What does the data say? A close look at public services

As austerity enters its seventh year, mainstream concern over the state of public services has reached fever pitch. At a timely demonstration -- the weekend before Philip Hammond's first Budget as chancellor -- tens of thousands of campaigners took to the streets of London to protest about funding cuts to health services. But the NHS is by no means the only cause of strife as dissent about management of the public purse continues to grow. In truth, the heated debate about whether their public services are at breaking point is at best opaque and at worst misinformed. The Institute for Government, the think-tank and charity that works to make government more effective, is rising to that very challenge. In collaboration with CIPFA, it has published the first tranche of a continuing project to track the government's performance using publicly available data.