Monday, June 02, 2008

David Boyle on target culture

David Boyle has an article on Comment is Free today on the decision by four police forces to reject government targets and allow their officers to use more discretion.

He writes:
They follow the trail blazed by the top independent schools when they withdrew from the league tables, but this is a much braver and more significant step.

It is also an emperor's new clothes moment for government targets: if you deny their existence, they lose their power. Whole swaths of the public sector - and local government in particular - will now be emboldened to go the same way.
David blogs at The Real Blog (but not very often).
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2 comments:

  1. dreamingspire03 June, 2008 07:07

    They were not Brown's targets. He is allowing them to wither. A pity he could not have stood tall and thrown them out by putting forward a coherent philosophy of responsibility and commonsense, along with different kinds of targets: service quality and competence from the top down.
    But its good that we are beginning to see signs of leaders emerging again at the local level, and not just in the police.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Letters From A Tory03 June, 2008 10:57

    I bet you that any attempt by public services to drop targets will be met with a swift removal of funding from central government.

    ReplyDelete