Nowadays, governments around the world are reconsidering efficiency, effectiveness and quality of service delivery under the pressure of fiscal restraints, social demands and reputational factors. However, most of the emerging and existing community challenges have little possibility (if any at all) of being successfully tackled with, unless the engagement and proactivity of large masses of citizens is won. This makes both the tactics of doing “more with more” and “more with less” budget largely inappropriate. On the one hand, the provision of high-quality services in a uniform way and at virtually no cost for the beneficiary has proven unaffordable, even for the most affluent governments and societies; people do want more, and what they ask is differentiation and personalisation of service – which is impractical under any point of view. On the other hand, the logic of downsizing in order to save resources only creates monsters, with most of the budget cuts located at operational, rather than infrastructural level, which leaves the bureaucratic burden virtually untouched and makes fewer and fewer customers happy with a fast declining quality of service, despite the generous efforts of front line staff.

A new way of thinking is required to successfully manage change, which we call Frugal Government.

• Frugal because it is parsimonious in the use of resources, not only financial – if and when they exist – but also including the creativity, imagination and collaboration of people, from both inside and outside the public sector.
• Frugal because it aims to minimise the cost and maximise the benefit of public service delivery per user – therefore, it has a user centred and value driven perspective, where value is defined in differential terms between benefit and cost, and these are both expressed in non monetary (subjective) as well as monetary (objective) terms.
• Frugal because it adopts the diligence of a good family man in finding, measuring and distributing available resources in the direction of sustainable innovation – acting as a point of reference for the behaviour of all the members of its own “governance system”: citizens, businesses, third sector operators, academics, media and other stakeholders.

The above calls for a new capacity of policy makers and civil servants to set shared goals with civil society, as well as mobilize (most of the) people in their fulfilment or at least complying with them – which is the essence of leadership. This site intends to contribute to building such capacity, by providing insights into current and emerging trends as well as successful implementations of “Frugal Government” principles in the design and delivery of a wide range of policies and services – with their associated, and replicable, business models.

We hope you will enjoy reading, and look forward to your feedback.