Human Learning Systems is… a way to make public service1 work better for people How can we rebuild trust in public service, when resources are tight? What does public service look like, when it is organised to respond to the strengths and needs of the people it serves? How can we create the radical change in public service that we need, rooted in the practical realities of the day-to-day work? Human Learning Systems is a different approach to public management – how public service is organised, funded and governed – which seeks to answer these questions. It has been created by thousands of public servants around the world experimenting and learning together. It was created by people who wanted to address the failings of the current way of organising public service, which is called New Public Management. It was created by people who do the work of public service – public-facing workers, managers and leaders, together with their Learning Partners – who wanted to serve the strengths and needs of the people in front of them, rather than look upwards in the hierarchy to be told what to do. It was created by people who were fed up with the waste and inefficiency of working to standardised performance targets, and who knew how resources could be more effectively deployed. It was created by people who want to constantly learn how to do the work that matters, in the complexity of the real world. It is ultimately about the locus of control in public service. Where should responsibility for deciding what happens in public service lie? Currently, those who serve the public spend too much of their time looking upwards - for permission, for “quality” control, for decisions on what to do. Human Learning Systems offers a way to change that. It shifts decision making power about public service into the relationship between workers and citizens and creates the conditions under which those relationships are responsible and accountable. It moves public service from central control to citizen control.