Public Services Productivity Review

About this programme 

The National Statistician delivered the Independent Review of the Measurement of Public Services Productivity in March 2025. The report details improved measurements across almost all major public services, including health, education, policing, immigration, taxation, benefits, defence, criminal justice, as well as a large number of recommendations for the future.

If you would like more information, please email psp.review@ons.gov.uk.

The latest public services productivity data can be found on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) website.

Measuring public service productivity 

Around 20% of gross domestic product (GDP) is accounted for by the outputs of public services in the UK, which is comparable to most other western economies. The recent coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and desire to improve public services without increasing spend or taxes has brought the focus back onto public services.

The coronavirus pandemic highlighted that public services can be subject to significant changes, which measurement systems designed for more standard times can struggle to accommodate. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2023 asked the National Statistician, Professor Sir Ian Diamond, to review the measurement of public service productivity, noting the changing data and policy landscape that may arise in coming years. Automation, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and other forms of innovation also offer opportunities to transform public service delivery.

Measurement of the productivity of public services is historically and internationally acknowledged as being challenging. This is because of the absence of prices to demonstrate the value to citizens of what is produced. The Public Services Productivity Review (PSPR) builds on previous work undertaken by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to make improvements to published statistics, building on The Atkinson Review: Final Report: Measurement of Government Output and Productivity for the National Accounts (2005) and the Independent review of UK economic statistics: final report (2016).

The Independent Review of the Measurement of Public Services Productivity  summarises the PSPR's work over the last 18 months. It presents the important challenges identified; the cross-cutting methodological improvements that it has developed; the service specific improvements implemented; and recommendations for further work.

The PSPR has collaborated extensively with government departments, academics and other bodies across the UK to identify new data sources and innovative methods to improve existing ONS published estimates of public services productivity. The quality, granularity and timeliness of estimates have been improved.

The PSPR has:

• delivered a once in a generation update to the Atkinson principles (2005)

• improved the quality and granularity of UK public services productivity estimates; the majority will be incorporated in the spring 2025 release of data

• significantly improved the measurement of healthcare, education, social security administration, tax administration, and public order and safety

• made research progress on measuring long standing conceptual challenges in policing and defence

• improved the timeliness of estimates through publication of experimental annual "nowcasts" since November 2023 to address the two-year lag in data availability and the consequent lack of quality adjustment

• introduced publication of quarterly experimental estimates of healthcare productivity from February 2025, with a plan to extend this to other services

• developed a plan to improve the coherence of the quarterly and annual estimates to improve understanding for users, which is already underway

• influenced the UK recommendations to the United Nations review of the Classification of the Functions of Government (COFOG) (PDF, 2.86MB) 

• delivered groundbreaking research and insight into public sector managers' and workers' views on the opportunities and barriers associated with improving productivity, use of automation and artificial intelligence

• produced a strategic "roadmap" for incorporation of these public services productivity improvements into the UK National Accounts and GDP, aligned with the planning for implementation of the new System of National Accounts 2025

With continued focus, further improvements should be achievable in 2026 as well as beyond. It will be important for the ONS to continue collaboration with the growing network of service-specific bodies exploring public service productivity measurement at more granular levels, to ensure consistency and transparency of data in the public domain. The coherence of devolved governments' data underpinning the UK-wide public service productivity estimates could be improved if sufficient user need exists and investment into development is made available.

A significant number of far-reaching recommendations for further work have been identified. Some impact or depend upon other government departmental initiatives and may need additional funding to bring to fruition.

The PSPR offers a substantive step-change in UK public services measurement, which over the next few years can be applied into the UK National Accounts as well as productivity measures, to support the coherence and accuracy of the UK economic measurement system. The PSPR delivery has been overseen by a sponsorship group, made up of the national statistician and permanent secretaries from HM Treasury and a steering group, co-chaired by the chief economist at the ONS and director of macro-economic environment statistics and analysis at HM Treasury.

Previous review updates

• As part of the commitment to the Public Services Productivity Review (PSPR), the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reached its first milestone on 17 November 2023, publishing new experimental baseline estimates of UK annual public service productivity, 1997 to 2019 and a new experimental measure for the path of annual UK public service productivity for the years 2021 and 2022.

• ONS provides an update on the work and progress made towards improving public service measures on productivity on 20 February 2024.

• ONS launches a new pilot "time-use survey" for the public sector.

• First findings from our pilot time use survey are available in our Time use survey in the public sector, Great Britain: February 2024 bulletin.

• Ahead of the upcoming annual public service productivity article, ONS presents the methodological inputs, outputs and quality adjustment improvements to be made to education and healthcare.

• Published on 22 March 2024, Public service productivity, healthcare, England: financial year ending 2022 uses improved methods as part the PSPR. These include the improvements made to the measures of quantity output, quality adjustment and inputs described in the Improved methods for total public service productivity: total, UK, 2021 methodology, published on 8 March 2024.

• New estimates on annual public service productivity for the UK between 1997 and 2021, published by the ONS on 26 March 2024, incorporate the first set of methodological improvements since the PSPR began. Changes reflect development of measures on quantity output, quality adjustment and inputs, as described in Improved methods for total public service productivity: total, UK, 2021. This is the second annual report published by the ONS where the findings are affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

• The ONS launched The Public Sector Management Practices Survey (PSMPS) on the 26 April 2024. This is a new survey looking to collect information about the management practices of organisations from across the public sector, covering central government; local government; police and fire services; health services and education. We will be looking to publish findings from this survey in autumn 2024.

• Published on the 3 May 2024, our Public service productivity, quarterly, UK: October to December 2023 bulletin, presents official statistics in development for total public service productivity, inputs and output, including data that are consistent with our GDP quarterly national accounts, UK: October to December 2023 bulletin. This release provides a short-term, timely indicator of the annual accredited official statistics of total public service productivity. The quarterly estimates in this release are not quality adjusted.

• Published on the 15 July 2024, Public service productivity, quarterly, UK: January to March 2024, presents official statistics in development for total public service productivity, inputs and output. This quarterly publication provides a short-term, timely indicator of the annual accredited official statistics of total public service productivity, which include quality adjustments but are produced with a two-year lag to give time for data on quality factors to become available.

• Three pieces of analysis related to our public services productivity review published on 21 October 2024. Public Sector Management Practices Survey pilot, UK: 2023 bulletin and Public sector managers' views on management practices, Great Britain: August to September 2024 article, present findings of qualitative research into public sector managers' views on their organisations' management practices, administration, technology and innovation. Our Time use in the public sector, Great Britain: further analysis, February 2024 bulletin presents in-depth analysis of our pilot public sector time use survey, from which the initial findings were published in March 2024.

• Published on 11 December 2024, our Developing nowcast methodologies for public service productivity, UK article, is an overview of the latest experimental methods to produce timelier estimates of annual UK public service productivity.

• Published on 10 February 2025, our Public service productivity, quarterly, UK: July to September 2024 bulletin, reports the UK total public service and healthcare productivity, inputs, and output, to provide a short-term, timely indicator of annual productivity estimates.

Related links

National Statistician's Independent Review of the Measurement of Public Services Productivity
Report | Updated 15 April 2025
UK Statistics Authority report from the National Statistician, Professor Sir Ian Diamond.

Public services productivity – exploring statistical frontiers
Blog | Published 13 March 2025
Following the publication of the National Statistician's Independent Review of Public Services Productivity, this blog tells us how the data have been improved and changes in the operation of our public services.

Shining a light on Public Service Productivity\
Blog | Published 7 August 2023
How the review of measures of public service productivity is progressing and why measuring public service productivity is more challenging than other areas of the economy.