Optimising services in the public sector

Improving the public sector for the benefit of the citizens is, maybe, the (quiet but constant) wish of citizens and the (occasional but loud) promise of politicians. Quite rightfully so, especially in countries where considerable sums of public money are channelled to support the various social state functions, such as education, healthcare, welfare services, etc.

'Winner' by Alessandro Capurso
under a CC license

So, why not try to optimise the public sector as would any business do with its core processes?

Interesting idea, probably not-that-new, certainly always tempting, but with its pitfalls. So, not so fast!

Optimisation, in the mathematical sense, is the selection of the best element(s) against a pre-determined set of criteria. This implies that, in order to optimise something, one needs data to for performance and cost parameters. In the typical scenario, one would have a large set of variables, with the corresponding datasets, and would need to select the target for the optimisation process, providing any constrains that may apply to the variables. It sounds easy but it's not.