Here are selected highlights from today's policy review which focused on personalising the Government's education and health policies. Five more papers, on the environment, security and crime and justice are expected in the coming weeks.

Choose your hospital

Those on waiting lists for acute healthcare, such as hip replacement, should be able get treatment from any provider, public or private. Currently some patients have a choice of four NHS hospitals. Also more GPs' surgeries open during evenings and weekends and high-street pharmacies with a broader range of services.

Control your budget

Expert View

This concept of "personalised public services" is very much the new buzz word and I think it will make for the next stage of new Labour's public service reforms

Philip Webster, Political Editor

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Users of public services should have control of their own budgets "which they can use to select what services they need and who should provide them", the review said. An arthritis sufferer, for instance, would be able to choose how to mix their services within an agreed list of options.

Get involved

Citizens should be able to communicate better with local authorities. The review cited the example of Breckland in Norfolk, where members of the public are given disposable cameras to identify "grot spots" in need of clean-up by the street cleaning. Schools should have better websites and text message parents. Students should get university credit for relevant public service volunteering.

More flexibility for public servants

The Government will continue to break down "traditional demarcations between public sector roles", according to the review. For instance reforming the courts to deal with low-level civil and criminal proceedings simultaneously and giving nurses the opportunity to expand their responsibilities and make certain prescriptions.

Competition everywhere

Private and voluntary sector organisations should be able to compete for a wide variety of public services. For instance: street cleaning, foster care and adoption services. In the police and Armed Forces, "non core" activities should outsourced, including payroll and pension administration, even the transcription of interviews and forensics. Private companies should help find permanent jobs for the long-term unemployed.

Reaching the most excluded

Specific policies and incentives must be aimed at the 2.5 per cent of the population judged by the Government to have been excluded from public service reform so far. These include parenting contracts on behaviour and school attendance; group and community incentives, for instance class healthy eating awards, and the use of "social marketing" to raise aspirations and change people's behaviour.

The social contract

"With rights come responsibilities," the policy review says of the trend towards personalised public services. The Government wants to make more use of "citizen–service contracts", where people promise to do certain things, for instance, more exercise, in return for services, for instance, healthcare. It moots the idea of an NHS constitution to coincide with the organisation's 60th anniversary in 2008.

The policy review recognises that promises made to the community are stronger than those made to the state, and recommends the use of more "mutual obligations between citizens", for instance giving ASBO powers to neighbourhood groups and tenant associations.

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