Mr Letwin's whiteboard
Wherever you look - in the NHS, in policing, in schools, in town halls, the benefit system, housing or even the constitution - Coalition ministers are attempting to deliver far-reaching change at breakneck speed.
And this week, in a fascinating, if rather tekky session of the , the two ministers in the engine room at the centre of government described how they are attempting to manage this legislative blitzkrieg.
is the Cabinet Office minister in charge of oiling the machinery of government. He's the architect of the new system which has replaced New Labour's Public Service Agreements and Performance Indicators - by which the centre of government attempted to drive the different departments in the Blair/Brown years.
Mr Letwin has been heard to claim that he has mapped out every major policy initiative for the next two years - so that all the Coalition's big changes will be in place and, he hopes, delivering tangible improvements, in good time for the voters to take note before the next election. He told the PAC he has a whiteboard in his office on which a vast number of departmental objectives and milestones are listed. In due course ministers and officials will be summoned to account for their performance, or lack of it, against these objectives. And, most important of all, all those objectives and milestones have been made public, in business plans published by each department and updated at regular intervals.
Mr Letwin works closely with the Lib Dem , who holds the central purse-strings as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. They are an amiable double act. But the fate of the government depends on whether they can make this system work - and in particular can ensure their programme is not frustrated by a sheer lack of money. The PAC members, particularly, but not exclusively, on the Labour side, were sceptical about whether enough funding was being provided for the changes the Coalition wants. The new free schools and the proposal to replace the present Police Authorities with elected Police Commissioners were two examples where they probed hard.
And the duo retorted that they were reshaping the system to squeeze out more bang for the buck. Mr Letwin insisted that electing the people in charge of policing policy, coupled with the publication of online "crime maps," showing what offences were committed where, plus localised accountability at "beat meetings" would drive a revolution in police priorities - and give local people the policing they wanted. And both ministers argued that publishing much more information about what government spends would force politicians to make dramatic improvements in their performance. All this accountability through business plans, and transparency through freedom of information would be, they admitted, a stick for the government's collective back, but both insisted it would be bracing, and ultimately good for them.
So expect to hear a lot more about the business plans - especially when ministers miss their milestones.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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