Press Release - Delivering Public Services to a Diverse
Society
10 December 2004
Responding to an increasingly diverse society is essential if
public services are to meet their full potential, Sir John Bourn,
head of the NAO, reported to Parliament today.
This report – the first of its kind by the NAO – looks across
Whitehall at the way in which government bodies are taking steps to
better tailor their services to the needs of these diverse
groups.
This reflects the increasing emphasis of the Government, not
only to improve the diversity of the Senior Civil Service, but to
design services around the different needs of the diverse citizens
who make up modern society.
The NAO report is based on a survey of 131 government bodies,
assessing their performance under each of the Government’s six key
diversity strands: disability, gender, race, religion and belief,
age, and sexual orientation. In addition, the NAO used interviews
with both public sector staff and stakeholder groups. The NAO found
that knowledge of customer diversity, the diversity of the
workforce, and success in meeting diverse needs through service
delivery, tended to go hand in hand. At the same time, the report
highlights case studies of successful delivery where staff involved
were not representative of the groups they were serving – but where
the crucial factor was their willingness to engage with and respond
to stakeholder groups and individual service users.
The report selects four successful initiatives and highlights
the lessons that can be learnt from them. The Crown Prosecution
Service gives an example of good consultation with stakeholder
groups as it prepared to launch a Public Policy Statement on its
approach to the prosecution of racially and religiously aggravated
crime. In Bristol and North Somerset, the Inland Revenue’s outreach
activities in the Sikh and Chinese communities have helped ethnic
minority businesses and individuals understand and comply with the
tax system. Through successful engagement with the community, a
Women’s Study Group in Birmingham is meeting the educational needs
of a diverse community. Finally, the National Gallery’s "Art
Through Words" programme has helped to make parts of its collection
accessible to blind and partially sighted blind people.
In terms of its own staff, the Civil Service as a whole is
broadly representative of the wider population in terms of gender
and race. At senior grades, while it is still far from being as
representative, it is making steady progress on its targets for
increasing the percentage of women and people from ethnic
minorities. However, there appear to be particular challenges in
improving the workforce representation for disabled people. Unlike
the ratios for gender and race, there is a continuing shortfall in
the ratio between disabled staff and the wider population, not just
at senior grades, but at all grades throughout the Civil Service.
Some 13.6 per cent of the economically active population of the UK
are disabled in some way; but only 2.3 per cent of the Senior Civil
Service have declared they are disabled. The Government recognises
that further progress is needed, and is putting in place a number
of policies to address this.
The NAO survey reveals that government bodies seem less
confident of their performance in meeting needs connected with
race, than with other diversity strands. This could be because
statutory race equality duties are forcing departments to focus
their attention on areas where they still have progress to make on
race. At the same time, it is possible that it also reflects
awareness of a genuine underperformance in service delivery
relating to black and minority ethnic people.
Another finding of the survey is that government bodies possess
much less information for religion and belief and sexual
orientation than for other diversity strands. While there are
obvious sensitivities relating to capturing information about these
strands, departments may be failing to meet certain important needs
if they have wide gaps in their knowledge. Where bodies find it
difficult to collect information on these categories, they should
seek to use anonymised or third party methods of capturing it, and
do the same for encouraging feedback on their performance.
Sir John Bourn said today:
"Tailoring public services to address diverse needs can
be seen as important, not simply as a moral end it itself, but also
to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public services by
making sure they actually benefit all those they are designed to
serve. This report shows that there is much that government can do
and is doing to achieve this, and makes recommendations that show
how this might best be effected."
Notes for Editors:
- Press notices and reports are available from the date of
publication on the NAO website,
which is now at www.nao.org.uk. Hard copies can be obtained from
The Stationery Office
on 0845 702 3474.
- The Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir John Bourn, is the
head of the National Audit Office which employs some 800 staff. He
and the NAO are totally independent of Government. He certifies the
accounts of all Government departments and a wide range of other
public sector bodies; and he has statutory authority to report to
Parliament on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which
departments and other bodies have used their resources.
Press Notice 74/04
All enquiries to Mark Strathdene, NAO Press Office:
Tel: 020 7798 7183
Mobile: 07748 181693