In more detail
Commissioning means giving someone the job of doing something. In public services (the council, police and the NHS etc), it means working out the specification for a service collaboratively and then paying someone to deliver it who isn’t directly employed by you. It is not the same as purchasing because it involves working with potential suppliers to see what is possible. It is not the same as direct delivery because the people who do the work are employed by a different organisation.
Public Service Commissioners
Commissioners are people who work for public services to do commissioning. Their job involves translating executive decisions and priorities into practical and achievable work; setting standards ; negotiating with, and supporting partners, to deliver work; tendering contracts; monitoring and evaluating (which means measuring and learning from ) work; and ensuring good social value and value for money in how money is spent.
Social Value and Local Services
Public sector organisations can commission businesses, civil society groups or other public sector bodies to deliver work. Increasingly, when they do, they are being reminded and required to take into account ‘social value’ – the wider benefits to society in the long term of having work delivered in one way as opposed to another. Social value can be added, for example: by using local labour and locally based businesses; or by commissioning local organisations that re-invest any surplus they make back into the local area and for community benefit.
There is support for the delivery of local public services by community-based organisations: for example, through the 'right to challenge' how local services are delivered by councils (which was introduced by the Localism Act); and through programmes like Our Place with is run by Locality on behalf of the government.
The presentation below is by the New Economics Foundation - it sets out their approach to commissioning for coproduction:
| Key Facts:
Commissioning means working with alternative providers of public services to see whether they could be done more cheaply and provide more social value. Community groups have the right to challenge the way councils provide local services and there is some support for communities who are interested in running services directly in their own neighbourhood. |
Page Links from here
Our Place aims to involve communities in making decisions about commissioning public services
Involving Users in Commissioning Local Services is a research report by Silvia Schehrer and Stephanie Sexton
published by Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2010 - available for download as a PDF using the link
New Economics Foundation is a London-based thinktank which highlights innnovative economic thinking
In the toolkit, see:
OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.
BIRMINGHAM COMMUNITY PLANNING TOOLKIT DEFINITION SHEET This sheet may be reproduced in paper or electromic or any other form but please mention it was made by Chamberlain Forum Limited for Birmingham City Council supported by Department for Communities and Local Government.
| created: 2016-06-17 12:45:07 | by: admin | status: f published |