better understanding of their customers, their characteristics, and how these affect demand and delivery.

A better understanding of the real costs of delivery: The unit costs of provision are not always well understood; with greater internal and external scrutiny, the need to establish what it actually costs to deliver interventions will grow.

Ensuring research is cost-effective

Policy-makers and researchers will have to deliver these insights using available resources. This demands that research also becomes more cost-effective, and there are a number of ways in which we can work together to make this happen:

• Making the most of available data: Organisations already collect extensive data on customers; but this data is often unstructured and not easily interrogated. We provide solutions that require limited investment in preparing data to better inform decision-makers.

• Collaborative working:  We work closely with our clients on research projects, adding expertise or capacity as they require, helping organisations to make the most of the organisation’s existing internal resources

• Pooling resources:  Solutions such as syndicated surveys offer organisations the ability to share the costs of research whilst benefitting from economies of scale and often side-benefits including greater robustness.

• Leveraging technology: As a full-service research agency, we are able to provide organisations with the technological tools they need to access service users and interact across organisations and sectors in a cost-effective way.

Researchers, whether internal or external, will need to be able to explain what the likely return on investment is for any activity.  What tangible outcomes do we expect to result from the work that we undertake?

Our approach is increasingly focused around providing value for money research solutions and demonstrating return on investment on the studies that we undertake. Where possible, we use existing survey or organisational data to augment any primary research that we conduct – for example drawing on the skills of our in-house statistics team to provide more insight and linkage across datasets, ensuring that clients get the most out of their data.