The National Consumer Council has published A Playlist for Public Services.  Not sure that the ipod imagery works, but there’s ome good stuff here:

Consumers say that they:

  • care about public services and can often be passionate about them. They use words like wonderful, brilliant and excellent, but they also talk about feeling cheated, ignored and made to feel small;
  • feel lucky when things turn out well, but they don’t want others to have to rely on luck. They want everyone to have the assurance of a good service;
  • don’t really mind who delivers public services, so long as they are good;
  • expect public services to work with them, rather than just for them – a real partnership

They also have a vision for 2010 which we could probably take as is:

By 2010 we want…

  • public services that do what they say and say what they do
  • an assured baseline of quality for all services
  • a core set of values that unite a diverse range of suppliers
  • services that organise around consumer needs, with funding that gives them incentives to do so
  • an end to reorganisation for its own sake
  • all public services to report on customer satisfaction in a consistent way
  • a culture in which public servants are respected for what they achieve for consumers.

Our vision is of a new public service professionalism, aware of its vital role in people’s lives, but also its dependence on ordinary people too.