Ranking Public Services: from Local to Global (ESRC Public Services Programme and OII Public Service Workshop Series)

About

For over twenty years ratings and rankings have been widely used to rate public service performance within the UK and particularly England. School and university rankings, local authority league tables, micro-local crime data, heath trust ratings, are now part of our lives. International rankings of public services, governance and even quality of life (in cities, for example) have become commonplace over the last thirty years too, feeding into policy debate at the national level. The aim of this lunchtime workshop series is to look at the operation and design of different rankings systems, at the supply of and demand for rankings and at the way the rankings game is played by strategic actors from the local to the global level. The workshop will draw on and feed into the work done on rankings and performance indicators in the ESRC Public Services Programme of which Christopher Hood is currently Director.

The workshop, which has been going for several years, is a small informal group of faculty and graduate students interested in the analysis of public services and executive government. It aims to work wherever possible on the basis of pre-circulated short papers, with very short presentations followed immediately by discussion. It works as a ‘brown bag’ workshop, so bring your own sandwich. Water, juice and coffee will be provided.