Rethinking Regulation: A Manifesto

Drawing on a lifetime's experience of working in the public sector, John Seddon here condenses what he has learnt about public sector 'improvement', regulation and inspection into a simple and singular Manifesto.

In it he clearly sets out what government needs to do allow the public sector to do its job: meeting the needs of citizens.

The narrative will be familiar to anyone who has read his definitive work Systems Thinking in the Public Sector. But it is here updated, condensed and set out in a form that no politician or policy-maker can afford to ignore.


Since the 1980s, successive governments have adopted a wide variety of approaches to improve public-sector productivity. These have ranged from New Public Management, consultancy-led service industrialisation and digital transformation at one end of the scale, to benchmarking, leadership development, employee engagement and future planning at the other. All have failed to improve productivity. Productivity improvement is described by politicians as a vexing conundrum.

Few people, perhaps especially those in government, would imagine that the UK's model of regulation could itself be responsible for damaging productivity. But that is certainly the case.
In Rethinking Regulation, John Seddon sets out the evidence for this. He then presents a manifesto for change, arguing that fundamental reform of our regulatory model would have a profound positive impact on public-sector productivity. The evidence is garnered from interactions with ministers, public servants, regulators and the regulated over more than 20 years working with public-sector services.