The Open Public Services White Paper is the government’s much-vaunted, yet widely mocked, Big Society agenda made manifest. This delayed and hugely anticipated document – which was finally published in the dog days of mid-July – provides the guiding principles that will enable public sector change from the bottom up, rather than being a prospectus for the direct re-engineering of the state. But will it work?

It breaks down public services into three broad categories: individual services, such as education and skills training; neighbourhood services, such as certain local authority functions; and commissioned services, such as health services. Across these, the proposed policy framework is based on five core principles. First, increase choice wherever possible. Second, power should be decentralised to the lowest appropriate level. Third, public services should be open to a diverse range of providers. Fourth, the government will seek to ensure fair access to public services. Finally, public services should be accountable to users and taxpayers.

Consumer sovereignty

Personal budgets are just one aspect of a quasi-market theme that runs throughout the paper. The government is promising to increase the diversity of provision by opening commissioning up to a range of voluntary organisations, private companies, mutuals and social enterprises. In many respects this is a continuation of the contracting out of public services. However, changes to the design of government contracts, which stem from these principles, are arguably more radical. Payment by results will mean providers are no longer remunerated by their volume of output, but by the actual outcomes and specific results they achieve.

This focus on results and greater consumer sovereignty will provide new challenges for many managers in the civil service and local authorities, as well as for the service providers. Too often, the government assumes, incorrectly, that those commissioning the changes have the expertise and legal freedom required to ensure competitively tendered contracts benefit a mix of social enterprises and community providers – rather than developing a private sector monoculture.

Ensuring implementation

On education, the White Paper does not contain a great deal that is new, but draws together existing education policies (free schools, academies and so forth) as evidence of greater freedom in the education sector and provides an opportunity for general consultation.

The biggest challenge of this new White Paper will come in encouraging participants who wish to make use of these principles, particularly in areas where public anxieties and vocal vested interests exist. It has already proved easier to foster diversity in provision across welfare than in health. There are concerns that the Civil Service lacks the management and leadership skills necessary to ensure implementation. There are many civil servants who are highly effective in the design of reform, but it will require a different set of leadership skills to shift cultures in departments and more widely across the public sector.