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The article considers the challenges involved in measuring the performance of local public service networks through an empirical analysis of Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAAs), a short-lived but pioneering attempt to gauge the effectiveness of local governments, health trusts, police and fire services in England.

Primary data about the implementation and impact of CAAs were gathered using a mixed method approach, including surveys of local public services, inspectorates and residents together with focus groups and semi-structured interviews in 12 case study areas.

CAAs encouraged agencies to strive to achieve better partnership working but did not provide sufficiently robust comparative data to enable managers to benchmark their performance against other areas or identify good practice elsewhere. Policy makers hoped that citizens would use CAAs to hold services to account but the process failed to attract media or public interest.

The logic of a more ‘joined-up’ approach to performance assessment of local partnerships is compelling. But in practice it is difficult to achieve because institutional arrangements at a national level mean that different sectors work within very different budget systems, professional networks and performance frameworks. Assessing the outcomes achieved by local partnerships also presents new challenges for inspection agencies and requires them to use new kinds of evidence.

This is the only attempt to date to evaluate CAAs and adds to an understanding of the challenges of assessing the performance of local public service partnerships. It highlights new questions for researchers and policy makers about the types of evidence needed to measure partnership performance and the extent to which the public may use the results.

The personalisation agenda currently appears as a key strand of the Government's approach to health and social care services. On the face of it this offers an exciting new future where service users drive the way services are joined up, which for some may be welcome given the paucity of evidence to show that the organisationally‐driven partnership working of the past decade has delivered real and tangible outcomes for service users. There is some suggestion that in the future any talk about partnerships will be about this citizen‐state interaction, rather than one between health and social care agencies. This paper argues that there is a real danger in suggesting that personalisation negates the need for health and social care agencies to work together in partnership; instead this interface is more imperative than ever. In this paper we provide an overview of the debates around personalisation and partnership and set out the case why partnership should not be forgotten, and indeed will be key, in the success of the personalisation agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and review the leadership challenges in workforce planning, paying special reference to adult social care primarily in England (UK) whilst raising leadership issues that have international resonance.

This is a viewpoint which presents a distillation of key issues, challenges and relevant literature spanning workforce planning, human resources and social care.

The paper finds that growing demands on services, rising expectations for personalised care and support, together with the provision of safe and effective joined up care are some of the key drivers facing social care and wider public services. Leaders need to ensure a robust data and evidence base, sound interpretation of intelligence as well as building integrated approaches to workforce planning both within and between services.

Workforce leadership provides the bedrock to ensuring social care builds the workforce required for the future. As services undergo redesign and transformation the workforce planning task is more important now than ever and is a key responsibility for every organisation's leadership, including chief executives, commissioners and workforce specialists.

Workforce planning in social care is afforded relatively little attention and the analysis presented in this paper provides the stimulus for debate.

Older people currently do not view websites as a preferred source of information. This may not be a view held in the future. An exploration of local authority websites suggests room for improvement and collaboration with others to shape a future in which websites are joined up and informative for older people.

The purpose of this paper is to unpack some of the socio‐technical relationships inherent in contemporary notions of personal identity management. For this purpose it considers the issue of personal identity management in terms of a framework, which distinguishes between the related processes of authentication, identification and enrolment.

The conceptual model described in this paper is reflected against an important recent case in which issues of personal identity management are being enacted: the introduction of a UK national identity card. Both this issue and case are particularly examined in the light of the growth of e‐Government in the UK.

The paper relates issues associated with the technical infrastructure of e‐Government with some of the costs and benefits associated with the social infrastructure of e‐Government. This device offers a useful framing for a whole range of issues surrounding individual‐organisation interaction in the Information Society that rely on elements of personal identity management.

In the paper the issue of personal identity management is under‐represented in the Information Systems and Information Management literature. The conceptual approach adopted in the paper is used to identify areas of further research in terms of issues relevant to the technical infrastructure of e‐Government.

The paper identifies a number of personal identity management issues embedded in the technical infrastructure required for effective e‐Government.

This paper raises the importance of personal identity management to the success of the e‐Government agenda. It also links classic information management issues to the issue of personal identity management and identifies the challenges for e‐Government within this.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a horizontal integration programme in the South West of England. The programme was unusual insofar as it included the full range of public services being provided in a single town. It was a place-based system framed by the concept that a person’s wellbeing includes their health, economic status and living environment and that they are inextricably linked. As well as aiming for broader system integration, the programme utilised a person-centred approach using service-user perceptions to influence design. It was implemented through a local governance structure using a set of collaborative principles.

The paper presents personal reflections of the programme manager about the efficacy of the model, its sustainability and the problems encountered. It sets out the principles defining the model and the extent to which the principles were followed in practice.

Creating a holistic public service based on integration to tackle deep seated problems within a population requires reducing complexity at the interface between citizens and services. A local system model that includes all public services allows for collective responsibility for meeting the service needs of the population augmenting the connections and bridging the gaps between services. There was a recognition amongst participants that service redesign does not require wholesale organisational restructuring but does require creating shared aims and objectives and the participation of leaders with the ability to implement change within their services. A user-led, bottom-up approach provides deeper understanding and traction on the ground but should be combined with top-down strategic support to provide structural sustainability and the ability to scale out.

The paper demonstrates that horizontal service integration based on the concept of wellbeing is possible but faces significant challenges. The benefits and complexities of inter-agency collaboration multiply when enhancing the outcome focus from improving population health to general wellbeing. New theories of implementation and transformation are needed that relate to this important emerging service theme.

This paper aims to describe coal-face challenges to making services in the UK work to ensure the mental and physical health, safety and wellbeing of children.

After briefly referring to some challenges to effective joined-up service provision, it describes examples from the first author's experience of problems, during 30+ years as an NHS clinical child psychologist, and some solutions. It then describes two challenges that underpin many of these problems: lack of understanding of, or training in, evaluating evidence for interventions and a more general lack of knowledge about effective behaviour change principles.

The paper concludes with recommendations about how to achieve effective joined-up services. Common themes emerging from the research are discussed, including choosing evidence-based programmes, providing adequate training to staff, and increasing people's understanding of behavioural principles.

Having effective joined-up services would mean better services for parents and their children, and would be more cost-effective for the NHS. The ideas presented in this paper could also be applied to other services within the NHS.

This paper aims to talk about the changes to auditing practice in the context of broader changes in the public sector.

A personal reflection on the issue using prior experiences as a former auditor-general of two Australian states.

The role for government audit will always mirror the change in the public sector. Whether audit fulfils this role depends on having the right legislation and the right approach. While audit legislation lags behind recent shifts in public sector approaches, government auditors are continuing to explore new ways to give parliament, as well as the sector, authoritative opinions and commentary that is relevant and valuable.

Increased understanding of the changing role of the Auditor-General's Office that affects the efficiency and effectives of public sector entities will help practitioners in improving strategic directions of their operations. This will also help academic researchers in developing ideas for future research.

Reflections presented here are based on the author's practical experiences over the past 40 years as a program manager and as a government auditor.