Leaner, more commercially savvy government?

From a recent article in the FT:

In an analysis entitled Turning the Tide, Deloitte yesterday said central and local government must seize the opportunity “to take radical steps to emerge as leaner, more commercially savvy entities”. In practice, it argued, the downturn “provides a chance for public sector organisations to drive through reforms they could not necessarily achieve in more prosperous times”.

Deloitte’s comment on the challenges facing government is simply much of the same that we have seen over the last decade.  The theme pursued by the whole article (by Nicholas Timmins) is that government has to be even more commercially capable and emerge as even leaner.  Why should this happen?  Our concern in pursing shareholder value thinking in both the private sector and government is that this philosophy has dramatically failed.  Shareholder value thinking and practice simply helps the rich get richer and the rest of us suffer ever poorer service.  It is long overdue that focus on customer and the citizen predominate over this ridiculous mania of ensuring growth in mature markets, which is little more than increasing debt to the point where paper is just worthless.

Yes we need new thinking but it certainly has nothing to do with the line that Nicholas Timmins has taken in the FT.