This two-day seminar is directed at public officials from EU Member States, candidate countries and the EU institutions and other multi-lateral institutions, as well as auditors, consultants, and other stakeholders who are faced with challenges relating to governance, accountability and performance of public sector organisations.

The seminar builds on four case studies to explain the paradigm shift that is required to move public service organisations into the 21st Century. Two of the cases are manifestations of the ‘Toyota Production System’ (also known as ‘Lean’)  as adapted to service organisations (using the ‘Vanguard’ approach, which like Toyota’s system derives from the thinking of E.W. Deming, the father of modern quality management), one is a case of Human-Centred Design (an approach pioneered by IDEO, one of the world’s largest innovation consultancies and used by public sector organisations such as MINDLAB in Denmark) and one is a case of the modern socio-technical systems approach to organisational design. All of these approaches have a great deal in common and can be seen as concrete ways to realise a flexible, networked organisation (agile, adaptive, customer focused etc.) as opposed to a bureaucratic one. In addition, two cases of ministries with similar functions will be presented to discuss the implications of the new paradigm for the practice of strategic management.

At the end of seminar participants will understand how performance for citizens can be significantly and sustainably improved in a systematic way without using traditional command and control methods or misuse of target-setting.