My wish to you for 2021 is that the vaccination programme completes quickly and successfully. It has been amazing to see the number of volunteers stepping up to help, despite some of the unnecessary hurdles put before them.
A recently retired doctor needs to provide 39 pieces of documentation to prove they are suitable to give an intramuscular injection. Despite the hurdles, volunteers are coming forward in huge numbers.
If it were down to willpower alone then a successful programme is guaranteed. But there are a number things that could extend the time taken for the programme to complete. Access to the vaccine is one big unknown – will the manufacturers be able to deliver to the competing demands of different purchasers? Discussion of whether the vaccines can be mixed has emerged in the UK, with the US Centre for Disease Control saying that we have ‘abandoned the science’.
So perhaps we should, as we always do, hope for the best but plan for every contingency. Which means, of course, we need to continue to transform our services alongside the virus this year and perhaps longer.
The cost of the pandemic, not just to the sector, but to the physical and mental health and wellbeing of residents and businesses, means that transformation is needed more than ever. So, with a difficult year ahead of us iESE is renewing its commitment to public service transformation – and wants volunteers to help.
Our commitment takes three forms: identifying and sharing best practice from around the world; building your capacity to transform your services against those world standards, and; providing access to innovative tools that will make a meaningful impact on local public services in the eyes of the resident and local business.
Transform magazine, published in The MJ and online, has grown fantastically and is read around the world with read times having grown to one hour. This year we plan to generate more international content from across the globe to bring new ideas and information into the UK.
We are collaborating with public services in Canada and transformative technology companies in the UK like MindOfMyOwn and Elemental to test a radical new approach to care records – LifeTree – one that puts real control in the subject of service, empowering them and supporting them and their network of supporters.
And, our Customer Focus Wheel has become digital, a tool which enables you to assess in measurable ways how customer-focused your services are and how best to improve them.
If you want to support us in any of these initiatives, then please get in touch at enquiries@iese.org.uk
Dr Andrew Larner is chief executive of the Improvement & Efficiency Social Enterprise (iESE), which supports public sector transformation