Colin Talbot

• Read Colin's blog on Whitehall and public management - Whitehall Watch and his personal blogsite Colin Talbot

Colin's main area of expertise in is public services and public management reform. He has completed major international comparative studies on the creation of arms-length agencies (for the UK government and ESRC); of the use of performance reporting systems (for the National Audit Office); and of budget participation and scrutiny systems (for the Scottish Parliament). Colin has advised Parliamentary Committees on performance and public spending issues for the Treasury, Public Administration and Welsh Affairs Committees.

He is currently looking at the interface between academia and policymaking through a series of studies and experimental virtual "Policy Labs".

Colin has advised a wide range of international public sector organisations and/or carried out research in countries as diverse as Canada, Jamaica, Mexico, Tanzania, India, Bangladesh, Japan, Hong Kong, Malta and Sweden and spoken at conferences and seminars in over two dozen countries.

Colin has had an unconventional career - he left school at 16 and worked in various jobs before going to Manchester University as an undergraduate at 21. After Manchester he worked in a variety of mainly public sector posts before completing an MSc in Public Sector Management at Southbank University (with Distinction) and then becoming a senior lecturer in 1990 at Southbank. He completed a PhD at the London School of Economics before becoming Chair of Public Policy and Management at Glamorgan University in 1995 and Chair of Public Policy at Nottingham in 2003 and first as Chair of Public Policy and Management at Manchester Business School and most recently professor of Government in Politics | Social Scinces.

His current main projects are on GAP - Government, Academics and Policymaking. This includes surveys, interviews and experimental virtual Policy Labs.