Highly pertinent. It does read as a playbook for effective government - at the level of implementation and, to a degree, administration, rather than in the more glamorous domains of policy and strategy - and if its ideas seem familiar, that's probably because they've been influential at least in these circles that the last few years have taken me into. (It also touches only very lightly on the vexed questions of direct public sector reform and, particularly, public sector productivity, which has the effect of grounding it even more thoroughly in the practical.) And it's a playbook that I can imagine referring back to myself - which makes it one of a very small number in this kind of field.
* * *
Putting together the pieces, Barber set up and ran Blair's Delivery Unit during his second term as PM (2001 to 2005) and Geoff Mulgan, now of the so-interesting Nesta, was variously head of policy and of the Strategy Unit at Number 10 over an overlapping period.
* * *
Putting together the pieces, Barber set up and ran Blair's Delivery Unit during his second term as PM (2001 to 2005) and Geoff Mulgan, now of the so-interesting Nesta, was variously head of policy and of the Strategy Unit at Number 10 over an overlapping period.
