Speaking to Civil Service World, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said that in the public sector "we lumber our processes with excessive burdens. There are lots of ways in which we want things to be done quicker, cheaper, simpler. We want to engage public sector workers to help us to do that."
Under 'Tell Us How', he said, "every major organisation and business will have a means for their staff to make suggestions on how things can be done better".
Maude asked public sector workers to question whether there are "regulations that make it more difficult to do your job; processes that are cumbersome and unwieldy - that if they were dealt with, would enable you to operate more successfully?"
He also said that, while he doesn't encourage this, some public sector workers could "put in their suggestions and comments anonymously, because sometimes the criticism may be that an organisation is managed in an unsatisfactory way. They may not want their name attached to that - but people will often be frustrated."
Once ideas are submitted, Maude said, a small team in the Cabinet Office will assess them and determine how best to act on them. "We'll speak to the department, agency or frontline service and say: 'Why don't you sort it out?'" said Maude. "Or we may do a quick review where we will involve non-executive members of departmental boards to help drive through the difficult, complicated things".
The URL for the website is: www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/content/tell-us-how