There is also a significant debate to be had about the defintion of 'front line'.
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I agree with the overall sentiment of the article. The problem with claiming to "Protect the front line" is that it prevents you from really understanding the service needed and how it is offered. I work with both the public and private sectors and people in the public sector tell me that they are actually frustrated that their organisation is not looking hard at how it delivers service and is implementing cuts badly rather than doing any real investigation into other options to reduce costs. They are also protected because they can cut and say, "not our fault, lack of government funding". No wonder the public are confused.
When talking to a friend in the Police Service, he told me that he has tried to get a different approach to changes but his HR team are “a joke and only think about removing people”. This is a real opportunity for HR to lead in good change management and organisational redesign efforts and become true partners to our clients. Instead we are focussed on moving people out of the organisation.
In future years we will look on this as an opportunity missed and our position with clients will remain unchanged. I hope I am wrong.
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I agree with the article. There are only so many back office functions that you can cut, but that won't deliver the bulk of the savings required.

The reality is that public sector organisations (at least the one I work in) are looking carefully at how front line services are delivered, and how they can be made more efficient, without effecting the quality of service delivery. There are very few redundancies on the font line, but posts aren't replaced through natural turnover. Unfortunately it will become more and more difficult for people new to their professions to gain employment in their chosen careers, which will inevitiably leave us with difficulties further down the line.
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Firstly, I defy everyone to agree on what constitutes the 'frontline' - a recent study by the police showed how difficult this really was. Secondly, what matters is what the customer/client of the service really want and how they want it. Thirdly, based on what matters then design the service end to end to deliver what the customer wants - that is your front line, and it's probably very different from what you thought it is!
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